Ideas – Patrick Lohier

OUT WEST is Out Now! | April 1, 2024

I was honoured and humbled when my friend Michael O’Leary asked me if I would write a blurb for his newest book of poems, OUT WEST. Michael had shared drafts as he wrote and revised the poems, and I knew that they were shaping up to be unique and mesmerizing.

The book is out. I’m excited to share that he has created a mind-altering work of intellect, passion and rare vision. Words that come to mind include adventure, intense, physics, surreal, longing, probing, masterful, unusual, rare. These poems are strange and gorgeous.

OUT WEST is a reflection of the brilliant polymath I know Michael to be – poet, engineer, professional quant, husband, father, a man with as earnest and restless a mind and soul as you’ll ever encounter, steeped in numbers, lit, music, nature and curiosity.

Over years, I’ve swum in many rivers and lakes with Michael, trekked dense forests, explored ink-black caverns, risked death by heat, cold and gravity. I vouch for him. He’s the real deal, an adventurer of the world we see as well as the many possible worlds of the imagination.

Cribbing from Rilke, I encourage you to buy OUT WEST and change your life. You can order it from The Cultural Society today: bit.ly/3VGJBUS

A book on a table. Michael O'Leary. Out West. The Cultural Society

Review of Laila Lalami’s book ‘Conditional Citizens’ for Harvard Review | November 8, 2020

In her new book Conditional Citizens, Laila Lalami argues that America’s vaunted diversity and pluralism are undermined by actions designed to differentiate systematically between an “us” group and an “other” group. Lalami pairs her compelling personal narrative with perceptive and wide-ranging insights to reveal the cultural, social, and historical forces that create our modern American caste system. Read my review here.

Review of Ted Chiang’s short story collection ‘Exhalation’ for Harvard Review | October 4, 2019

Ted Chiang has built a cult following based on a few dozen exquisitely crafted, intellectually provocative, and poignant science-fiction short stories and novellas. His new short-story collection Exhalation presents Chiang’s unique talent in abundance. Read my review here.

Review of ‘Heads of the Colored People’ for Harvard Review | July 2, 2018

Nafissa Thompson-Spires’s debut short-story collection, Heads of the Colored People, captures black lives in this current, divided, Facebook-Live-Black-Lives-Matter-#MeToo moment, and catalogues trauma’s impacts on black bodies, minds and souls. Read my review here.

On the brilliant ideas and radiant visions of reclusive SF author Greg Egan for Boing Boing | Feb 17, 2015

I was thrilled to learn recently that Night Shade Books, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, is in the midst of reprinting paperback editions of seven of science fiction author Greg Egan’s works that have been out of print in the U.S. I reached out to Skyhorse Publishing and was able to find out some of the backstory. Find out what I discovered here.

Review of the graphic novel ‘Here’ and interview with Richard McGuire for Boing Boing | Dec 11, 2014

The experience of reading Richard McGuire’s Here bends the mind. My initial reaction was tentative, even puzzled. But I soon found myself immersed and often moved. Here has the surprising depth of a magician’s top hat. The combination of the surreal and the nostalgic are mesmerizing. The book is an ingenious epic of time and space, and I think readers everywhere, and of many ages, will find it delightful. Read my review of Here and my interview with McGuire, well . . . here.

The Normalization of Mass Surveillance | Sep 16, 2014

In early September, following the release of a video showing NFL running back Ray Rice hitting his wife Janay Rice in an elevator, the Baltimore Ravens terminated Rice’s contract and the NFL suspended him indefinitely from the league.

This follows an event in April, when an audio recording of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling telling his girlfriend V. Stiviano not to bring black people to games was made public. Sterling was banned from the NBA and the league is currently working to finalize the sale of the team to a new owner.

The following month Solange Knowles, the younger sister of Beyonce Knowles, appeared in a surveillance video attacking her brother-in-law, rap impresario Jay Z, in an elevator following the Met Ball. The footage exploded onto both gossip and news sites and sparked a storm of conjecture about what happened that night.

You’ll see a pattern here. Continue reading “The Normalization of Mass Surveillance | Sep 16, 2014”

Review of the graphic novel ‘Sugar Skull’ and interview with Charles Burns for Boing Boing | Aug 22, 2014

For over 30 years, Charles Burns has quietly carved out a reputation as one of the most talented and compelling cartoonists of his generation. In 2010, X’ed Out appeared, billed as the first installment of a trilogy. The second installment, The Hive, appeared in 2012. The last installment of the trilogy, Sugar Skull, is due out this September from Pantheon. Read my review of Sugar Skull here.

Snowden, ‘Animal Farm’ and the End of Privacy | Nov 14, 2013

Over the past few months, millions of Americans have discovered that their government is willing and able to spy on them as well as on the populations of other countries. This comes as a surprise to many.

For the nearly 50 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, the majority of Americans have enjoyed strong legal supports of our civil liberties. We have lived with Constitutional amendments and legal requirements for due process designed to bar or at least curtail undue search, seizure, surveillance and other intrusions on our persons, property and privacy. These rights were perceived as congruent with our most basic tenet, that we are all equal, that no one has the right to intercept our emails, or invade our privacy other than with a legally obtained warrant, obtainable only after establishing probable cause. Many of us had come to believe that these protections were ironclad and non-negotiable.

But at some point unnoticed, or simply obscured by the fog of over a dozen years of the War on Terror, the rules changed. Our confidence that we enjoy inalienable rights to privacy is evaporating. Although every once and a while we are made aware of secret executive orders, directives and programs that delimit our civil liberties, it’s still unclear how we lost so much so fast. Continue reading “Snowden, ‘Animal Farm’ and the End of Privacy | Nov 14, 2013”