The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin is offered to us as a book full of insight, a new, fresh, and informed exploration of that stickiest of all human adventures—sex. Within the action of the book, however, we see proclaimed not the joy of sex, but the heroism of abstinence. Estraven, Genly Ai's closest native friend, normally a lusty sort of character (we gather), abandons his sexuality and suffers the tortures of the celibate in the name of the quest.

The play Hamlet grows out of the tradition of the revenge tragedy, a great favorite of the Elizabethan audience. In the conventional...

February 2, 2013 (Warning: spoilers ahead.) I haven’t really kept up with my movie-going lately, but Django stood out for me quite...

February 14, 2010 · Finally got around to watching Shrek. More interesting than I had anticipated. But I do have a question or two… The...

June 9, 2009 · Rest in peace, Grasshopper “We have all been in rooms/We cannot die in” “Adultery,” James Dickey In Tarantino’s Kill Bill 2 , David Carradine (Bill) [also called “Grasshopper” by his master in the TV series “Kung Fu”] meets his end at the hands of Uma Thurman (Beatrix Kiddo), whom Bill had tried to kill for leaving him. Beatrix has learned the five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique from the master Bill sent her to for her apprenticeship; when she strikes hi