Titus Techera is the executive director of the American Cinema Foundation and a cultural critic. He has written essays for National Review, The Federalist, The University Bookman, and Modern Age. Mr. Techera studied liberal arts at Bard College Berlin and political science at the University of Bucharest and the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
Ricky Jay was born in 1948 and died last Saturday. He was the greatest magician in America for more than a generation and a character whose like we will not see again. He combined the all-American love of...
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Titus Techera as he reflects on the meaning of G.K. Chesterton's "A Ballade of Suicide." —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher
Do not expect G.K. Chesterton's ballade to be any kind of love poem–he wants to something else instead, to raise your eyebrow, not to say hairs on end...
G.K. Chesterton published "A Ballade of Suicide" in...
It is insufficient to say that Ebenezer Scrooge is greedy. Scrooge believes that in his private life no one can make claims on his substance or time. He the kind of man who understands life to reduce to contracts...
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft...
You might wonder where this phrase comes from—the law of the jungle—which we take to mean lawlessness, spelled out in a fine turn of phrase. Rudyard Kipling thought otherwise; in fact, he makes quite a lot in...
Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for...
Sexual intercourse began
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the "Chatterley" ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all...
