Greetings, literature-loving Dharmists! (do we have a group name yet?) This is a crosspost of my dailykos series, profiling famous and not-so-famous names in literary history. Last week we spent time in West Africa with the former president of Senegal, who also happened to be a cultural theorist and excellent poet. Our subject this week was also involved with politics, although on a much more modest scale: he was friend and informal adviser to Czechoslovakia’s first elected president, Tomáš Masaryk.
Since the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina two years ago this week, one of this author’s novels has become uncomfortable to read, because he had once imagined in agonizing detail the destruction of the Gulf Coast due to humanity’s meddling with nature. Join me below for an extended discussion with a true visionary, and one of the foremost liberal humanists of the 20th century.