
Honeysuckle Walks
a literature & philosophy blog

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Jane Austen and the era of virtueβand vice
At the heart of every Jane Austen novel lies a sharp critique of social values. This isnβt surprisingβ¦

Timeless quotes from Steppenwolf
In an authorβs note for the 1961 edition of Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse described the novel as his most βviolently misunderstoodβ workβ¦

The tortured poet
The trope of the βtortured poetβ is intriguingβit conveys the idea that meaningful art requires or is enhanced by anguish, tormentβ¦

Sin, Sirens, and the irresistible allure of sound
βSquare in your shipβs path are Sirens, crying beauty to bewitch men coasting by; woe to the innocent who hears that sound!β

Imagination, empathy, and John Keatsβ negative capability
John Keats was an English Romantic poet whoβs best known for his odes, like βOde to a Nightingale.β Despite a short lifeβ¦

The happiness machine and accepting life as it is
In 1957, Ray Bradbury published a captivating short story called βThe Happiness Machine,β which takes us back to a time ofβ¦

The interconnectedness of the world and time
βThey were all interwoven and interlocked, entwined in a thousand ways [β¦] All of them together was the stream of eventsβ¦β

Old lessons on learning and wisdom (Siddhartha Part I)
Siddhartha is a beautifully written spiritual novel by Hermann Hesse about a Nepalese man's journey of self-discovery and search forβ¦

A book and a beverage: Anthem and a layered latte
βI guard my treasures: my thought, my will, my freedom. And the greatest of these is freedom.β - Ayn Rand

Book review: The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead (published in 1943) by Ayn Rand tells the story of Howard Roark, a talented and hardworking architect with strong convictionsβ¦

Fictionβs inability to reinvent the past
βIs it possible to make the experience and journey of faith fresh, as new and as linguistically unencumbered as it was to earlyβ¦β

What novelists should strive for (according to Ayn Rand)
βIt was Aristotle who said that fiction is of greater philosophical importance than history, because history represents things onlyβ¦β