andy merrifield

Every once in a while I like to delve into Henri Lefebvre’s La Somme et le Reste, the French philosopher’s two volumed autobiography from 1959.

As is fitting for every June 16—for every BLOOMSDAY—this is my little tribute to James Joyce’s Ulysses and its famous day fêted across the world today.

For a long while, I’ve had a peculiar fantasy of bringing volume two of Marx’s Capital into dialogue with James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

Last Sunday, I took a rare outing beyond Rome, fifteen miles southeast to Ariccia, a historic small town in the Alban Hills, close to the picturesque volcanic lakes of Albano and Nemi.

Over the years, there have been periods in my life when I’ve grown tired of reading, shocking as it may sound.

There’s something about James Joyce.

Three years ago, on New Year’s Day 2023, I published a blog post about the avant-garde movement DADA and what it might mean for us today.

I don’t usually get invited to these things.

Almost two-centuries after its opening night, Gogol’s five-act satirical play, The Government Inspector, continues to create a stir each time it airs anew, seemingly no matter where.

Gogol was passionate about food, reached obsessive proportions with it—in the portion sizes he consumed, in the elaborate descriptions around the dinner table in his stories.

A fifteen-minute stroll from Caffè Greco, west toward the Tiber, north in the direction of Piazza del Popolo, takes you to Via di Ripetta, which I head up, a narrow corridor running parallel to the river.