Table of Contents
Crisis 22 uses literature to explore the Ukraine War & global conflict. It contains the following 7 chapters:
Politics & Literature I - Metaphor & Symbol - Politics & Literature II - Waking Up - Cunning Plans - Puppet Masters - Fearless Leaders
Politics & Literature I
🟢 Fog & Shadow (March 2025) ~ Fog - Shadow - Koch’s Year - 007
☮️ Glaciers & Novels ~ Writing Against War - The Depth of Novels
🇺🇳 All Over the Map (April 3, 2025) ~ Geography - 7 Chapters - 11 Novels
🇷🇺 Imperialism & Colonialism (April 3, 2025)
🌏 Pushkin’s Brethren (April 3, 2025) ~ Writers in an Authoritarian State - The ____ Hate Us - The Global South - Colonialism & Genocide
Metaphor & Symbol
❤️ Extended Metaphor ~ Overview - Comedy & Tragedy - Are We Still Talking About Sex? - Puppet Regime
🚥 Symbolic Landscape (April 9, 2025) ~ Paths - Falls - Poo-tee-weet - Saul of Tarsus - Redemptions
🌊 Russian Horses ~ Over the Waves - Into the Skies - Into the Fray - Russian Horsepower - On the Hoof, from Minsk to Magadan - Asklepios & Phaeton
🐎 Magic Black Horses ~ A Dangerous Chef-d’œuvre - Mist - Night Flight
🍷 Nightingales 1 (March 2025) ~ Now or Forever - Half in Love With Easeful Death - Fled is That Music - Coda
🐦⬛ Nightingales 2 ~ Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Tolstoy’s Hadji Murad
♒️ Rivers ~ Politics & Metaphor - Religion & Metaphor - Rivers & Ocean - Alternate Courses - Rivers of Blood
🍏 Apples
🍎 The Road to Damascus ~ Who’s to Blame? - Apples of Discord - Changing Course
Politics & Literature II
☕️ A Point of View ~ The Bitten Apple - Coffee in St. Pete’s
🗝 The Time is Out of Joint ~ At the Tea Table - The Play’s the Thing
📺 Vicarious Experience ~ In a Dream of Passion - Pianoman - Cameraman
🪞 Mirrors ~ Overview - The Mirror Up to Nature - Poetry & Unified Sensibility - Tragedy & Comedy - Achilles & Arjuna
☯️ War & Peace ~ War, Peace, & Literature - An Artful History - Anna’s Drawing Room - Rights & Balances
🇫🇷 Napoléon Avait Cinq Cent Soldats ~ War & Peace - [In Progress]
Waking Up
🌒 With Open Eyes ~ on the shock of war in 2022 - Martyrs - Overview
⏳ The Ghost of Crises Past (November 2, 2023) ~ on the old fears of super-power conflict - Two Sonnets - The 1980s - Lines - Chaos
✈️ Dream Vacation 2005 ~ on a Russia that might have been - St. Petersburg, Moscow, Vladímir, & Suzdal
⛱ Rip Van Winkle ~ on the long sleep before the storm - Mojitos & a Cigar - El Profesor - Blissful Ignorance - Reveille
🍒 Macaron, Not Macron ~ on luxury amid the carnage (a fictional narrative set in New York)
🥕 The Carrot ~ on political inactivism - La Carotte - To MSF and All the Others - Court & Commons - Black Florentine - La Vie en Rose - Nightmares of the Iraq War Variety
❤️ Caritas (2014) ~ on dipping the toe in political water - Caritas - Avenida de los Presidentes, 2014 - The Hotel Nacional - Makoko - Guilt on an Oversized Sofa - Currents
🌉 Jovanka on the Bridge ~ on the blessing of bombs - Jovanka (July 22, 2023) - Q & A (October 8, 2023)
🎸 The Algorithmics (Dec. 10, 2023) ~ on the dangers of following your bliss & anger - Marilyn - Bubbles - Algo Something
☯️ Both In and Out of the Game ~ on getting critical distance - Options - Ostrichism - Ukraine 101 - Realism - Whitman
❄️ Political Modes of Being ~ on opting in & out of the game - Connections - Keats - Eliot - Snowflakes
🦋 The Tao of Putin (April, 2022) ~ on poetry, mysticism, & violence - Preface - Poem - Notes
🏛️ Stoicism & Religion ~ on two old ways of mixing reality and idealism - Aurelius - Pseudaurelius - Eyes Wide Closed - Stoic Q& A - Religion
Cunning Plans
~ On Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, & Bulgakov ~
🌘 Gogol & Co. ~ on Dead Souls & The Year of Living Dangerously - Plans & Puppets - Cunning Plans
🧥 Two Novels and an Overcoat ~ on Russian literature and its potential to oppose authoritarianism - Dead Souls & Year - Gogol’s Overcoat
😵💫 Russian Souls (July 8, 2024) ~ on Dead Souls and the notion of a Russian soul - A Cunning Plan - The Russian Soul - Belinsky
✒️ Literature & Subversion ~ on Gogol & Bulgakov - The Integrated Threat - Exceptionalism - Gogol & Bulgakov
PAGES IN PROGRESS: 💰 Gogol: Selling the Scheme 🧛🏻♂️ Dostoevsky: The Immoralities of Marmeladov & Raskolnikov 🚓 Crimes & Punishments ✝️ Zosima & the Grand Inquisitor ⚡️ Dostoevsky’s Inquisitor & Bulgakov’e Pilate ⚡️ The Devil Descends on Moscow
Puppet Masters
~ On postcolonialism, a multipolarity that already was ~
🕉️ Southern Paradigms ~ A Postcolonial South - Years of the Cold War - Chapter Overview - Rushdie
🎭 Behind the Scenes ~ on the difficulty of seeing behind the political scene - Five Points - The Wayang Kulit
☯️ Unified Sensibilities ~ on coping with uncertainty - The Political Uses of Literature - The Fractured Mirror - T.S. Eliot - Koch’s Year
⚔️ The Dangerous Years ~ on spying, subterfuge, and other Cold War elements in Koch’s novel - Years - Puppetry - James Bond - Daughter of Darkness - Spoiler Alert
🌪 The Eye of the Storm (November 2, 2023) ~ on coping with political despair and lecturing others - The State of Things - What Then Must We Do? - Lecturing Kumar
✨ The Dark Which Has No End ~ on a philosophical way out of despair - Strata Casting: Akasha & Accumulation - From Lamp to Lamp
PAGES IN PROGRESS: 🎙️ Words of Folly and Wisdom ⚔️ Battle of the Puppets 🇮🇳 Rushdie: India & the Many-Headed Monsters 🇵🇰 Pakistan & the Fall of the Poet
Fearless Leaders
~ On super-powers & rhetoric ~
✊ Fearless Leader of the Global South ~ on the Kremlin’s claim to be saving the global South - Overview - The New Bung Karno - Les Humiliés - Global Sing-Along
🇺🇦 Golden Bridges (July, 2022) ~ on the difficulty of finding a compromise solution to this war - Past & Present - Blame - The Past - Solution - Sanctions - Action - Coda - Anthem
💥 Exceptionalism I ~ on the present mess - A Difficult Question - Chiaroscuro - Chiaro - Scuro - The Present Score: August 19, 2024
🇺🇸 / 🇷🇺 Exceptionalism II (Dec. 2, 2022) ~ on the dangers of political and military exceptionalism - The Mad Cartographer (Aug. 2024) - Dec. 2022 - The Unmentioned History
🗽 Our Lady of the Harbour ~ on the resumption of the arms race - Arms Race to the Grave (2023) - Questions - Setting Sail - Our Boys (2003)
⏳ AD / BC (July, 2022) ~ on the worst possible outcome (a fictional narrative set in Sumer, Iraq, and Penticton, B.C.)
🇺🇦
Next: 🟢 Fog & Shadow