Kevin P. Keating: Fiction, Essays & Commentary

From Issue #7 of Mad Hatter's Review : When director Stanley Kubrick’s final masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut was released posthumously in summer 1999 (shortly before rumors spread that Tom Cruise and a band of disgruntled Scientologists had him “silenced” for what they felt was an unflattering portrayal of their secret society) there was a public uproar over its paradoxically realistic and outlandishly stylized depictions of sexuality. Some critics brazenly dismissed it as “a sex movie made by a dirty old man,” though perhaps madman would have been more apropos, considering Kubrick seems to fit into that category of latter day prophet-philosopher-artist, not unlike Nietzsche and de Maupassant and Schubert, syphilitic geniuses one and all, ironic considering the psycho-sexual themes of the film. Of course there is no evidence that Kubrick contracted much less died of a venereal disease. Read the entire essay

From the February 2007 edition of Undergound Voices : Zihuatanejo, Mexico, a once remote fishing village north of Acapulco, has in recent years become a destination for savvy gringos who want to avoid the crowds in the usual tourist spots like Puerto Vallarta, Cancun, Cozumel and the all-inclusive resorts sprouting up along Baja and the Yucatan. But like those better known places, Zihuatanejo caters mainly to Americans who hesitate to leave the safety and comfort of their hotels and rarefied social circles to wander the narrow, litter-strewn streets of the barrio (think of crushed cans of Tecate and Modelo Especial in the gutters and packs of mangy dogs scampering through the evil-smelling alleys) where portly men in ragged clothes accost you at every turn to buy worthless trinkets. Little wooden lizards painted in the festive colors of the tropics, chess pieces whittled from soapstone that snap in two or disintegrate before you can capture your opponent’s queen, bottles of mescale a

From the January 2007 edition of Perigee: Lake Cumberland, one of the largest man-made lakes in the United States, stretches along the misty hills and valleys of the notorious bible belt of southern Kentucky near the Tennessee border. There the educated elite, barricaded inside fortified vacation resorts like medieval royalty seeking refuge from marauding barbarians, wile away the hours, boating and fishing and drinking bourbon on the rocks with a practiced air of ennui. Last summer I visited one such resort, and because I quickly grew weary of lounging beside a pool and chasing after my two-year old daughter (a Marie Antoinette in the making), I dared to leave our impregnable compound with its battalion of nervous security guards and journeyed into the heart of darkness where, among the winding roads and four-lane stretches of highway, there raged a cultural conflagration the likes of which I have never seen.