Over sixty years have passed since a young Robert Zimmerman began making his mark on history, poetics, and culture. Still, much of the inspiration behind his poignant contributions remains mysterious, partly due to the artist’s secretive nature. His eclectic collection of records, books, and films makes him a platypus amongst aesthetic polymaths, eclipsing accomplished peers who’ve mastered multiple domains. But
Lady Margaret Lucas Cavendish’s futuristic novel, The Description of A New World Called The Blazing World, from 1666, has received renewed interest in recent years as feminist academics and other woke literary praetorians obsessed with their crusade of presentism, struggle to revise every page of the western canon. Their intent is not wholly without merit as the ambitious work by Cavendish had gone overlooked for centuries and delights this modern reader with illuminating descriptions of bizarre new worlds that predate some of today’s best science fiction. Many of her insights, although often coated with a generous layer of snark, remain fresh even four hundred years later.
