December 2025

Dedicated to Skip & Ingrid Eisiminger

From the Publishing-Editor of Hubris: Our December issue opens with an astonishing contribution by a relative newcomer to Hubris, Dr. Jason Page, who, in collaboration with one Claude Sonnet IV, Esq. has penned “The Mutiny on the Bounty: A History Play in Three Acts (In the Style of William Shakespeare).” (Well, the play is not quite, not yet, “in the style of William Shakespeare.” It lacks The Bard’s poetry entirely. But stay tuned: Claude Sonnet is but a freshman. Willy nilly, we will all read his senior thesis, and perhaps by next week, the way he’s going.) There follows a review of László Krasznahorkai’s A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by new Contributor Daniel J. Dodson, of Austin, Texas. (Welcome aboard, Daniel!) Following Dodson and Krasznahorkai’s metaphysics, I have slotted in yet another new Contributor, Dean Kalimniou, also known as Konstantinos Kalymnios, of Melbourne, Australia. For December (appropriately), Kalimniou has filed an essay titled “The Icon of The Nativity through a Feminist Lens,” the first of (I hope) many explorations of the nexus of Greek Orthodoxy, Feminism, and a theology beyond the sheerly kyriarchal. Then, Dr. Guy McPherson returns to us with a reasoned reminder that we are (all, Trump, Musk, and Voght, included) living in The Time of The Second Great Dying. I suspect many if not most of the readers of Hubris are on the same page as McPherson: as his editor and friend, I took his message on board years and years ago, and bless him for continuing to share it. Following McPherson come Kathryn E. Livingston, because Homo ludens must needs smile through the tears, and Poetry Editor Claire Bateman, introducing us to the poetry of William Walsh. Next, we have the fourth and final installment of poet Janet Kenny’s New Zealand memoir, “A Provincial Childhood (or, What I Did in the War).” And we close with an Eisimingerian essay on greetings by my favorite fellow teacher at Clemson University. (May a Merry Christmas with you be, Skip! And, Ingrid, may your Weihnachten Frohe be.)

Our December Home Page Artist, Susan Ryder RP NEAC, began painting professionally at an early age. Encouraged by her father, an enthusiastic amateur painter who imbued his daughter with a similar passion, she entered the Byam Shaw School of Art, where Bernard Dunstan introduced her to the work of the post-impressionist Edouard Vuillard, who proved a significant influence on her painting style and choice of subject. Ryder was 18, and still a student, when she first exhibited at the Royal Academy. She married shortly after, and spent the next decade juggling the demands of her career with that of her young family. By 1981, her reputation as a portrait painter was such that HRH the Prince of Wales commissioned her to paint Diana, Princess of Wales in her wedding dress. Ryder has won numerous prizes at the Mall Galleries and has been elected a member of both the New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Her work away from portraiture has proven even more successful. She occupies a place among the great names of contemporary British Impressionism as represented by the New English Art Club—a society of like-minded artists that can trace its philosophical roots from John Singer Sargent and Augustus John, through Stanley Spencer, to the present day. Her original paintings are available through Panter & Hall Gallery in London. Prints are available through sites such as art.com, and fineartamerica.

Off the Page

“Fakespeare Minus the Daddy Issues,” By Dr. Jason Page

HOMER New York—(Hubris)—December 2025—“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Shakespeare’s immortal words from “Twelfth Night” seem particularly apt when considering the Bard’s own rise from middle-class obscurity to literary immortality. Born the third child of an established Tudor family, William Shakespeare was hardly destined for greatness, yet he achieved it nonetheless, leaving an indelible mark on English society and language that endures centuries later. Such a towering reputation inevitably attracts controversy . . . and copycats. The persistent claims that Shakespeare didn’t author his own works reflect our ongoing fascination with questions of authenticity and authorship. (Read more . . .)

Signal & Memory

“The Infinite Mistake & the Nobel That Made Sense of Itself,” By Daniel J. Dodson

AUSTIN Texas—(Hubris)—December 2025—Every October, when the Nobel Committee emerges from its Scandinavian hush to name a new laureate in literature, a small portion of the world blinks, nods, and says: “Who?” This year, that bemused chorus met the name László Krasznahorkai, the Hungarian novelist whose sentences make Proust seem hasty and whose visions of moral vertigo could send Kafka reaching for chamomile tea. The Nobel, of course, has a taste for such difficulty. It has smiled on Toni Morrison’s tragic symphonies of language and Bob Dylan’s troubadour metaphysics—bodies of work wherein rhythm itself is a kind of moral argument. One might even recall Kazuo Ishiguro, who built entire emotional landscapes out of restraint. (Read more . . .)

Diatribe/North

“The Icon of The Nativity through a Feminist Lens,” By Dean Kalimniou

MELBOURNE Australia—(Hubris)—December 2025—Among the many images that have shaped the sacred imagination of the Orthodox world, none appears more deceptively familiar than the icon of The Nativity. It enters our homes each December with a sense of comforting inevitability and seems to present an uncomplicated tableau of divine incarnation. Yet when examined through the optic of feminist theology, the Nativity icon reveals itself to be an intricate field of contested meaning. It is a visual locus where the tensions of gender, authority, and embodied holiness are negotiated across centuries of artistic and theological tradition. As Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has argued, Christian iconography often encodes patriarchal patterns within familiar sacred narratives, and this encoding becomes perceptible only when the viewer approaches the image with critical attentiveness. (Read more . . .)

Planetary Hospice

“The Fire This Time,” By Dr. Guy McPherson

BELLOWS FALLS Vermont—(Hubris)—December 2025—The Mass Extinction Event of about 252 million years ago has been described as The Great Dying. This end-Permian event caused the extinction of about 90 percent of species on Earth. For many years, paleoecologists and climate scientists have believed that this event would not be eclipsed: it would go down in history at the worst of the Mass Extinction Events, never to be outdone. Along comes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC. Designed-to-fail when it was created during the Ronald Reagan administration, the IPCC has concluded that the end-Permian Mass Extinction Event was minor compared to the current one. It’s not even close. In fact, no previous Mass Extinction Event comes close to the ongoing event. Consider the language used in the IPCC’s Global Warming of 1.5°, a report published on 8 October 2018. (Read more . . .)

Words & Wonder

“No Kings . . . or Corsets,” By Kathryn E. Livingston

BOGOTA New Jersey—(Hubris)—December 2025—Lately, in my imagination, I’ve taken to fainting and calling for my smelling salts. No, not because of any actual illness (though I did faint into a plate of French fries due to low blood sugar some 20 years ago). My current fascination with fainting comes from my obsession with a naughty, new delight I’m engaging in; the romance novels of one Georgette Heyer, a British writer born in 1902 (her first book was published in 1921, and she wrote nearly until her death in 1974). It’s our daily news cycle that has led to my fervent and frequent need to escape—preferably into the pages of fiction, particularly the Regency era in England which began in 1811 with the swearing in of George, Prince of Wales, as Regent, until 1820, when he was crowned King George IV. (Read more . . .)

Speculative Friction

“The Poetry of William Walsh,” By Claire Bateman, Poetry Editor

GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Hubris)—December 2025—William Walsh is an award-winning poet and novelist, the author of eleven books, editor of the James Dickey Review, and director of the Etowah Valley Low-Residency MFA program at Reinhardt University. His work has appeared in AWP Chronicle, Five Points, Flannery O’Connor Review, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review, Poetry Daily, Poets & Writers, Rattle, and Shenandoah. His novel, Haircuts for the Dead, was published in August by Mercer University Press. Four years in the making, Flannery O’Connor’s Andalusia: The Georgia Dairy Farm and Its Influence in Her Fiction comprises a new exploration of the impetus of O’Connor’s fiction, to be published in April 2026 by McFarland & Co. (Read more . . .)

Singing & Drowning

“A Provincial Childhood (or, What I Did in the War): Part IV,” By Janet Kenny

POINT VERNON Australia—(Hubris)—December 2025—“Stand up any child who can sing V For Victory,” said the pantomime dame. We were at the pantomime, and I wanted to stand up and sing. Unfortunately, I had never heard of V For Victory and was wildly jealous when a pasty child with ringlets put up her hand and said: “I will”. What’s more, I recognized her as one of the chorus children from the cast in the previous act. I was seeing my first rigged audition. She sang, with pathetic gestures: “Who’th that knocking at my door? Who’th that knocking at my door? It’th me. It’th me. Vee for victoree, knock, knock, knocking at your door.” This sub-standard interlude did not detract from the delight of the show. The pantomime dame and the clown had hurled dough at each other. (Read more . . .)

Skip the B.S.

“High Fives & Fist Bumps: Greetings,” By Dr. Skip Eisiminger

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Hubris)—December 2025—One Sunday evening this April, I yelled downstairs, “I’m going for a quick ride, Maudie.” “Be careful, Yoda,” she said. “Do I will!” Turning off Blue Ridge onto Karen, I see Tommy ahead, weaving his way home on his bike. I think I’ll teach him a lesson, but he hears me coming, stands on his pedals, and beats me to his mailbox. “You win!” I yell. He smiles back and rings his bell. On Clemson Elementary’s softball field, I see an angler practicing his fly casting. “Are they biting?” I yell. “Just grass,” he says. Going down Berkeley, a woman and her pitbull tug on a slender leash in equal but opposite directions. “Easy, boy; easy, boy,” I say, swinging wide in light traffic. In Ashley Estates, a car cuts me close despite my flashing butt light. As he passes, his beagle barks ten feet from my left ear, but I bark back even louder. (Read more . . .)

Our November 2025 Issue

Singing & Drowning

“A Provincial Childhood (or, What I Did in the War): Part III,” By Janet Kenny

POINT VERNON Australia—(Hubris)—November 2025—My mother used to purchase mysterious parcels in the corset department of one of the larger department stores. She never divulged their contents and for some reason I never asked. I can’t remember when I first heard about menstruation. My first information about sex was told to me, along with lurid anecdotes, by a clever pretty girl who was two years my junior. Although I had already read delicately pornographic historical novels for some years and had been enrolled in the adult library since I was nine years old, I had somehow read the purple passages without understanding them. (Read more . . .)

Imagination’s Favors

“Two Arrivals,” By Don Schofield

THESSALONIKI & ATHENS Greece—(Hubris)—November  2025—There I was, thirty-years-old, with most of my worldly possessions in a heavy blue backpack and a stained grey suitcase at my feet, leaning toward the oncoming traffic on Queen Amalías Boulevard, in t-shirt, cutoffs, and Birkenstock sandals—unmistakably American—nervously waiting at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the only person I knew this side of the Atlantic, John Photiádes. John was the Greek-American econ prof who befriended me in my last year of graduate school at University of Montana. When I told him I wanted to go live in Greece, he offered to teach me the alphabet and, as I made plans for my one-way trip, agreed to meet me when I arrived. He’d be in Athens anyway, he said, for his annual visit. But now he was late. (Read more . . .)