John Leonard (February 25, 1939 to November 5, 2008) was an American writer, a critic, whose focus included various cultural manifestations. He became executive editor of the Times Book Review in 1971. Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008 (2012) is a posthumous collection, and here we read about the novel, A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone (1992). John Leonard writes-- The heresy here is Gnostic and Manichean. There is a "divine spark" and a "library in a jar". Culture and love are both secret. The demiurge is a tourist. ... In the absence of evil --to an anthropologist nothing is evil, including himself, we have history: snakes, feathers, lizards, jewels, a fanged cat, a wooden cross, a unicorn, and death without mercy. Mr. Stone kicks the brain around; we live in heresy; Satan prevails; A Flag for Sunrise is the best novel of ideas I've read since Dostoevsky escaped from Omsk. John Leonard also wrote: In the cellars of the night, when the min
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