In which I argue that great pro-war literature doesn’t exist, including “The iliad” and “War and Peace.” (Both works are magnificent; I just don’t see them as pro-war.)
Posted in Homer, Tennyson (Alfred Lord), Tolstoy (Leo) | Also tagged "Charge of the Light Brigade", Alfred Lord Tennyson, anti-war literature, Catch 22, Donald Trump, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homer, Iliad, Joseph Heller, Leo Tolstoy, Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien, war, War and Peace |
The GOP’s decision to allow the hunting of hibernating bears and denned wolf cubs raises issues of wannabe machismo that one can find in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
In a remarkable interview with “The New York Times,” Barack Obama spoke about the importance of literature in his life. The range of his reading and the sensitivity of his responses is astounding.
Posted in Bellow (Saul), Cixin (Liu), Diaz (Junot), Flynn (Gillian), Goff (Lauren), Hemingway (Ernest), Kerouac (Jack), Kerouac (Jack), Kingston (Maxine Hong), Lahiri (Jhumpa), Lee (Harper), Lessing (Doris), Mailer (Norman), Marquez (Gabriel Garcia), Morrison (Toni), Naipaul (V.S.), Robinson (Marilynne), Roth (Philip K.), Shakespeare (William), Whitehead (Colson) | Also tagged Barack Obama, Bend in the River, Colson Whitehead, Doris Lessing, Fates and Furies, Garcia Gabriel Marquez, Gilead, Gillian Flynn, Golden Notebook, Gone Girl, Jack Kerouac, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Lauren Goff, Liu Cixin, Marilynne Robinson, Martha Nussbaum, Maxine Hong Kingston, Moveable Feast, Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Philip Roth, Road, Saul Bellow, Song of Solomon, Tempest, Three Body Problem, Toni Morrison, Underground Railroad, V.S. Naipaul, Warrior Woman, William Shakespeare |
If Bill Gorton, a positive figure in “The Sun Also Rises,” is politically incorrect, does that mean that Donald Trump is correct in his attacks on PC? Award-winning high school teacher Carl Rosin tackles the issues by contrasting Gorton and Trump.
Donald Trump has a very distinctive twitter style., one that would be great for classic book reviews. A BuzzFeed writer imagines how he might have reviewed “Hamlet,” “Tristram Shandy,” “Ulysses,” and other classics.
Posted in Hemingway (Ernest), Joyce (James), Shakespeare (William), Sterne (Lawrence), Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Also tagged Albert Camus, Donald Trump, Hamlet, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Joyce, Lawrence Sterne, Lord of the Rings, Stranger, Sun Also Rises, Tristram Shandy, Ulysses, William Shakespeare |
The death of Cecil the Lion conjures up images of Aslan in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and of the lion in Ernest Hemingway’s “Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.”
NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof recently sang the praises of the liberal arts and talked about the vital importance of literature.
Posted in Hemingway (Ernest), Homer, Hosseini (Khaled), Lahiri (Jhumpa), Morrison (Toni) | Also tagged Homer, Iliad, Jhumpa Lahiri, Khaled Hosseini, Liberal arts education, Odyssey, Old Man and the Sea, Toni Morrison |
Literature played a major role in my father’s World War II experiences.
Mitt Romney resembles the dead leopard in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in multiple ways.
Maureen Down is accusing Obama of the grandiosity of Hemingway and the detachment of Walker Percy’s moviegoer.
Like much of America, I am still in a state of shock over Saturday’s shooting of a Congresswoman, a judge, and 16 others. Like many I wonder if this was an example of a disturbed mind encountering the inflamed political rhetoric that has come to characterize American political discourse. (Add Arizona’s permissive gun laws into […]
Posted in Aesop, Baum (L. Frank), Bradbury (Ray), Bukowski (Charles), Carroll (Lewis), Hemingway (Ernest), Hesse (Hermann), Hitler (Adolph), Homer, Huxley (Aldous), Juster (Norton(, Kesey (Ken), Lee (Harper), Orwell (George), Plato, Rand (Ayn) | Also tagged Adolph Hitler, Aesop, Aldous Huxley, Alice through the Look Glass, Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Arizona killings, Ayn Rand, Brave New World, Charles Bukowski, Communist Manifesto, Fables, Fahrenheit 451, Gulliver's Travels, Harper Lee, Hermann Hesse, Homer, James Barrie, Jared Lee Loughner, Jonathan Swift, Karl Marx, Ken Kesey, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Mein Kampf, Meno, nimal Farm, Norton Juster Phentom Tollbooth, Odyssey, Old Man and the Sea, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Peter Pan, Plot, Pulp, Ray Bradbury, Reading George Orwell, Republic, Siddhartha, To Kill a Mockingbird, violence, We the Living, Wizard of Oz |
Reader Farida Bag sent me a link to an article from the London Guardian about literature being used to rehabilitate prisoners in Texas. The program, called Changing Lives through Literature (here’s the link to their website) has been racking up impressive results: Of the 597 who have completed the course in Brazoria County, Texas, between 1997 […]
