Tag Archives: Tristram Shandy

A Taoist Response to Grieving

By Robin Bates | Published: August 25, 2022

Taoist Chuang Tzu has a story about grieving that I find immensely comforting.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Chuang Tzu, death and grieving, Laurence Sterne, Taoism | Comments closed

When a Novel Affected Clock Sales

By Robin Bates | Published: June 9, 2022

Friday I have lots of thoughts about the Congressional hearings on Donald Trump’s January 6 coup attempt, which opened last night, and am working up a post that references Milton’s rebel angels. I’ll end this week, however, on a lighter note, an interesting footnote that my English professor son alerted me to. Apparently, Laurence Sterne’s […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged clocks, Country Wife, Enlightenment, John Wilmot, Laurence Sterne, Plain Dealer, William Wycherley | Comments closed

Imagining Little Ocean’s Future

By Robin Bates | Published: October 22, 2018

Looking for the literary significance of my latest grandchild, I turn to Walcott, Whitman, Masefield, Coleridge, and Byron. What emerges is a mystical seeker.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", "Sea Fever", "Tales of the Islands", baby names, Derek Walcott, J. D. Salinger, John Masefield, John Milton, Laurence Sterne, Lord Byron, Lucille Clifton, Paradise Lost, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, To Esme with Love and Squalor, Walt Whitman, William Blake | Comments closed

If Trump Tweeted Classic Lit Reviews…

By Robin Bates | Published: March 17, 2016

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 Uncategorized | Also tagged Albert Camus, Donald Trump, Ernest Hemingway, Hamlet, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Joyce, Lawrence Sterne, Lord of the Rings, Stranger, Sun Also Rises, Ulysses, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Literature as a Social Activity

By Robin Bates | Published: October 6, 2014

Literature becomes especially interesting when it enters social situations.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Haruki Murakami, Lawrence Sterne, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy | Comments closed

To Esmé and Alban with Love (No Squalor)

By Robin Bates | Published: June 18, 2012

With names from Salinger and Blake, my two new grandchildren have promising destinies.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Children, Four Zoas, J. D. Salinger, King Lear, Laurence Sterne, names, To Esme with Love and Squalor, William Blake, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Midwife, No Doc, at Grandson’s Birth

By Robin Bates | Published: February 6, 2012

My new grandson had the birth experience denied Tristram Shandy: one where a midwife was in charge.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Birth, Doctors, Enlightenment, Laurence Sterne, Medicine, midwives, Science | Comments closed

Novels and Baseball Fans, Fixated on Time

By Robin Bates | Published: October 3, 2011

As I watched the amazing day of baseball last Wednesday, I found myself thinking (being the literature nerd that I am) that the English novel was invented to do justice to reality when it got this dramatic and complex.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Baseball, Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne, Robinson Crusoe, Sports, Tom Jones | Comments closed

On Literary Names and Destinies

By Robin Bates | Published: July 26, 2009

Reynold, “Portrait of Sterne” Just as I was born into a literary name, so were Darien and Toby. Before telling the story, I will follow up on the allusion in my last post to Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged fathers and sons, John Keats, Laurence Sterne, names, Tobias Smollett, Upon First Looking into Chapman's Homer | Comments closed