Monthly Archives: February 2010

Poets Helped Shape Modern Olympics

Sports Saturday I am adding a new feature to Better Living through Beowulf, which I am calling Sports Saturday.  If you wish to see all of the website’s posts on sports and literature, click on “sports” in the tag cloud. Once again the mesmerizing spectacle of the Olympics has descended upon us as we watch […]

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Should Death Be Proud or Not?

John Donne               Last December, in writing on Margaret Edson’s play W;t, I noted that I didn’t think John Donne’s famous sonnet “Death Be Not Proud” would be very useful in helping someone handle death.  (The dying Donne scholar in W;t doesn’t turn to it.)  Since then, a friend pointed out that John Gunther’s 1949 book […]

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So We Should Read Standing Up?

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about already, recent studies have bad news for book readers. Apparently excessive sitting puts us “at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death.” Here’s an article on the subject. Book lovers would agree that there are few pleasures in […]

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Dragons in the Senate

 In yesterday’s post, I talked about how current gridlock in the U. S. Senate reminds me of the intractable problems that confront King Hrothgar in Beowulf.  Grendel, I said, is the spirit of fratricidal rage that sets colleagues against each other and brings activity in the great hall of Heorot to a halt.  Upon further reflection, […]

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King Hrothgar Stymied by Congress

McConnell, a modern-day Unferth?             What are we to make of the gridlock in the United States Senate these days and the refusal of Republicans and Democrats to cooperate to address the nation’s ills?  (In my partisan view, columnist Thomas Friedman is right when he accuses Republicans of never having been more irresponsible, but feel free to […]

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Huck Finn vs. CBS in the 1960’s

Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain         This past Friday was the 125 anniversary of Huckleberry Finn, a book that packed a wallop when it came out in 1885 and has continued to be controversial ever since.  Last May I wrote a series of posts on Huckleberry Finn, including on its importance to me as a child […]

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Beowulf into the Sports Blogosphere

The Super Bowl has come and gone and, although my team lost, I appreciate the fact that the American city most in need of a boost received one. Before the football season entirely fades from memory, I want to share the story of my incursion into the sports blogosphere and how I carried the torch […]

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Without Literature, We’d Die Like Mad Dogs

Kurt Vonnegut I have heard people sing the praises of Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle for years so I used the occasion of one of our snow days to read it. Vonnegut once had a cult following and perhaps does so still.  I’d love to hear an update from a Vonnegut fan. While I wasn’t blown […]

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Ignoring Books–Another Way to Burn Them

Read, reflect, act.  That is my vision for how we should respond to literature.  Therefore I was pleased to see a version of this advice appearing in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.  I’m reading Bradbury’s dystopia because I will be leading a discussion of it tom0rrow as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big […]

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