Monthly Archives: July 2010

Is There a Price for Doing Evil?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 22, 2010

In a dinner conversation with academic colleagues and novelist Rachel Kranz, we grappled with the question of whether those who commit atrocities pay a price for doing so. I came to the conclusion that it is a question that novelists and poets are sometimes better at answering than academics.

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Defending Miss Watson

By Robin Bates | Published: July 21, 2010

Many readers of Huckleberry Finn enjoy laughing at Miss Watson’s approach to teaching Huck. She tries to use the Bible to scare him into good behavior, insists that he sit still, and prohibits him from smoking and drinking. Romantics that we are, we make fun of her educational philosophy and find her a hypocrite, especially […]

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So You Want to Tell Your Story . . .

By Robin Bates | Published: July 20, 2010

Balthus My friend Rachel Kranz, author of the novel Leaps of Faith, is visiting us at the moment, and we were talking about the number of times that people approach her about writing a book about their lives. As they envision it, they will tell her their stories and she will write them up. We […]

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Europe and America, Fantasy Projections

By Robin Bates | Published: July 19, 2010

North Americans have regarded Europe as a cultural Mecca for a long time and often use their summer vacations to travel there as though on a pilgrimage.  This has been true of a number of American writers, including Mark Twain, Henry James, the ex-patriots of the 1920’s (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein), and T. S. Eliot.  […]

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Rising Again to Dance

By Robin Bates | Published: July 18, 2010

Chidi Okoye (Nigeria)  Spiritual Sunday I refute Berkeley thus, Samuel Johnson famously said. And kicked a rock. Bishop Berkeley was the 18th century idealist philosopher who asked how we know reality is really there if we are dependent upon our senses for perceiving it. Is the rock in existence when we turn our backs? Johnson’s […]

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George Steinbrenner, Not a Hollow Man

By Robin Bates | Published: July 17, 2010

Sports Saturday Mistah Steinbrenner—he dead. So I imagine T. S. Eliot announcing the death of the legendary Yankee owner this past week. That’s because, if one goes by Eliot’s famous 1925 poem “The Hollow Men,” one could not say that “the Boss” was “Shape without form, shade without colour,/ Paralysed force, gesture without motion.” In fact, an […]

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The Magic Flute and Teenage Hormones

By Robin Bates | Published: July 16, 2010

Film Friday The nature of Spain’s World Cup victory over Holland seems to have stuck with me all this past week.Spanish elegance won out over a Dutch “kick ’em in the legs” strategy (check out the state of hero Andres Iniesta’s legs here), and I have been writing about Prospero triumphing over Caliban and John […]

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And Universal Darkness Buries All

By Robin Bates | Published: July 15, 2010

Yesterday I talked about irresponsible political commentators and politicians and how they reminded me of the scribblers that John Dryden was worried about in the 1680’s. In the 1740’s Alexander Pope was even more pessimistic about the threat they posed. In The Dunciad he imagines an inevitable cultural slide until “universal darkness buries all.” Harold […]

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Enough Already, Rush, Glenn, Shadwell!

By Robin Bates | Published: July 14, 2010

Last week when I complained about Christopher Hitchens, I think I was reacting as much to the incessant chatter of pundits as to Hitchens himself. At present there appear to be non-stop voices competing with each other to see who can make the most outrageous claims or confrontational statements, whether on talk radio, cable television, […]

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