Sometimes, it seems, we have to be deprived of literature to learn how powerful it is and how much we need it. Yesterday a colleague wrote about a former Chinese student of hers who, along with other Young Pioneers, discovered a secret treasure trove of books from the west during the dark days of the […]
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Seductive Balzac in Communist China
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, Communism, Dai Sijie, Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, politics Comments closed
Lit vs. China’s Cultural Revolution
Sometimes, it seems, we need to take a step out of our own liberal society to remind ourselves just how precious the classics are. During last year’s protests in Iran, I wrote a series of posts (starting with this one) on the potential for literature to be a force for liberation. Barbara Beliveau, a member […]
Fighting Crime through the Classics
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 […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Changing Lives through Literature, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea, Oliver Twist, Prison Comments closed
From Spiritual Hunger to Obesity Epidemic
Spiritual Sunday My wife Julia has been telling me about a book that she’s reading, Geneen Roth’s Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. The thesis of the book seems to be that overeating, like other compulsions and obsessions, is a means of escaping a spiritual emptiness. Or to put it another […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "When Death Comes", Dubliners, Emptiness, English Patient, Hunger, James Joyce, Mary Oliver, Michael Ondaatje, Nikos Kazantzakis, Religion, Spirituality, Zorba the Greek Comments closed
