John Kenneth Galbraith, noted economist and author of The Affluent Society, used to read Jane Austen before he sat down to write. He wanted to achieve the author’s light ironic touch in his own work. Yesterday another liberal economist had me thinking of Austen. Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate who writes for the New York […]
Monthly Archives: September 2010
Atwood and the Eve of Destruction
Margaret Atwood’s most famous novel may be her futurist nightmare The Handmaid’s Tale (1985). In her two most recent novels, Atwood returns to the dystopian genre and paints a picture of a world in which unbridled capitalism, environmental devastation, urban decay, sexual license, runaway gene splicing, and extreme income disparity rule the earth. My book […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged apocalypse, Dystopia, Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake, science fiction, Year of the Flood Comments closed
The Lord Is My Shepherd, I Shall Not Want
Spiritual Sunday This past Sunday in our Episcopal Church, the 23rd psalm, it seems, was everywhere. We read the psalm itself aloud and sang two or three hymns that were versions of it. The gospel lesson dealt with the parable of the lost sheep, a comforting passage given its assertion that “the good shepherd” loves […]
Imagination Unleashed: Children on Bikes
Sports Saturday I bicycle virtually everyday to the college where I work, about a mile and a quarter from home. Unless it’s raining or snowing, motorists can see me pumping along, my pants tucked into my socks, my necktie blowing in the wind, my backpack weighed down with laptop, lunch, and the Longman Anthology of British […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Learning the Bicycle", Bicycling, Children, It, Sports, Stephen King, Wyatt Prunty Comments closed
The Titanic and Adolescence, 2 Disasters
Film Friday I have been recently writing about how Jane Austen’s 17-year-old heroine in Northanger Abbey uses gothic novels to negotiate the challenges of early 19th century life. Today I talk about how the greatest box office success in Hollywood history did the same for middle school girls in 1997. In fact, a major reason […]
The Church and the Chimney-Sweep’s Cry
In his August 29 Washington Mall speech, rightwing television commentator Glenn Beck attacked (among other things) the notion that Christianity should be concerned with issues of social justice. He accused Barack Obama and liberation theology of distorting Jesus’s message. For the President, Beck said, it’s all about victims and victimhood; oppressors and the oppressed; reparations, […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Chimney Sweep", Children, Christianity, oppression, Religion, William Blake Comments closed
Moving Beyond Adolescent Fantasies
Sometimes I will discover that two different works start talking to each other simply because I happen to be teaching them both at the same time. This week Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey (from my Jane Austen first year seminar) and John Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes (from my British fantasy course) engaged in one of […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged adolescence, Eve of St. Agnes, fantasy, Jane Austen, John Keats, Northanger Abbey Comments closed
Lit and Our Impoverished Political Culture
I’ve been thinking about how shallow and dishonest political speech has become in recent years. Then again, maybe it’s always been like this and I’m just noticing it more. When politics enter the picture, it appears that people start becoming stupid. Outlandish claims and ridiculous reasoning are either (1) accepted as factual or (2) seen […]
Singing a Lullaby to a Dead Son
From time to time I have reported on my friend Alan, who is dying of cancer but who continues to hold his head up and, to the amazement of us all, refuses to get depressed. We held another one of our salons in his honor this past Thursday. After hearing Alan report on the latest […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Wynken, and Nod", Blyken, death, death of a child, Eugene Field Comments closed
