Film Friday I have wonderful childhood memories of going to the movies with my parents. That’s why I am particularly fond of the opening scene of James Agee’s novel Death in the Family (1957), where six-year-old Rufus is shown attending a Charlie Chaplin short with his father. The year is 1915. I have seen many […]
Monthly Archives: November 2010
The Greatest Clown of Them All
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Charlie Chaplin, Comedy, Death in the Family, Film, James Agee Comments closed
Fixing the House that Jefferson Built
I offer my apologies to my regular readers for having written a series of very long posts this week. To give you some relief, I offer up a political poem by my father, who is a master of light verse. As he did in a poem that I ran in a previous post (you can […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "House that Jefferson Built", Environmentalism, Nature, politics, Scott Bates Comments closed
Obama, Don’t Mess with My Kitsch
I have been continuously bewildered by the state of political discourse in this country over the past two years. The vituperation that normally reasonable conservative intellectuals have unleashed against President Obama has struck me as, at times, unhinged. In his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Czech author Milan Kundera has provided me with […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Kitsch, Milan Kundera, politics, Unbearable Lightness of Being Comments closed
Soul-Selling for Dummies
How do I sell my soul? Let me count the ways. I wrote in Sunday’s entry how the ego and the soul are pitted against each other in an unending battle. Just think how much better off we’d all be if humans listened to their higher selves and ego took a back seat. […]
The Hell of Ego, the Heaven of Love
Spiritual Sunday A reader’s response to Friday’s post on the Faustus story has me thinking more about Marlowe’s marvelous play. Marlowe informs us that we don’t need to die to go to hell. If we refuse to listen to the voice of our soul, we can find hell right here on earth. If there were […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Christopoher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, King Lear, Religion, Soul, William Shakespeare Comments closed
The Suicidal Beauty of Football
Sports Saturday I’ve always been haunted by James Wright’s poem about high school football in working class Ohio. Wright’s fathers, living ruptured lives, hope for some kind of escape, some kind of renewed virility, through the football prowess of their teenage sons. Perhaps picking up on their parents’ desperation, their sons “gallop terribly” against each […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry Ohio", Football, James Wright, Sports Comments closed
Films that Mishandle the Faustus Story
Film Friday The baseball playoffs, which concluded with a San Francisco win over the Texas Rangers this past week, have had me thinking about the Faustus story and how many modern renditions of the story get it wrong. If this seems like a leap, let me explain. The Texas Rangers used to be the Washington […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Christopher Marlowe, Cold Souls, Damn Yankees, Devil's Advocate, Doctor Faustus, Film Comments closed
It’s Been a Mad Tea Party
Tuesday’s election gave us a chance to assess the effectiveness of the American Tea Party movement, which has fascinated not only the American media but people around the globe. For liberals like me, at times Tea Partiers have seemed to resemble less the American colonialists dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and more Lewis Carroll’s […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, politics, Tea Party Comments closed
