Monthly Archives: January 2011

Hope: Invisible before Us and Still Possible

By Robin Bates | Published: January 13, 2011

At the end of yesterday’s memorial service remembering those who died in the tragic Tucson shooting, the president of the University of Arizona read a poem by W. S. Merwin, recently named our poet laureate. I found a copy of it on the University’s Poetry Center website, along with the following wonderful quotation by Merwin […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "To the New Year", Arizona shootings, Barack Obama, death and dying, W. S. Merwin | Comments closed

What Would Alyosha Karamazov Do?

By Robin Bates | Published: January 12, 2011

I continue to turn to The Brothers Karamazov almost as a meditational practice to guide me through the turmoil I am experiencing over the Arizona shootings. Yesterday I quoted Zosima, the elder in the book, about how we must look to ourselves if we want others to change. I spoke approvingly of those who, rather than […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arizona shootings, Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, politics, violence | Comments closed

Dostoevsky and the Arizona Shootings

By Robin Bates | Published: January 11, 2011

When I posted, on Saturday morning, my blog entry for Sunday, I little realized that I would be turning for help later in the day to the work I was discussing. Doestoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov is guiding my response to the horrific shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Judge John Ball, and 16 others, including a child. […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arizona shootings, Brothers Karamazov, Ceremony, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leslie Marmon Silko, politics, violence | Comments closed

Analyzing Loughner’s Booklist

By Robin Bates | Published: January 10, 2011

Like much of America, I am still in a state of shock over Saturday’s shooting of a Congresswoman, a judge, and 16 others. Like many I wonder if this was an example of a disturbed mind encountering the inflamed political rhetoric that has come to characterize American political discourse. (Add Arizona’s permissive gun laws into […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Adolph Hitler, Aesop, Aldous Huxley, Alice through the Look Glass, Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Arizona killings, Ayn Rand, Brave New World, Charles Bukowski, Communist Manifesto, Ernest Hemingway, Fables, Fahrenheit 451, Gulliver's Travels, Harper Lee, Hermann Hesse, Homer, James Barrie, Jared Lee Loughner, Jonathan Swift, Karl Marx, Ken Kesey, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Mein Kampf, Meno, nimal Farm, Norton Juster Phentom Tollbooth, Odyssey, Old Man and the Sea, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Peter Pan, Plot, Pulp, Ray Bradbury, Reading George Orwell, Republic, Siddhartha, To Kill a Mockingbird, violence, We the Living, Wizard of Oz | Comments closed

A Message of Love for Fractious Times

By Robin Bates | Published: January 9, 2011

Spiritual Sunday In last Monday’s post a fascinating discussion was started when I applied a passage from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov to the debate over whether society should step in and help out homeowners who can’t pay their mortgages. Zosima, a very spiritual character and an elder in the Russian Orthodox Church, warns his listeners that […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky, love, Religion | Comments closed

Peyton Manning as Moby Dick?!

By Robin Bates | Published: January 7, 2011

Sports Saturday In anticipation of football’s “Wild Card Weekend,” which begins today, I see that a sports writer has invoked Herman Melville’s masterpiece. Dan Graziano believes that Indianapolis Colt quarterback Peyton Manning has become Rex Ryan’s Moby Dick. He has beaten the New York Jets coach so many times that Ryan has become obsessed with […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Fuzzy-Wuzzy", Alfred Lord Tennyson, East of Eden, Football, Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Jungle Books, Moby Dick, Rudyard Kipling, Sports, Ulysses | Comments closed

Film’s Phantom Empire Controls Our Lives

By Robin Bates | Published: January 7, 2011

Film Friday Film has restructured the way we see the world. Such is the thesis of a fascinating book that my father gave me for Christmas. Geoffrey O’Brien’s aptly named The Phantom Empire: Movies in the Mind of the 20th Century is a very smart book that takes one inside the movie viewing experience—good movies, […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Film, Geoffrey O'Brien, Magic Mountain, Phantom Empire, Thomas Mann | Comments closed

What Fictional Fantasy Means

By Robin Bates | Published: January 6, 2011

Having taught British Fantasy Literature for the first time last semester, I need to think back on it before it becomes a distant memory. By reflecting publicly, I can share some of the insights I gained from the course. Two major things I learned are that (1) fantasy is an oppositional genre—by which I […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goblin Market, Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Hard Times, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Barrie, John Keats, Joseph Campbell, Jungle Books, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carol, Man and His Symbols, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rider Haggard, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, She, teaching, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Our Inner Library: A Quiz

By Robin Bates | Published: January 5, 2011

Last semester my Ljubljana friend Jason Blake sent me a passage from Alberto Manguel’s novel The Library at Night. A colleague of Jason’s was trying to identify all the literary allusions and was stuck on “first centenary encounter with ice.” It took me a while but I think I was able to identify it correctly, […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alberto Manguel, libraries, Library at Night, reading | Comments closed