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 […]

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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 […]

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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. […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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