Monthly Archives: October 2011

Using Austen to Understand Racism

By Robin Bates | Published: October 10, 2011

African American blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates uses Jane Austen’s villainous Fanny Dashwood to penetrate the mindset of American racists.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Jane Austen, Mansfield Park, racism, Ta-Nehisi Coates | Comments closed

Coming into the Peace of Wild Things

By Robin Bates | Published: October 9, 2011

Wendell Barry’s “Peace of Wild Things” provides a vision that can help counteract what Thomas Merton identifies as the most common form of innate violence: the rush and pressure of modern life.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Peace of Wild Things", Michael Glaser, Nature, Spirituality, Thomas Merton, Wendell Barry | Comments closed

Is America Selling Its Soul?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 7, 2011

The 1941 film “The Devil and Daniel Webster” is unsettling by how relevant to our current day economic crisis is its story of America selling its soul.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged class inequality, Depression, Devil and Daniel Webster, Economics, Film, poverty | Comments closed

Quixote’s Battle for Imagination

By Robin Bates | Published: October 6, 2011

In a short poem about about Sancho Panza and one of the windmills, Scott Bates describes Don Quixote’s sidekick as common sense reality robbing life of imagination.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Sancho Panza Come and Fight", Charles Dickens, Don Quixote, Hard Times, Imagination, Miguel de Cervantes, Scott Bates | Comments closed

The Myth of Slaves as Faithful Companions

By Robin Bates | Published: October 5, 2011

A visiting lecture on “Slaves as Loyal Confederates” reminded me of the complex relationships between black and white as they are explored by Twain and Stowe.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Harrieet Beecher Stowe, Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, racism, slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin | Comments closed

What Does a True Arab Do Now?

By Robin Bates | Published: October 4, 2011

In “Blood,” Naomi Shihab Nye grieves the massacres of Lebanese Palestinians in a poem that calls out for us to see each other as individuals and not as racial Others.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Blood", Beiruit massacre, Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinians, politics, racism | Comments closed

Novels and Baseball Fans, Fixated on Time

By Robin Bates | Published: October 3, 2011

As I watched the amazing day of baseball last Wednesday, I found myself thinking (being the literature nerd that I am) that the English novel was invented to do justice to reality when it got this dramatic and complex.