Monthly Archives: August 2015

Sacks & the Bard’s Midsummer Madness

The late Oliver Sacks’s observations on the mind sometimes sound a lot like Shakespeare in “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “The Tempest.”

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He Doth Sit By Us and Moan

Last week I was honored by my friend Jean Yeatman when she asked me to sit with her at her mother’s deathbed. We talked about childhood excursions that our families took together and also about the importance of ritual in our lives. Today’s William Blake poem is for her and her brother Clay. Blake finds […]

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All the Devils of Hell Unleashed by Katrina

The panic of New Orleans 9th Ward residents ten years ago is reminiscent of the passengers on board the ship in Shakespeare’s “Tempest”: “Hell is empty and all the devils are here!”

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Trump as Frankenstein’s Monster

What is it about Donald Trump that brings out the literary analogies? First a Salon columnist compared him to Odysseus’s Cyclops, then the New Yorker’s John Cassidy saw him as Gulliver, and most recently Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and others have compared him to Frankenstein’s monster. I’ve written about the Cyclops parallel here, but let’s take […]

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The Pleasure of a Pathless Wood

For Americans, wilderness is a more unkempt affair than it for Europeans.

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Trollope and Patriarchal Marriage

My portraying traditional Victorian marriages, Anthony Trollope exposes the pathologies that came with them.

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Please Go Gentle into That Good Night

Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle” can be read as a narcissistic desire by young people that their elders will go out on young people’s terms.

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Dante’s Love: Hot Coals Unconsumed

Solomon plays an important role in Dante’s “Paradiso” become he combines earthly sensuality and celestial wisdom. I find this to be a healthier vision than those who elevate the spirit over the body.

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The Hardy Boys Do Not Age Well

I loved the Hardy Boys when I was growing up. Now I find them unreadable.

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