Monthly Archives: May 2016

Trump Sees Garbage and Rocks in Foes

By Robin Bates | Published: May 31, 2016

I’ve compared Donald Trump to Murakami’s villain in “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” Today I dig deeper into the comparison.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump, Haruki Murakami, politics, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | Comments closed

Trump as a Haruki Murakami Villain

By Robin Bates | Published: May 30, 2016

Donald Trump has an uncanny resemblance to the villain Noboru Wataya in Haruki Murakami’s masterful novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” (1998). Both have a similar hollowness and both have the ability to separate people from the higher instincts and put them in thrall to their lower ones.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump, GOP, Haruki Murakami, Jonathan Bernstein, politics, racism, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, xenophobia | Comments closed

Memorial Day: I Am the Grass, I Cover All

By Robin Bates | Published: May 29, 2016

Carl Sandburg’s outward stoicism masks a deep grief as he memorializes those killed in battle in “Grass.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Grass", "Song of Myself", "Where Have All the Flowers Gone", battles, Carl Sandburg, Memorial Day, Pete Seeger, Walt Whitman, war | Comments closed

Trapped in Spiritual Crisis? Read Donne

By Robin Bates | Published: May 28, 2016

John Donne can come to the rescue of students who are in spiritual crisis.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Sonnet 5", "Sonnet 9", Doubt, John Donne, spiritual crisis | Comments closed

Resisting the Witchery of Nuclear Warfare

By Robin Bates | Published: May 26, 2016

Today Barack Obama will be the first American president to visit Hiroshima. Laguna Pueblo author Leslie Marmon Silko has an explanation for the development of the bomb: witches.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Barack Obama, Ceremony, Hiroshima, Leslie Marmon Silko, nuclear bomb, nuclear warfare, witchery | Comments closed

Defending the Canon vs. New Attacks

By Robin Bates | Published: May 25, 2016

Yale English majors have been complaining about requiring them to study canonical writers. Here’s is why they are wrong.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged canon, canonical works, Herbert Marcuse, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Pope Foresaw GOP Capitulation to Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: May 24, 2016

Alexander Pope warned, in “Essay on Man” that vice loses its ugliness once it becomes familiar. This is the danger we face with the normalization of Donald Trump.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Old Whorehouse", 2016 presidential election, Alexander Pope, Donald Trump, Essay on Man, Mary Oliver, politics | Comments closed

Hillary Clinton as Emma Woodhouse

By Robin Bates | Published: May 23, 2016

Hillary Clinton shares certain characteristics with Emma Woodhouse. (And far fewer with Lady Macbeth.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2016 presidential election, Emma, Hillary Clinton, Jane Austen, politics | Comments closed

Using Lit to Discover Purpose in Science

By Robin Bates | Published: May 22, 2016

My Intro to Literature students, few of whom are English majors, are often startled to discover that literature understands them better than they understand themselves. Today’s post describes the encounters between two science majors and, respectively, Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality” and Kingsolver’s “Flight Behavior.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Tables Turned", Barbara Kingsolver, climate change, Flight Behavior, Humanities, Intimations of Immortality, Science, William Wordsworth | Comments closed