Monthly Archives: August 2017

Eclipses in Fiction

By Robin Bates | Published: August 21, 2017

Two memorable times that fiction appears in fiction are in Mark Twain’s “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” and Hergé’s Tintin adventure “Prisoners of the Sun.”

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Trump’s Pastor Endorses Worldly Power

By Robin Bates | Published: August 19, 2017

By suggesting to Trump that he bomb North Korea, Trump’s pastor sounds disturbingly like Satan tempting Jesus in the desert, as described by Milton.

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Gogol’s Guide to Traveling

By Robin Bates | Published: August 18, 2017

Friday I’m driving back to Maryland from Tennessee today and so have chosen a passage on traveling from Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls, which I’m listening to at the moment. I myself won’t have the same experience as Gogol’s traveler since I can’t lean back and fall asleep. Nevertheless, the passages reminds me of traveling by […]

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Tolstoy on Resisting a Narcissist

By Robin Bates | Published: August 17, 2017

If Trump is like Napoleon in Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” can he be defeated by popular resistance, as he is in Tolstoy’s novel?

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Obama Was Invisible to White America

By Robin Bates | Published: August 16, 2017

A Salon article explores how some of white supremacism’s rise can be traced to rage over having had a black president. Quoting Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” it makes the case that the right couldn’t really see Obama.

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Poetry Helped Feed Robert E. Lee Myth

By Robin Bates | Published: August 15, 2017

Herman Melville and Julie Ward Howe, although anti-slavery, unfortunately wrote poems which helped mythologize Robert E. Lee, whose statues have become symbols of white supremacy. And indeed, Lee was a white supremacist.

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Baldwin Explains White Supremacists

By Robin Bates | Published: August 14, 2017

To understand white supremacy, check out James Baldwin’s short story “Going To Meet the Man.” It helps explain the hatred and violence we saw in Charlottesville this past weekend.

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O World Inapprehensible, We Clutch Thee

By Robin Bates | Published: August 13, 2017

Poet Francis Thompson, desperately seeking for God, imagines that Jesus can be found as readily on the Thames as on the Sea of Galilee.

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Gogol Would Understand Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: August 10, 2017

I may just have discovered the ultimate literary parallel for Donald Trump: Gogol’s Nozdrev from “Dead Souls.” Reading about Nozdrev helps us understanding our fascination with Trump.

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