Monthly Archives: April 2018

Food Is More Than Food for Esquivel

By Robin Bates | Published: April 19, 2018

Esquivel captures the greater significance of food in “Like Water for Chocolate.” I also share a whiskey cake recipe and reflect on the magic in magical realism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 100 Years of Solitude, cake recipe, Confessions, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Haruki Murakami, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate, magical realism, Marcel Proust, Midnight's Children, Remembrance of Things Past, Salman Rushdie, whiskey cake, Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | Comments closed

A Public Liberal Arts Education

By Robin Bates | Published: April 18, 2018

In which I assess what my students have gained from having attended a public liberal arts college.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Jean Giraudoux, Liberal arts education, Madwoman of Chaillot, public education, public liberal arts college, Ronald Reagan, St. Mary's College of Maryland | Comments closed

The Dark Jinn Invade America

By Robin Bates | Published: April 17, 2018

Salman Rushdie’s “Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights” helps explain how Trump came to power. Blame it on a longing for dark fantasy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Barack Obama, Donald Trump, fantasy, ISIS, Muslim fanatics, Salman Rushdie, Terrorism, Two Years Eight months and Twenty Eight Nights | Comments closed

My “Last Lecture”

By Robin Bates | Published: April 16, 2018

I share here my “last lecture” from my retirement ceremony. (But rest assured: I will not be retiring from this blog.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Aristotle, Bertolt Brecht, Chinua Achebe, Divine Comedy, Goethe, Heart of Darkness, Horace, Huckleberry Finn, integration, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, Martha Nussbaum Wayne Booth, Matthew Arnold, Percy Shelley, Plato, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Samuel Johnson, segregation, Sir Philip Sydney, Terry Eagleton, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayne Booth | Comments closed

When Science Clips an Angel’s Wings

By Robin Bates | Published: April 15, 2018

Scientist and atheist Richard Dawkins disagrees with Keats and Poe in their attacks on science. I think he loses the argument.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "Mock on, "Mont Blanc", "To Science" John Keats, Edgar Allen Poem, Lamia, Percy Shelley, Richard Dawkins, William Blake | Comments closed

Senior Projects and Alice’s Rabbit Hole

By Robin Bates | Published: April 13, 2018

I compare senior theses to Alice falling down a rabbit hole. But not in the way you think.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, senior projects, student essays | Comments closed

Literature Has Paul Ryan’s Number

By Robin Bates | Published: April 12, 2018

Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, Chinua Achebe, John Milton, and Thomas Hardy see through men like departing Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged "How Doth the Little Crocodile", Alice in Wonderland, Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, Charles Dickens, Chinua Achebe, Hard Times, John Milton, Lewis Carroll, Oliver Twist, Paradise Lost, Paul Ryan politics, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Things Fall Apart, Thomas Hardy | Comments closed

Ferreting Out White House Corruption

By Robin Bates | Published: April 11, 2018

Salman Rushdie’s fantasy about genii attacking the earth contains a fantasy that is very topical: a “storm baby” who can root out graft.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged corruption, Salman Rushdie, Trump administration, Two Years Eight months and Twenty Eight Nights | Comments closed

The Stories We Tell Our Robots

By Robin Bates | Published: April 10, 2018

My sons have a podcast–“The Stories We Tell Our Robots”–which links literature with such developments as bitcoin, chatbots, airline pricing, and the like. Their rating system ranges from utopia to apocalypse.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Darien Bates, Oedipus, Sophocles, technology, Tobias Wilson-Bates | Comments closed