Monthly Archives: June 2019

Does Sade Explain Trumpism?

By Robin Bates | Published: June 19, 2019

Thursday A recent reflection about Trump and Trumpism by Editorial Board’s John Stoehr has me thinking of the Marquis de Sade and Fyodor Dostoevsky. To understand the president and his devoted followers, Stoehr says, try sadism. Stoehr is initially puzzled that people like Trump don’t want power in order to enact policy. He comes to […]

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Kafkaesque & Other Common Lit Allusions

By Robin Bates | Published: June 18, 2019

Wednesday In a recent Literary Hub article, Emily Temple honors the 95th anniversary of Franz Kafka’s death (June 3, 1924) with a list of times she has encountered the media calling something Kafkaesque. As is often the case in such matters, the term has been much abused, but that shouldn’t make us any the less […]

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Sherlock: Hard-Boiled or Soft-Boiled?

By Robin Bates | Published: June 17, 2019

Tuesday I share today an Alexis Hall essay I encountered in CrimeReads arguing that Sherlock Holmes is a hard-boiled detective. (Thanks to Literary Hub for the alert.) For those who study detective fiction, the thesis is startling because Holmes is generally grouped with the soft-boiled or puzzle-solving detectives, more like Dupin, Poirot, Miss Marple, Nero […]

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The Seductive Lure of Power

By Robin Bates | Published: June 16, 2019

Monday Pundits are puzzled why respectable people yield to the lure of Donald Trump and join his administration, even though they invariably emerge tainted. I don’t have in mind those grifters like campaign chair Paul Manafort, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price, or EPA’s Scott Pruitt, who were corrupt […]

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Gnosticism’s Flight from Earth

By Robin Bates | Published: June 15, 2019

Spiritual Sunday I have found myself exploring Gnosticism thanks to a marvelous poetry collection by my best friend from graduate school, Norman Finkelstein (the poet, not the political scientist). Norman has been included in a group of poets labeled “the New Gnostics,” which helps me make sense of From the Files of the Immanent Foundation. […]

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Amelia Bedelia, Working Class Rebel

By Robin Bates | Published: June 13, 2019

Friday Here’s a literary comparison I never would have anticipated: Amelia Bedelia as a feminist Bartleby. Reader Donna Raskin alerted me to this New Yorker article by Sarah Blackwood, who came up with the comparison after reading the series to her children. Amelia Bedelia is a maid who gets in trouble because she takes every […]

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Doctor Zhivago vs. Soviet Communism

By Robin Bates | Published: June 12, 2019

Thursday A new book explains how and why Boris Pasternak’s Nobel-prize winning Dr. Zhivago played an important role during the Cold War. Peter Finn’s and Petra Couvée’s The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, The CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book makes it sound as though former English majors were running the CIA’s Soviet Russia […]

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I, My Dear, Was Born Today

By Robin Bates | Published: June 11, 2019

Wednesday – On My Birthday, June 12 I turn 68 today so I share a birthday poem written by Matthew Prior (1664-1721). In it, he complains about being rejected by Clotilda, a name he plucks from the pastoral tradition. While the poet’s “jolly comrades” are prepared to “bring me music, wreaths, and mirth/And ask to […]

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Couples Fighting: It Must Be Love

By Robin Bates | Published: June 10, 2019

Tuesday I read plays all day yesterday with an eye toward an upcoming class on “Battling Couples in Theatre and Film (the Comic Version).” The September course is part of Sewanee’s “Lifelong Learning” series. As the course runs for four weeks, I will teach four plays and four movies, pairing a play with a film […]

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