Our society is currently split on the value of scientific expertise. That split goes back at least as far as Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
Monthly Archives: April 2020
Sci-Fi Provides Pandemic Guidance
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Andromeda Strain, Anthony Fauci, COVID-19, Donald Trump, Frankenstein, Last Man, Margaret Atwood, Mary Shelley, Michael Crichton, Oryx and Crake, pandemics, science fiction, Stand, Stephen King Comments closed
A Literary Survey of What Plagues Mean
A survey of how literary authors have grappled for meaning in times of pestilence bolsters our own search. I look at Sophocles, Virgil, Defoe, Porter, Camus, King, Mandel, Atwood, and Erdrich.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Aeneid, Albert Camus, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Emily St. John Mandel, Journal of the Plague Year, Katherine Anne Porter, Louise Erdrich, Margaret Atwood, Oedipus, Oryk and Crake, Pale Horse Pale Rider, Pestilence, plague, Sophocles, Stand, Station Eleven, Stephen King, Tracks, Virgil Comments closed
Church Attendance in Plague Times
Defoe in “Journal of the Plague Year” captures people’s need for church in plague times.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged church attendance, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year, worship services Comments closed
Trump Is Captain Queeg, Not Bligh
Trump apparently sees himself as Captain Bligh. Try Captain Queeg instead. Or the captain in a recent Dave Eggers comic novel.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Andrew Cuomo, Caine Mutiny, Captain and the Glory, COVID-19, Dave Eggers, Donald Trump, Herman Wouk, Mutiny on the Bounty Comments closed
Toni Morrison on Insensitive Employers
Wednesday The tragic coronavirus death of a Maryland grocery store clerk with cerebral palsy reminds me of a death in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, which I’m currently teaching remotely to my Composition and Literature course. We see similar levels of corporate insensitivity in both cases. According to CBS News, A 27-year-old grocery store clerk […]
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What Awaits COVID Grafters
Grafters with their eyes on the Coronavirus Relief Plan will have a special place (Circle 8, Ditch 5) in Dante’s “Inferno.”
Neruda: Let’s All Stop for a Moment
In “Keeping Quiet,” Neruda offers us a powerful challenge in the face of the world’s horrors: what if the entire world were to observe a moment of stillness?
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Keeping Quiet", COVID-19, Dante, Inferno, Pablo Neruda Comments closed
Shafts of Golden Light
Easter Sunday For Easter I offer up two April poems that work as a before and after. First, Rainer Maria Rilke speaks of the “slumbering silence” before everything bursts into flower. Then William Carlos William describes that bursting as almost too much to bear. First the breathless anticipation, then the flowering. In the Rilke poem, […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "April", Easter, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Rainer Maria Rilke, Spring, William Carlos Williams Comments closed
