Reading “Les Misérables” while awaiting a Covid shot led me to compare our pandemic experience and Jean Valjean’s trek through the sewers.
Monthly Archives: March 2021
Does Lit Makes Us Better People?
I share the intro of my forthcoming book, “Does Literature Make Us Better People?”
Posted in Uncategorized Comments closed
Milton on Cancel Culture
Yale professor Bromwich applies Milton to the cancel culture debate.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Areopagitica, cancel culture, censorship, David Bromwich, free speech, John Milton, Paradise Lost Comments closed
How Whites Cancel Readers of Color
Rightwingers complain that liberals are canceling Dr. Seuss. Real cancelation, however, uses racial stereotyping, of which Seuss was occasionally guilty.
God as a Stern but Loving Gardener
Herbert’s Lenten poem “Paradise,” about the pruning necessary to ensure growth, literally prunes the line endings.
America Plagued by Ingratitude
Friday Red states have a long history of complaining about “blue state bailouts” while sucking up far more blue state money that blue states get from red, (Urban areas, the nation’s major income generators, generally vote Democratic.) Red state Congress members are also famous for denying disaster relief to blue states (think Ted Cruz on […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Ingratitude, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Ted Cruz, Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray Comments closed
Elizabeth Warren, Like Eve, Persists
It was four years ago when McConnell said about Sen. Warren, “Still she persisted.” Milton’s Eve also persisted but the comparisons end there.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Elizabeth Warren, John Milton, Mitch McConnell, Paradise Lost, Sexism, She persisted, U.S. Senate, women politicians Comments closed
Does Lightweight Lit Do Damage?
I look at how thinkers over the centuries have viewed so-called popular or lightweight literature.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Alexander Pope, Dunciad, Feminism, Frankfurt School, Frederick Engels, Herbert Marcuse, Jaws, John Dryden, Karl Marx, lightweight literature, Lovers' Vows, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Percy Shelley, Persuasion, Peter Benchley, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Terry Eagleton, W.E.B. Du Bois, Wayne Booth Comments closed
