Monthly Archives: March 2021

Our Time in the Covid Sewers

By Robin Bates | Published: March 10, 2021

Reading “Les Misérables” while awaiting a Covid shot led me to compare our pandemic experience and Jean Valjean’s trek through the sewers.

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Does Lit Makes Us Better People?

By Robin Bates | Published: March 9, 2021

I share the intro of my forthcoming book, “Does Literature Make Us Better People?”

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Milton on Cancel Culture

By Robin Bates | Published: March 8, 2021

Yale professor Bromwich applies Milton to the cancel culture debate.

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How Whites Cancel Readers of Color

By Robin Bates | Published: March 7, 2021

Rightwingers complain that liberals are canceling Dr. Seuss. Real cancelation, however, uses racial stereotyping, of which Seuss was occasionally guilty.

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God as a Stern but Loving Gardener

By Robin Bates | Published: March 5, 2021

Herbert’s Lenten poem “Paradise,” about the pruning necessary to ensure growth, literally prunes the line endings.

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America Plagued by Ingratitude

By Robin Bates | Published: March 4, 2021

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 […]

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Elizabeth Warren, Like Eve, Persists

By Robin Bates | Published: March 3, 2021

It was four years ago when McConnell said about Sen. Warren, “Still she persisted.” Milton’s Eve also persisted but the comparisons end there.

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Hugo on Freedom-Loving Insurgents

By Robin Bates | Published: March 2, 2021

To get a sense of protesters in Myanmar, Hong Kong, and elsewhere who are risking their lives, read Hugo’s “Misérables.”

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Does Lightweight Lit Do Damage?

By Robin Bates | Published: March 1, 2021

I look at how thinkers over the centuries have viewed so-called popular or lightweight literature.

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