Monthly Archives: May 2024

René Girard on What Lit Can Teach Us

By Robin Bates | Published: May 16, 2024

Philosophical anthropologist René Girard owes his ideas about mimetic desire to literature.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

To Be Trump’s VP, Leap and Creep

By Robin Bates | Published: May 15, 2024

The competition to be Trump’s VP resembles the stick leaping and crawling contest in Lilliput.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Alice Munro, R.I.P.

By Robin Bates | Published: May 14, 2024

Alice Munro, who died yesterday, explored themes of survival in everyday settings.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Does Clockwork Orange Describe Us?

By Robin Bates | Published: May 13, 2024

The novella Clockwork Orange captures the process of fascist conditioning, such as we are seeing carried out by Putin on swatches of the GOP.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump, Stormy, and The Waste Land

By Robin Bates | Published: May 12, 2024

The Stormy Daniels-Trump encounter resembles the sordid sex scene found in T.S. Eliot’s “Waste Land.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

He Took Us with Him to the Heart of Things

By Robin Bates | Published: May 11, 2024

Poet’s writing about the Ascension often focus on our tangled lives.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A May Sarton Poem for Mother’s Day

By Robin Bates | Published: May 9, 2024

A poetic reminder, by May Sarton, to remember the good times we spent with our mothers

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Jane Eyre, Teacher of the Month

By Robin Bates | Published: May 8, 2024

To honor teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week, I look at teaching as it occurs in “Jane Eyre” and “Villette.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

On Gulliver and Biden Putting Out Fires

By Robin Bates | Published: May 7, 2024

Disagreeable measures used to combat Covid were like Gulliver pissing on a palace fire to save the structure.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment