Tag Archives: Anthony Trollope

Trump and Satan, Both Miserable

By Robin Bates | Published: January 14, 2025

Trump is as miserable as Milton’s Satan (and also a character in a Trollope novel). Unfortunately, like Satan, he does all he can to pull others into his well of misery.

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On Atkinson, Trollope, and Death

By Robin Bates | Published: December 23, 2024

Kate Atkinson is masterful in how she sprinkles literary allusions throughout her novels, which give her special insight into challenging subjects such as death.

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Trollope, Trump & Another Phrase for Lying

By Robin Bates | Published: June 20, 2023

Lizzie Greystock has a Trump-like phrase for escaping accountability: “incorrect version of the facts.”

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Pilfered Files, Eustace Diamonds

By Robin Bates | Published: June 11, 2023

I compare Trump with Lizzy Greystock in Trollope’s “Eustace Diamonds”–government files for him, diamond necklace for her.

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Trollope & Trump’s Congressional Enablers

By Robin Bates | Published: August 9, 2016

By continuing their support for Donald Trump, GOP leaders Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are choosing their party and their careers over country. In doing so, they resemble Anthony Trollope’s Sir Timothy Beeswax, Conservative leader in the Palliser novels..

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Trollope’s Melmotte Anticipates Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: July 6, 2016

Anthony Trollope foreshadowed Donald Trump in the figure of Augustus Melmotte in “The Way We Live Now” (1875).

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Trollope & Trump’s Willing Enablers

By Robin Bates | Published: May 19, 2016

Trollope describes gentry who enable to a scandalous financier in “The Way We Live Now.” Parallels can be drawn with those members of the GOP who are reconciling with Donald Trump.

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On the Death of a Controversial Judge

By Robin Bates | Published: February 14, 2016

How long should one pause following the death of a public figure like Justice Antonin Scalia before considering the political implications? It’s an issue that also arises in Anthony Trollope’s “Barchester Towers.”

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Donne’s Lovers, Spooky at a Distance

By Robin Bates | Published: December 1, 2015

Tuesday Adam Gopnik makes some nice literary allusions in a recent New Yorker essay-review of George Musser’s Spooky at a Distance, which is about the history of quantum entanglement theory. Entanglement, also known as non-locality and described by Einstein as “spooky at a distance,” claims that two particles of a single wave function can influence each other, even […]

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