The “New Yorker’s” Hendrik Herzberg has a perfect Anatole France quotation for Republican plans to pay for extending the payroll tax exemption.
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Tag Archives: Charles Dickens
Deficit Plan: No Food Stamps for the Rich
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Anatole France, Budget battles, Christmas Carol, politics, Red Lily, Taxation Comments closed
Gingrich Auditions for a Dickens Villain
Newt Gingrich’s proposal that poor children be allowed to serve as janitors in their schools calls for a Dickensian response.
Quixote’s Battle for Imagination
In a short poem about about Sancho Panza and one of the windmills, Scott Bates describes Don Quixote’s sidekick as common sense reality robbing life of imagination.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Sancho Panza Come and Fight", Don Quixote, Hard Times, Imagination, Miguel de Cervantes, Scott Bates Comments closed
Novels and Baseball Fans, Fixated on Time
As I watched the amazing day of baseball last Wednesday, I found myself thinking (being the literature nerd that I am) that the English novel was invented to do justice to reality when it got this dramatic and complex.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Baseball, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Lawrence Sterne, Robinson Crusoe, Sports, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy Comments closed
It Sucks to Be Poor
Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” offers a response to those who want to blame the recession on the poor.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Hard Times, politics, poverty, Sherman Alexie Comments closed
Warren Buffett, Dickensian Philanthropist
Warren Buffett’s op-ed article that the wealthy should pay more taxes is reminding me of Charles Dickens’ benevolent philanthropists, especially Mr. Brownlow in “Oliver Twist.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Christmas Carol, Economic hard times, Oliver Twist, politics, Taxes, Warren Buffett Comments closed
A Dickensian Response to the Mine Rescue
As I write this, the last of the 33 Chilean miners has just been pulled to safety after spending two months underground in a situation that once seemed hopeless. It appears that the entire world is celebrating, probably because we are all in need of hope. Given how we are continually battered by economic […]
Hard Times in 1854, Hard Times in 2010
I am teaching Charles Dickens’ Hard Times this week and it is disconcerting to see how applicable is still is to modern life. To be sure, one needs to be careful with comparisons. Industrial England in 1854 is not America in 2010. Dickens was writing about a world in which there were no air quality […]