A comic exercise imagining how a teenage John Roberts would interpret various classics.
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Tag Archives: Don Quixote
Why Aren’t More Kids Reading?
An Atlanta article attacks utilitarian arguments for reading. I push back.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Adam Kirsch, Ars Poetica, Cervantes, Goethe, Gustave Flaubert, Horace, Huckleberry Finn, John Stuart Mill, Judy Blume, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, Martha Nussbaum, Paul and Virginia, Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Samuel Johnson, Sorrows of Young Werther, Tom Jones Comments closed
My Life as Bildungsroman
Upon leaving college, I came to see literature more as a means of escaping my life than as a way of engaging with it more fully. That’s because I was unsatisfied with this life.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged bildungsroman, Henry Fielding, Main Street, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sinclair Lewis, Tom Jones Comments closed
Surprised by the Joy of Reading
In a satiric essay, a fictional writer begins by reading to impress and ends by loving to read.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Moby Dick, Oscar Wilde, performance reading, Picture of Dorian Gray Comments closed
Trump, Quixote, and Windmills
Both Trump and Don Quixote have an animus against windmills. The resemblances end there, however.
How Quixote Hones Problem-Solving Skills
Works that employ meta-fiction to break down the boundaries between the real and the fantastical teach us how to think outside the box.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Angus Fletcher, Aristophanes, breaking the fourth wall, counterfactual thinkiing, Lysistrata, Miguel de Cervantes, Plautus, Pseudolus, Wonderworks Comments closed
Rom-Coms, Defense against Heartbreak
One way of seeing “Tom Jones” is as “valentine armor,” alternating between romance and light satire. As such, it saves us from broken hearts.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Comedy, Henry Fielding, Miguel de Cervantes, Pamela, Romantic Comedy, Samuel Richardson, Shamela, Tom Jones Comments closed
History’s Arc Bends Towards Kafka
The late Kundera has fascinating insights into how the novel has intersected with history.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Art of the Novel, authoritarianism, Castle, Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Honoré de Balzac, Jane Austen, Madame Bovary, Miguel de Cervantes, Milan Kundera, sexuality, Slowness, Trial Comments closed