Looking back of 2016, I choose three posts that stood out to me, all dealing with Trump. One compares him to Satan inspiring the invasion of Earth by Sin and Death in “Paradise Lost.” The other two compare him to Herman Melville’s “Confidence Man” and to the narrator’s son in the Raymond Carver short story “Why, Honey?”
In which I argue with a writer who claims that art and artists have an inflated sense of their power and that they are irrelevant in the battle against Donald Trump.
Conservative columnist Ross Douthat suggests that, to understand Trump’s rise, we look not to novels like Sinclair’s “It Can Happen Here” and Roth’s “Plot against America” and instead turn to works by French novelist Michel Houellebecq. These helps us understand the crisis of Western liberalism, which Douthat sees as the major culprit.
Trump’s victory may signal the decline of the American republic, just as the rise of the Caesar signaled the end of the Roman republic. Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” is only too relevant to today’s politics.
Murakami’s “Wild Sheep Chase” is a modern parable that has important lessons for confronting authoritarian regimes. That’s the lesson one of my Bernie supporters took from it. Another student used it to support his decision to come out.
Ellison’s Invisible Man must retreat to a hole–or, as he calls it, hibernate–after getting banged around by reality. With Trump as president, will the Dreamers and others who benefitted from Obama’s prosecutorial discretion have to hibernate as well, returning back to the shadows?
In “American Gods,” Neil Gaiman warns that Americans are doomed if we don’t make spiritual connection with the land. The protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline are making the same argument.
Mitch McConnell is proving himself to be a veritable Moriarty in his ability to weave devious plots to get his way. Trump, by contrast, is more a trickster figure a la Figaro or Mac the Knife.
