I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Tag Archives: Huckleberry Finn
Why I Think the Way I Think
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett Comments closed
Which Literary Conman Is Trump?
To understand Trump as conman, I compare him to the King and the Duke, Mac the Knife, Melville’s Confidence Man, Satan & Iago.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Beggar's Opera, Confidence Man, conmen, Donald Trump, Herman Melville, John Gay, John Milton, Mark Twain, Othello, Paradise Lost, William Shakespeare Comments closed
The Novels that Shaped John McCain
McCain’s favorite novels included “Great Gatsby,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “Huckleberry Finn,” and works by Somerset Maugham. One can understand why.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Great Gatsby, John McCain, Kidnapped, Mark Twain, Of Human Bondage, Razor's Edge, Robert Louis Stevenson, Somerset Maugham, Tom Sawyer Comments closed
Pap Would Have Voted for Trump
“Last place aversion” accounts for white resentment of safety net programs. Huck’s father is an example of the process at work.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged last place aversion, Mark Twain, Pap, racism, social safety net, status anxiety Comments closed
My “Last Lecture”
I share here my “last lecture” from my retirement ceremony. (But rest assured: I will not be retiring from this blog.)
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Aristotle, Bertolt Brecht, Chinua Achebe, Divine Comedy, Goethe, Heart of Darkness, Horace, integration, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, Martha Nussbaum Wayne Booth, Matthew Arnold, Percy Shelley, Plato, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Samuel Johnson, segregation, Sir Philip Sydney, Terry Eagleton, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayne Booth Comments closed
A Cradle Yet Shall Save the Earth
Mark Twain has fun in “Huckleberry Finn” with today’s New Testament reading, which is about Moses being discovered in “the bushrushers.” Victor Hugo also has a charming poem about the incident.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Moses on the Nile", Exodus, Mark Twain, Moses, Victor Hugo Comments closed
How Trump Is Changing the Discourse
Adam Gopnik of “New Yorker” and Andrew Sullivan of “New York” are very, very frightened by the rise of Trump. As they explain why, they quote Tom Stoppard, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Plato.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Donald Trump, Fascism, GOP, It Can't Happen Here, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jumpers, Lord of the Rings, Mark Twain, politics, Presidential politics, protofascism, Sinclair Lewis, Tom Stoppard Comments closed