Tag Archives: Kate Atkinson

MAGA Militias and Nazi Collaborators

By Robin Bates | Published: January 7, 2025

Kate Atkinson’s “Transcription” involves a mole infiltrating the ranks of Nazi sympathizers. Pro-Publica recently published an account of such a mole in U.S. rightwing militias.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged anti-Semitism, AP3, Big Sky, Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, Emily Dickinson, Nazi collaborators, Oath Keepers, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, rightwing militias, Started Early Took My Dog, Transcription, When Will There Be Good News? | Comments closed

Playing Whack-a-Mole with Jan. 6

By Robin Bates | Published: January 5, 2025

The GOP plays moral whack-a-mole (Kate Atkinson’s metaphor) with Jan. 6. Soon they may claim, like the government in “100 Years of Solitude,” that it never happened.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Ambrose Bierce, Beowulf, Big Sky, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, January 6, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Oscar Wilde | Comments closed

Blog Fragments Shored against My Ruins

By Robin Bates | Published: December 26, 2024

In which apply a line from T.S. Eliot’s “Waste Land” to this very blog and suddenly understand the project in a new way.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bell Jar, Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Moliere, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Eliot, Waste Land | Comments closed

Atkinson Uses Lit to Explore Dying

By Robin Bates | Published: December 23, 2024

Atkinson, in “A God in Ruins,” uses literary fragments to explore the process of dying. She includes excerpts from Shakespeare, Blake, Hopkins, Wordsworth and others.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Adlestrop", "God's Grandeur", "Holly and the Ivy", "Lamb", "Ministry of Angels", "On First Reading Chapman's Homer", death and dying, Edmund Spenser, Edmund Thomas, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Keats, Love in Ruins, Midsummer Night's Dream, Spring and Fall, Tempest, William Blake, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

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.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers, death and dying, God in Ruins, Last Chronicle of Barset, Warden | Comments closed