Cartoonist Tom Toles has a very smart Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass take on Trump and the GOP.
Tag Archives: King Lear
The GOP, through the Looking Glass
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alice through the Looking Glass, Donald Trump, GOP, Lewis Carroll, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Is Old Age Becoming Overrated?
A “New Yorker” article on aging turns to literature to debunk the notion that aging is a good thing.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Vanity of Human Wishes", "Sailing to Byzantium", "Tithonous", Aging, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Aristotle, As You Like It, Ecclesiastes, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Merchant's Tale, old age, Plato, Rasselas, Samuel Johnson, Ulysses, William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Cataract Surgery: See Better, Lear
Thursday I am undergoing a second cataract surgery today and so am reposting the essay I wrote following my first (successful) surgery. I don’t expect to re-experience the same mixed feelings that I described two years ago, but dramas that feature sharp objects poked into people’s eyes still seem relevant. This essay is not for […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Black Leopard Red Wolf, cataract surgery, Marlon James, Oedipus, Sophocles, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Are We Watching Shakespeare or Beckett?
Friday When assuring my English majors that they will find jobs in the world beyond college, I sometimes point out that they are experts in narrative. Increasingly we are learning how much we process reality through stories, and political operatives talk ceaselessly about “controlling the narrative.” How you organize facts (or for that matter, lies) […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, Donald Trump, Endgame, Hamlet, Macbeth, Mueller investigation, narrative, Richard III, Samuel Beckett, Unnamable, Waiting for Godot, Westword Ho!, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Do Endings Reveal Meaning of Life?
Monday My wife Julia alerted me to an intriguing although somewhat frustrating article in Atlantic about the end of time. Drawing on Frank Kermode’s 1967 The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, Megan Garber wrestles with an issue recently raised by The Washington Post: how do we live with constant reminders […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Dover Beach", "Second Coming", Alexander Pope, endings, Frank Kermode, Matthew Arnold, modernism, post-apocalyptic fiction, Samuel Beckett, Sense of an Ending, William Butler Yeats, William Shakespeare, world weary ennui Comments closed
Lit as a Survival Toolkit
Thursday Friend and occasional guest blogger Carl Rosin alerted me to a heartfelt Commonweal article by an English professor describing how literature helped her confront and work through childhood abuse. Cassandra Nelson’s difficult history leads to some remarkable insights into trigger warnings, which she opposes. Nelson’s view on trigger warnings is pretty much my own […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bluest Eye, Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Bruno Bettelheim, childhood trauma, Dante, Inferno, Junot Diaz, sexual abuse, sexual assault, Toni Morrison, William Shakespeare Comments closed
An Incel Killer and an English Major
Maura Binkley was an English major killed by an incel killer in a Tallahassee yoga studio. Her department chair turned to Shakespeare in his grief.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Hamlet, Maura Binkley, Othello, Tallahassee yoga killing, William Shakespeare Comments closed
What Lit Is Good For–A Debate
Thursday Tim Parks has written a provocative essay for The New York Review of Books, asking, Is literature wise? In the sense, does it help us to live? And if not, what exactly is it good for? If you follow this blog, you already know my answers: –Yes, literature is wiser than we are (and […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charles Dickens, Herbert Marcuse, Little Dorrit, Madame Bovary, Tempest, William Shakespeare Comments closed
