Tag Archives: Leo Tolstoy

Early Scenes from a Marriage

By Robin Bates | Published: December 12, 2025

My memoir continued, this time looking at my relationship with Julia during our grad school years in Atlanta.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "River Merchant's Wife", Anna Karenina, Country Wife, Ezra Pound, Jane Austen, Marriage, Pride and Prejudice, William Wycherley | Comments closed

Questions about the Reading Experience

By Robin Bates | Published: August 19, 2025

In which I continue to answer questions, directed to Barbara Kingsolver, about my reading experiences. Then I come up with some new questions.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Tortoise Shout", Barbara Kingsolver, Catcher in the Rye, D. H. Lawrence, Flaubert’s Parrot, Franny and Zooey, George Eliot, Haruki Murakami, J. D. Salinger, Julian Barnes, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Man Who Died, Middlemarch, My Antonia, War and Peace, Willa Cather, Women in Love | Comments closed

Senior Centers Should Read Tolstoy

By Robin Bates | Published: July 22, 2025

Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” which looks at how we die, makes good use of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged “Ambulances", Aging, death and dying, Death of Ivan Ilyich, Everyman, Philip Larkin, Philip Roth, senior centers | Comments closed

What to Make of Fascist Authors

By Robin Bates | Published: June 26, 2025

In which I explore a Lit Hub article arguing that authors and fascists have things in common, which explains why certain authors have turned to the dark side.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Ed Simon, Eduard Limonov, Emily Bronte, Fascism, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Merchant of Venice, Tempoe of the Golden Pavilion, War and Peace, William Shakespeare, Wuthering Heights, Yukio Mishima | Comments closed

Tolstoy’s Advice for Diplomats

By Robin Bates | Published: May 8, 2025

Former diplomat Fletcher Burton shows Tolstoy’s brilliance in depicting diplomats and diplomacy in War in Peace.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged diplomacy, Fletcher Burton, War and Peace | Comments closed

An Iranian Hostage Recalls Tolstoy

By Robin Bates | Published: May 7, 2025

In which one of the 1980 Iranian hostages explains why “War and Peace” meant so much to him at the time.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Emma, George Eliot, Homer, Iliad, Iranian hostage crisis, Jane Austen, Life and Fate, Middlemarch, Pride and Prejudice, Vasily Grossman, War and Peace | Comments closed

Tolstoy, Must Reading for Economists

By Robin Bates | Published: September 9, 2024

A New Yorker article argues that economists should read Tolstoy, who understood that we can’t strip morality and politics out of the discipline.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Economics, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, Milton Friedman | Comments closed

The Dangerous Power of Libraries

By Robin Bates | Published: August 20, 2024

Libraries as described by poet Paul Engle are sometimes repositories of dynamite, sometimes of comfort.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Library", Anna Karenina, C. S. Lewis, Grand Canyon, Julius Caesar, libraries, Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lolita, Louisa May Alcott, Merchant of Venice, Paul Hamilton Engle, Tempest, Vladimir Nabokov, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Happy Marriages Are NOT All Alike

By Robin Bates | Published: June 6, 2024

For my wedding anniversary, I turn to my favorite literary couple: Levin and Kitty in “Anna Karenina.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Anna Karenina, Birth, death and dying, Marriage | Comments closed

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