An Atlanta article attacks utilitarian arguments for reading. I push back.
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Tag Archives: Mark Twain
Why Aren’t More Kids Reading?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Adam Kirsch, Ars Poetica, Cervantes, Don Quixote, Goethe, Gustave Flaubert, Horace, Huckleberry Finn, John Stuart Mill, Judy Blume, Madame Bovary, Martha Nussbaum, Paul and Virginia, Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Samuel Johnson, Sorrows of Young Werther, Tom Jones Comments closed
DJT’s Cabinet: Jumping Frogs, Lilliputians
Three literary comparisons for Trump’s cabinet: Twain’s jumping frog, Lear’s elder daughters, Swift’s Lilliputians
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, Department of Justice, Donald Trump, Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift, King Lear, Pam Bondi, William Shakespeare Comments closed
My Life in Lit – Segregation
In which I recount growing up in segregated Tennessee and recount the books that helped me cope.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, integration, May Justus, New Boy in School, racism, segregation, To Kill a Mockingbird Comments closed
Newsom, Swift, and Parody’s Power
Gavin Newsom’s parodies of Donald Trump tweets are reminiscent of Swift’s attack on an 18th century fortuneteller in “The Bickerstaff Papers.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Bickerstaff Papers, Donald Trump, Gavin Newsom, Isaac Bickerstaff, Jonathan Swift, Mysterious Stranger, parody Comments closed
Twain: Autocrats Fear Being Laughed At
In “Mysterious Stranger,” Twain calls upon us to laugh at autocrats—even when it gets us in trouble, as it did Late Night’s Stephen Colbert.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged CBS, Donald Trump, Late Show, Laughter, Mysterious Stranger, Stephen Colbert Comments closed
Classics to the Rescue in Dark Times
In Trump’s first 100 days, Jill Lepore turned to 100 classics to survive.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "1914", "Fears in Solitude", "Nightingales Are Drunk", "Nose", "Story of the Bad Little Boy", "With Antecedents", Aesop, Antigone, classic literature, Dante, Eclogue II, Edith Wharton, Figure in the Carpet, Frogs Who Demanded a King, Grimm Brothers, Hafez, Henry James, Homer, Inferno, Jill Lepore, Jonathan Swift, Matsuo Basho, Modest Proposal, Nikolai Gogol, Odyssey, Reckoning, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Six Servants, Sophocles, Virgil, Walt Whitman, Wilfred Owen, Yoshido Kenkō Comments closed
An April Fools’ Day Poem
For April Fools’ Day, check out Goldsmith’s “Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog,” which ends with a wonderful comic reversal. Also for today: war plans group chat from Mordor.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged April Fool's Day, Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, Houthi Group Chat, MAGA Christians, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Goldsmith, Paula White-Cain, Pete Hegseth, Rappaccini's Daughter Comments closed
Good Night, Dear Heart
My brother died yesterday. This Mark Twain lyric gets at some of what I’m feeling.