Tag Archives: Peter Brooks

Are Stories a Trap? Not the Great Ones

By Robin Bates | Published: July 20, 2023

A recent New Yorker article critiques our reliance on stories but makes the mistake of not distinguishing between different kinds of stories.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Arabian Nights, Beowulf, Don Quixote, King Lear, Miguel de Cervantes, Seduced by Story, storytelling | Comments closed

Reading Proust as Lenten Observance

By Robin Bates | Published: February 25, 2023

For Lent this year, I am taking on Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.” I hope to gain new insight into the nature of fictional engagement.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged In Search of Lost Time, Lent, Malcolm Guite, Marcel Proust | Comments closed

Literary Characters, Mirrors of the Soul

By Robin Bates | Published: February 2, 2023

Literary characters, according to Peter Brooks, help us understand “the most elusive and consequential issues of our limited human existence.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged In Search of Lost Time, literary characters, Marcel Proust, Seduced by Story, Walter Benjamin | Comments closed

To Understand Your Life, Read Novels

By Robin Bates | Published: January 31, 2023

Theorist Peter Brooks contends that it is through novels that we find shape and meaning to our lives.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged narrative, narratology, Seduced by Story, Walter Benjamin | Comments closed

The Usefulness of “Let’s Pretend”

By Robin Bates | Published: January 24, 2023

In “Seduced by Story,” Brooks challenges the idea that literature is meant to be useful. Instead, he says, it resembles play (and then acknowledges that play itself is useful).

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll, narrative, narratology, Seduced by Story | Comments closed

Worried about BS? Read Great Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: December 29, 2022

While I enjoy Peter Brooks’s “Seduced by Story,” I wish it went further.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Defense of Poesy, fiction, Seduced by Story, Sir Philip Sidney | Comments closed

Fiction as Authoritarian Weapon

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2022

In “Seduced by Story,” Peter Brooks warns of the dangers of narrative. Borges agrees in “Tlon Uqbar.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius", authoritarianism, Fascism, Game of Thrones, Jorge Luis Borges, narrative, narratology, QAnon, Seduced by Story | Comments closed

Just How Dangerous Is Fiction?

By Robin Bates | Published: November 2, 2022

Peter Brooks’s new book, “Seduced by Story,” raises the issue of fiction’s role in horrors.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged atrocities, Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russo-Ukrainian War, Vladimir Putin | Comments closed