Anti-vaxxers should read 19th century novels, which describe high mortality rates
Tag Archives: Philip Roth
Anti-Vaxxers Ignore the Past
Reading Lit to Cope with Prison
In his book about reading lit in prison, Genis talks about how novels helped him understand fellow inmates and discover his own Jewishness.
Roth and the Hamline Mess
Roth’s “Human Stain” has lessons for Hamline’s recent mess-up over an art teacher. It has also given me a new perspective on my two sons.
Tennis Fiction and Osaka’s Brilliance
Literary fiction that mentions tennis can raise our appreciation of the game, including the play of figures like Naomi Osaka. Nabokov, Roth, and Wallace have all written about tennis.
Using Tennis and Roth to Assess Character
Tennis professional Petkovic uses Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” to arrive at an important insight: to assess someone’s character, play tennis with him or her.
For Roth, People Were Always Complex
The late Philip Roth’s novel “Human Stain” reenforced for me that humans are always more complex than ideological caricatures of them.
Is Sexist Lit Gaslighting Women?
A Guardian article argues that critical praise for sexist male authors valorizes patriarchal attitudes.
Did Western Liberalism Give Us Trump?
Conservative columnist Ross Douthat suggests that, to understand Trump’s rise, we look not to novels like Sinclair’s “It Can Happen Here” and Roth’s “Plot against America” and instead turn to works by French novelist Michel Houellebecq. These helps us understand the crisis of Western liberalism, which Douthat sees as the major culprit.