Gawande’s “Being Mortal,” which looks at how we die, makes good use of Tolstoy’s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”
Tag Archives: Philip Roth
Anti-Vaxxers Ignore the Past
Anti-vaxxers should read 19th century novels, which describe high mortality rates
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "University Hospital Boston", anti-vaxxers, Birds' Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Charlotte Bronte, Childbirth, Cholera, Daniel Defoe, Jane Eyre, Journal of the Plague Year, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mary Oliver, Nemesis, Oliver Twist, plague, Polio, Robert Kennedy Jr., Scarlet Fever, Secret Garden, Small Pox, Turberculosis, typhus Comments closed
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.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged 1Q84, Alan Moore, American Gods, Bohumil Hrabal, Daniel Genis, Franz Kafka, Good as Gold, Haruki Murakami, Herzog, Jaroslav Hasek, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Heller, Neil Gaiman, Portnoy's Complaint, Prison, reading in prison, Saul Bellow, Sentence, The Good Soldier Svejk Comments closed
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.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged censorship, fathers and sons, Hamline University, Human Stain Comments closed
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.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged David Foster Wallace, Goodbye Columbus, Infinite Jest, Lolita, Naomi Osaka, tennis, Vladimir Nabokov Comments closed
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.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Human Stain, lynching, miscegenation, political correctness, racism Comments closed
Is Sexist Lit Gaslighting Women?
A Guardian article argues that critical praise for sexist male authors valorizes patriarchal attitudes.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charlotte Bronte, Donald Trump, Ernest Hemingway, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, Human Stain, Jane Eyre, Lolita, MeToo, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Sexism, Vladimir Nabokov Comments closed
