My response to an article lamenting that the presence of screens destroyed his love of novels.
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Tag Archives: Tom Jones
Read Novels Like a Victorian
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, Middlemarch, Our Mutual Friend, Tristram Shandy Leave a comment
How Roberts Might Rewrite the Classics
A comic exercise imagining how a teenage John Roberts would interpret various classics.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged 1984, Anna Karenina, Christmas Carol, Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, John Roberts, Jungle, Lolita, Modest Proposal, Narrative of Sojourner Truth, Oliver Twist, Othello, Pride and Prejudice, Scarlet Letter, Supreme Court, Tess of the D'Urbervilles Comments closed
Why Aren’t More Kids Reading?
An Atlanta article attacks utilitarian arguments for reading. I push back.
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, Mark Twain, Martha Nussbaum, Paul and Virginia, Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Samuel Johnson, Sorrows of Young Werther Comments closed
Rob Reiner’s 18th Century Sensibility
In which I honor Rob Reiner by looking back at “Princess Bride” and how I used it to teach Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Henry Fielding, Princess Bride, Rob Reiner, William Goldman Comments closed
My Life as Bildungsroman
Upon leaving college, I came to see literature more as a means of escaping my life than as a way of engaging with it more fully. That’s because I was unsatisfied with this life.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged bildungsroman, Don Quixote, Henry Fielding, Main Street, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Sinclair Lewis Comments closed
Laughter in the Presidential Campaign
Trump and Vance’s jokes are designed to beat down, not include. They elicit Hobbesian laughter, not Shaftesburian.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged blood libel, Caite Upton, Comedy, Donald Trump, Henry Fielding, Kamala Harris, Laughter, Leviathan, Mel Brooks, mysogeny Comments closed
On Comedy, Seinfeld, and Tom Jones
Seinfeld has complained that wokeness is ruining comedy. Similar complains show up in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Brian Boone, Henry Fielding, Humor, political correctness, Seinfeld, wokeness Comments closed
Austen’s Revolutionary Style
Austen may have innovated a way to blend satire with romance as a way to protect us from heartbreak.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Emma, Emma Bovary, free indirect style, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gustave Flaubert, Henry Fielding, Horace, ironic romance, Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility Comments closed