The gifted nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer knew that his brilliance was not leading him to inner peace. Perhaps he appreciated George Herbert’s poem “The Pulley” for voicing his condition and was soothed by the poet’s vision of final rest.
Tag Archives: war
Fiery Speech in a World of Shadows
Film Friday I owe my love of film to my father, who for years ran the “Cinema Guild” at the University of the South/Sewanee. When I wrote two weeks ago about Meet Me in St. Louis, my father talked about seeing the film as a G. I. in Europe. “We saw the film as directed […]
Hurt Locker and Confused Young Men
Jeremy Renner Film Friday I taught Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker in my film genre course earlier this week. The film both impressed and depressed me. I have been teaching action adventure films and how our culture uses this genre to sort through male identity issues. Drawing on a very useful book by Susan Jeffords, Hard […]
The Birds of War-Torn Afghanistan
I share today a poem by my father Scott Bates, who is an ardent birdwatcher as well as poet. The poem reminds us of an ongoing war that too often we want to push out of our minds. Through contrasting the natural world with the disasters created by humans, my father expresses his longing for […]
Fantasy As a Roundabout Road to Truth
Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn I didn’t do entire justice in Monday’s post to the Tolkien essay of my son Toby. In correcting that here, I also open up a more complicated vision of fantasy in general, as well as Tolkien’s fantasy specifically. I was wondering if Tolkien had retreated into fantasy as a refuge from […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mists of Avalon, Tobias Bates Comments closed
Tolkien’s Ring and World War I
Otto Dix, Trench Warfare (1932) I have gained some new insights into The Lord of the Rings since my son Toby wrote an essay about it for the University of Pittsburgh’s graduate English program. Toby informs me that there are a number of debates around the book, especially whether it should be considered great literature. The […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alfred Hitchcock, All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, Tobias Bates Comments closed
