Tag Archives: William Faulkner

Faulkner on Racism’s Deep Roots

By Robin Bates | Published: April 18, 2021

Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust” shows how deep into the American psyche racism reaches, helping explain the spate of police killings or unarmed Blacks.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged George Floyd, Intruder in the Dust, police shootings, racism, Sandra Bland | Comments closed

Specter of Racial Violence Haunts Faulkner

By Robin Bates | Published: September 3, 2020

Faulkner’s depiction of racial violence shows America’s dark side. Faulkner’s own racial views are less important than the truths that he shows.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Absolom Absolom, Light in August, racism, segregation, Sound and the Fury, Toni Morrison | Comments closed

On Rereading During a Pandemic

By Robin Bates | Published: May 19, 2020

In three articles on rereading great literature during difficult times, two discuss how it reassures them and the third that literature isn’t meant to reassure.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged As I Lay Dying, COVID-19, David Ulin, Larry McMurtry, Natalie Jenner, pandemics, Rasselas, Rereading, Samuel Johnson | Comments closed

Repressed Violence in Southern Gothic Lit

By Robin Bates | Published: February 18, 2020

In my course on American Gothic Supernatural lit, I contrasted “Turn of the Scre”w with “Wizard of Oz” and then glanced at Southern Gothic lit.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Deliverance", Edgar Allan Poe, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Good Man Is Hard to Find, Gothic horror, gothic supernatural, Henry James, In Cold Blood, James Dickey, L. Frank Baum, Petrified Man, Rose for Emily, Southern Gothic, Truman Capote, Turn of the Screw, Wizard of Oz | Comments closed

A Rose for Donald Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: February 7, 2020

To express his horror at Trump’s State of the Union performance, a commentator turned to Faulkner’s Southern Gothic story “Rose for Emily.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Donald Trump, Rose for Emily, Southern Gothic, State of the Union | Comments closed

Toni Morrison: White Panic Led to Trump

By Robin Bates | Published: November 16, 2016

As Toni Morrison sees it, William Faulkner’s observations about white panic go a long way toward explaining Trump’s victory.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged 2016 presidential election, Absolom Absolom, Donald Trump, Go Tell a Watchman, Harper Lee, racism, To Kill a Mockingbird, Toni Morrison, white privilege | Comments closed

The Complex Inner Life of Teachers

By Robin Bates | Published: June 16, 2015

Lily King’s “The English Teacher” is filled with literary lllusions, most of them thematically important.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Voice", Annabelle Lee, Beowulf, Edgar Allen Poe, Homer, Huckleberry Finn, Love Song of J. Alfred Pruforck, Mark Twain, Odyssey, Othello, Rose for Emily, T. S. Eliot, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

The American South, Trapped in the Past

By Robin Bates | Published: January 31, 2013

The reactionary South is like Emily in Faulkner’s story, clinging to a dead love while the world moves on.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged American South, GOP, politics, Rose for Emily | Comments closed

Using Faulkner to Counter Racist Madness

By Robin Bates | Published: July 5, 2012

Faulkner’s “Absolon, Absolon” is a continuing resource for countering the madness of racism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Absolon Absolon, miscegenation, racism | Comments closed