In the 2010 elections, seniors over 65 voted overwhelmingly Republican, perhaps in response to perceived threats to Medicare. Democrats may respond in kind in the upcoming election. In short, a lot of electoral politics involves firing up seniors. Frightened and angry old people can do a lot of damage. Which brings us to King Lear.
“A plague on both your houses!” So I found myself venting at both Christian and Muslim zealots as I heard the recent news in Afghanistan. In this case, the Montagues were Pastor Terry Jones and his fundamentalist followers who burned a Koran in South Carolina while the Capulets were the fundamentalist Muslims (a crowd exiting a mosque) who attacked and killed United Nations workers in Afghanistan.
Yesterday a New York Times blog addressed an issue I have been wrestling with as well: whether literature is up to the string of disasters we are encountering. Sam Tanenhaus asserts that “one of the enduring paradoxes of great apocalyptic writing is that it consoles even as it alarms.” To my mind, Tanenhaus’s most interesting point is about why poetry seems to be better at responding to catastrophe than narrative prose.
This past Saturday I got a front row view of what it would have been like watching Shakespeare in the early 17th century. Julia and I journeyed to the replica of the Blackfriars Theater in Staunton, Virginia to watch Comedy of Errors and also John Marston’s 1603 revenge drama The Malcontent. Some of drama’s greatest […]
Sports Saturday As we move towards the NFL’s conference championships, one of the most interesting stories continues to be loud-mouthed Rex Ryan, the 350-pound coach of the New York Jets. If his team were to win its third straight road game tomorrow, it would be, in the words of Sport Illustrated’s Rick Reilly, the “greatest […]
Spiritual Sunday A reader’s response to Friday’s post on the Faustus story has me thinking more about Marlowe’s marvelous play. Marlowe informs us that we don’t need to die to go to hell. If we refuse to listen to the voice of our soul, we can find hell right here on earth. If there were […]
