Is the GOP filibuster like a Sam Spade-Kasper Gutman negotiation? Is Obama like the Queen of Hearts in his drone program?
Like the oysters in “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” Americans are being lied to about GOP plans for Medicare.
Romney’s call for us to trust him on his taxes and policy specifics reminds me of Lewis Carroll’s “little crocodile.”
Judging by the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision and the defeats of Rafael Nadal and the German soccer team, the world passed through a strange portal this past Thursday.
Also posted in Murakami (Haruki), Wilde (Oscar) | Tagged 1Q84, Alices through the Looking-Glass, English Soccer, German Soccer, Haruki Murakami, Importance of Being Earnest, Italian Soccer, Jud, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rafael Nadal, Roger Fedderer, Sports |
To understand Mitt Romney’s lying, look not to “Pinocchio” but to “Alice through the Looking Glass.”
Byatt’s book “The Children’s Hour” demonstrates many of the uses of fantasy.
Lewis Carroll, Kundera, and Dostoevsky help us understand why Mitt Romney’s laugh makes us nervous.
Literary allusions are flying fast and free in this primary season.
Also posted in Blake (William), Bunyan (John), Hawthorne (Nathaniel), Melville (Herman), Milne (A. A.) | Tagged Alice in Wonderland, Herman Melville, John Bunyan, Lewis Carroll, Moby Dick, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pilgrim's Progress, Presidential campaign, Scarlet Letter, William Blake |
Should we dismiss all the rhetoric coming from the Republican presidential candidates as the gryphon in “Alice in Wonderland” dismisses the “off with their heads” commands of the Queen of Hearts?
In “Northanger Abbey,” Jane Austen advocates the ideal way to raise one’s kids: encourage them to read good literature and they will learn the life lessons that they need.
Also posted in Austen (Jane), Gay (John), Gray (Thomas), Pope (Alexander), Shakespeare (William), Thompson (James) | Tagged "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", Alexander Pope, Alice in Wonderland, James Thompson, Jane Austen, Lewis Carroll, Measure for Measure, Northanger Abbey, Othello, Reading to children, Seasons, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare |
Today’s Republican right are practitioners of the Humpty Dumpty approach to communication: “I said it very loud and clear. I went and shouted in his ear.” Like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty, they also believe that they can make reality, as Humpty makes words, mean whatever they want it to mean.
I, however, find all the posturing over Medicare depressing. When the Democrats respond with their own scare tactics, they just become Tweedledee to the Republicans’ Tweedledum.
Slate Magazine recently had a Jacob Weisberg column that invoked Alice through the Looking Glass in talking about the current Republican Party. Lewis Carroll’s Alice books seem indeed to be works for our times.
Like much of America, I am still in a state of shock over Saturday’s shooting of a Congresswoman, a judge, and 16 others. Like many I wonder if this was an example of a disturbed mind encountering the inflamed political rhetoric that has come to characterize American political discourse. (Add Arizona’s permissive gun laws into [...]
Also posted in Aesop, Barrie (J. M.), Baum (L. Frank), Bradbury (Ray), Bukowski (Charles), Hemingway (Ernest), Hesse (Hermann), Hitler (Adolph), Homer, Huxley (Aldous), Juster (Norton(, Kesey (Ken), Lee (Harper), Marx (Karl), Orwell (George), Plato, Rand (Ayn) | Tagged Adolph Hitler, Aesop, Aldous Huxley, Alice through the Look Glass, Alices Adventures in Wonderland, Arizona killings, Ayn Rand, Brave New World, Charles Bukowski, Communist Manifesto, Ernest Hemingway, Fables, Fahrenheit 451, Gulliver's Travels, Harper Lee, Hermann Hesse, Homer, James Barrie, Jared Lee Loughner, Jonathan Swift, Karl Marx, Ken Kesey, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Mein Kampf, Meno, nimal Farm, Norton Juster Phentom Tollbooth, Odyssey, Old Man and the Sea, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, Peter Pan, Plot, Pulp, Ray Bradbury, Reading George Orwell, Republic, Siddhartha, To Kill a Mockingbird, violence, We the Living, Wizard of Oz |
Having taught British Fantasy Literature for the first time last semester, I need to think back on it before it becomes a distant memory. By reflecting publicly, I can share some of the insights I gained from the course. Two major things I learned are that (1) fantasy is an oppositional genre—by which I [...]
Also posted in Andersen (Hans Christian), Barrie (J. M.), Chaucer (Geoffrey), Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), Dickens (Charles), Grahame (Kenneth), Grimm Brothers, Haggard (Rider), Keats (John), Kipling (Rudyard), Rossetti (Christina), Shakespeare (William), Sir Gawain Poet, Tennyson (Alfred Lord), Tolkien (J.R.R.) | Tagged "Kubla Khan", "La Belle Dame sans Merci", "Lady of Shallot", Alfred Lord Tennyson, Alice in Wonderland Alice through the Looking Glass, Carl Jung, Charles Dickens, Christina Rossetti, fantasy, Geoffrey Chaucer, Goblin Market, Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, Hard Times, Hero with a Thousand Faces, Idylls of the King, J. R. R. Tolkien, James Barrie, John Keats, Joseph Campbell, Jungle Books, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carol, Man and His Symbols, Midsummer Night's Dream, Rider Haggard, Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Rudyard Kipling, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, She, teaching, The Lord of the Rings, The Wind in the Willows, William Shakespeare |
Tuesday’s election gave us a chance to assess the effectiveness of the American Tea Party movement, which has fascinated not only the American media but people around the globe. For liberals like me, at times Tea Partiers have seemed to resemble less the American colonialists dumping tea into the Boston Harbor and more Lewis Carroll’s [...]
“I am Peter Pan,” Michael Jackson reportedly once said, and of course he chose to name his ranch Neverland. In this second of my two posts marking Jackson’s death, I thought I would reflect upon why J. M. Barrie’s fictional creation meant so much to him. Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up [...]
Also posted in Barrie (J. M.), Burnett (Francis Hodgson), Milne (A. A.), Nabokov (Vladimir) | Tagged A. A. Milne, Alice in Wonderland, Annabelle Lee, Edgar Allen Poe, Francis Hodgson Burnett, innocence, J. M. Barrie, Lewis Carroll, Michael Jackson, Peter Pan, Secret Garden, Vladimir Nabokov, Winnie the Pooh |
William Kristof, the much traveled Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, wrote recently about the disturbing way that children’s IQ scores often drop over summer vacation. The cause is lack of intellectual stimulation. The problem is more severe with poor than it is with middle class kids. As an antidote, Kristof offered [...]
Also posted in Berna (Paul), Burnett (Francis Hodgson), Day-Lewis (Cecil), Doyle (Arthur Conan), Dumas (Alexander), Homer, Kipling (Rudyard), Lewis (C. S.), MacDonald (George), Milne (A. A.), Nesbitt (E.), Orczy (The Baroness Emmuska), Tolkien (J.R.R.), Verne (Jules), White (T.H.) | Tagged A. A. Milne, Alexander Dumas, Alice in Wonderland, Around the World in 80 Days, Arthur Conan Doyle, Baroness Emmuska Orczy, C.S. Lewis, Cecil Day-Lewis, children's books, E. Nesbitt, Francis Hodgson Burnett, Freddy the Pig, George MacDonald, Hardy Boys, Homer, Iliad, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, Jungle Books, Just So Stories, Knights of King Midas, Lewis Carroll, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Lost World, Mistress Masham's Repose, Narnia Chronicles, Otterbury Incident, Paul Berna, Rudyard Kipling, Scarlet Pimpernel, summer reading, T.H. White, The Lord of the Rings, The Princess and Curdie, The Secret Garden, Three Musketeers, Treasure Seekers, William Kristof, Winnie the Pooh, Would Be Goods |
