Sports Saturday
Last Sunday was a very good day for Colorado Rockies player Carlos Gonzalez. He hit for the cycle (a single, a double, a triple and a home run), a feat that has occurred only 291 times in the history of baseball. Furthermore, the home run was of the walk-off variety, occurring in the bottom [...]
Spiritual Sunday
My wife Julia has been telling me about a book that she’s reading, Geneen Roth’s Women Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything. The thesis of the book seems to be that overeating, like other compulsions and obsessions, is a means of escaping a spiritual emptiness. Or to put it another way, [...]
Also posted in 20th Century, Religion | Tagged "When Death Comes", Dubliners, Emptiness, English Patient, Hunger, James Joyce, Mary Oliver, Michael Ondaatje, Nikos Kazantzakis, Religion, Spirituality, Zorba the Greek |
Many readers of Huckleberry Finn enjoy laughing at Miss Watson’s approach to teaching Huck. She tries to use the Bible to scare him into good behavior, insists that he sit still, and prohibits him from smoking and drinking. Romantics that we are, we make fun of her educational philosophy and find her a hypocrite, especially [...]
Harper Lee
National Public Radio reminded me yesterday that this summer is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. I have written a couple of times about the book, once talking about its importance to me growing up in the segregated south and once examining Malcolm Gladwell’s critique of it [...]
Jules Breton, Song of the Lark
St. Mary’s College of Maryland is very excited by our new president, Joseph Urgo, who joins us this week. Among other things, Professor Urgo is a national authority on William Faulkner and Willa Cather. I share with you here an excerpt from his program notes for the College’s Summer River [...]
As it turns out, I am not the only person looking to literature in order to get my mind around the recent oil disaster. Randy Kennedy has written a superb article in the New York Times that points out parallels between the Gulf oil spill and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Kennedy says that, in the 19th century, [...]
This evening I will be moderating a Leonardtown Library conversation about The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It’s an enjoyable novel that is perfect for book discussion groups since it’s about a book discussion group.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is set up during the [...]
Armando Galarraga
Sports Saturday
Even as we stand on the precipice of the World Cup—tragically I will be traveling cross country today when the U.S. is playing England—something has been happening in the world of baseball that invites comment. Perfect games are breaking out all over.
A pitcher pitches a perfect game if no runner reaches base. 27 batters [...]
Also posted in 14th Century, 20th Century, Narrative poem, Sports | Tagged "Luxury Boxes", Baseball, Bruce Cohen, Great American Novel, Perfection, Philip Roth, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sports |
On Monday I described my friend Alan as an Odysseus figure for the way he has coming back, time after time, in his battle with his cancer. He appreciated the article but was taken aback by the comparison and asked why I hadn’t compared him instead with someone like Holden Caulfield. He said he didn’t [...]
Also posted in 20th Century, 8th century BCE, Epic, death and dying | Tagged Anatomy of Criticism, Catcher in the Rye, death and dying, Heroism, Homer, J. D. Salinger, Northrup Frye, Odyssey, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight |
Sports Saturday
So my tennis idol, Roger Federer, is out of the French Open. Before the semi-finals.
Federer’s astounding streak of 23 straight appearances in Grand Slam semi-final matches is one of the great streaks in sports and will never be approached. (To get a sense of its magnitude, consider that Rod Laver and Ivan Lendl are [...]
