Depending on your point of view, literature reduced to tweets is either comic or horrifying.
Posted in Austen (Jane), Flaubert (Gustave), Forster (E.M.), Kafka (Franz), Milton (John), Proust (Marcel), Salinger (J. D.), Steinbeck (John) | Tagged Catcher in the Rye, E. M. Forster, Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Howards End, In Search of Lost Time, J. D. Salinger, Jane Austen, John Milton, John Steinbeck, Madame Bovary, Marcel Proust, Metamorphosis, Of Mice and Men, Paradise Lost, Pride and Prejudice, Trial |
Mitt Romney’s favorite novel, “Battleship Earth,” is a throwback to an America that no longer exists.
It can be argued that “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Catcher in the Rye” were both shaped by their authors suffering from PTSD.
Wilfred Owen’s “Strange Meeting” is not only about the soldiers who have died but how their death taints the living.
Ken Sehested’s Pentecost poem says we have become acclimated to a culture of war and calls for us to break loose.
Tom Robbins and Scott Bates regard the mockingbird as an emblem for the consummate artist.
Posted in Bates (Scott), Lee (Harper), Robbins (Tom) | Tagged "Mockingbird", "Talented Mockingbird", Harper Lee, Mockingbirds, Scott Bates, Skinny Legs and All, Songbirds, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robbins |
Using “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a lens through which to view the J. P. Morgan recent financial disaster shows what America has lost in today’s banks.
Lewis Carroll, Kundera, and Dostoevsky help us understand why Mitt Romney’s laugh makes us nervous.
Posted in Carroll (Lewis), Dostoevsky (Fyodor), Kundera (Milan) | Tagged Alice in Wonderland, Encounter, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Idiot, Laughter, Lewis Carroll, Milan Kundera, Mitt Romney, politics |
Parents pressure schools to ban books because they want to protect their children. Their children want the books because they have a different set of needs.
Posted in Blume (Judy), Chbosky (Stephen), Rowling (J. K.), Salinger (J. D.) | Tagged adolescence, Are You There God It's Me Margaret, Book banning, Catcher in the Rye, censorship, Education, Harry Potter, J. D. Salinger, J. K. Rowling, Judy Blume, Perks of Being a Wall Flower, Stephen Chbotsky |
A version of Stephen King’s vision to raise taxes on millionaires (including himself) can be found in those of his novels where individuals collectively battle social fragmentation.
The students in my “Theories of the Reader ” course found the theorists we read affirming.
Seeing sin more as human separateness from creation than as disobeying God may be a more powerful way to teach the concept to today’s students.
Posted in Marlowe (Christopher), Milton (John) | Tagged Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, Genesis, John Milton, Martin Heidegger, Paradise Lost, Redemption, Religion, Sin, Spirituality |
Sherman Alexie wonders what will go through Kobe Bryant’s mind when he finds himself dominated by a younger player. This past week, we saw it happen.
The 1939 film “Destry Rides Again” takes a surprisingly strong stand against guns.
Obama’s youthful love letters see him moving seamlessly between great ideas with sexual desire.
During our commencement ceremonies this past Saturday, my creative writing colleague Karen Anderson was asked to read an appropriate poem. (Previous posts on Karen’s poetry have appeared here and here.) Karen chose a villanelle by Theodore Roethke and then, in a very nice touch, explained how the poem’s intricate form as well as its content [...]
One of my students who suffers from bulimia finds her condition mirrored in Satan’s rebellion against God.
The high school incident where Romney forcibly cut a classmate’s hair is less “Lord of the Flies” and more “Rape of the Lock.”
In “Ascension Hymn,” Henry Vaughan laments that he can catch only glimpses of God’s glory.
Maurice Sendak knew how the honor the interiority of children.
In “As It Is in Heaven,” a famous conductor travels back to his childhood town and helps a church choir find the music that is in and around them.
Klaus Mann’s novel “Mephisto” applied to Mitt Romney gives us insight into whether can give a strong presidential performance while being inauthentic.
Goethe’s “Sorrows of Young Werther” created a sensation in 1774, with a young cult following and older attackers.
A dying professor in Gail Godwin’s novel “The Good Husband” turns to John Donne’s “Second Anniversary” to comfort her.
Gertrude Stein’s Vichy sympathies raise the issue of the contrast between an artist’s politics and his or her art.
St. John of the Cross finds that love shows itself the strongest when we live in “darkness without light.”
“The Hunger Games” captures how my students see the contemporary job situation.
The attack of the Catholic Bishops on Paul Ryan’s devotion to Ayn Rand’s ideas puts “Atlas Shrugged” once again in the news.
Perhaps some of the conservative antipathy to Obama is because he is seen as just taking over when he promised to work for social justice.
As an undersized gay child, humorist David Rakoff found a soul mate in Stuart Little.
