People who think a modern Beowulf can come in and fix our political problems are delusional.
Is the GOP filibuster like a Sam Spade-Kasper Gutman negotiation? Is Obama like the Queen of Hearts in his drone program?
Why does a president well versed in literature and philosophy engage in targeted assassinations?
Karl Rove and Barack Obama have both “created monsters” (in the Tea Party and drone strikes respectively). Mary Shelley would understand.
Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” has an urgent message for us in today’s political battles.
Like Ellison’s Invisible Man, Obama may have started off naive but he’s wised up.
Obama’s “star that guides us”–the ideals in “The Declaration of Independence”–are, in “Beowulf,” the sword used to kill Grendel’s Mother.
Richard Blanco’s poem “América” shows that he is well chosen as this year’s inauguration poet.
Morrison’s “Song of Solomon” has advice for Obama in the fiscal cliff confrontation: Leap!
If Obama goes over the fiscal cliff as Sherlock goes over the Reichenbach Falls, then he’ll be all right.
Hurricane Sandy bringing us together is like the killer in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” spurring the grandmother’s epiphany.
It proved easy to apply the election to Toni Morrison and Jane Austen in my classes.
“Song of Solomon,” one of Obama’s favorite books, yield important insights into him and his African American supporters.
Lit to caution election night winners and bolster election night losers.
Posted in Hughes (Langston), Kipling (Rudyard), Milhauser (Steven), Millhaouser (Steven), O'Connor (Flannery), Peacock (Thomas Love), Sartre (Jean Paul) | Also tagged "Mother to Son", "War Song of Dinas Vawr", Election 2012, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O'Connor, Flies, If, Jean Paul Sartre, Langston Hughes, Martin Dressler, Mitt Romney, politics, Rudyard Kipling, Steven Milhauser, Thomas Love Peacock |
Political campaigns have come to be seen as competing narratives, providing those who understand fiction with special insight.
Obama’s journey over the past four years has been Beowulf’s journey, both in its high points and in its low.
Is Obama in a funk over his responsibilities as a war president? If so, “Beowulf” has answers.
Mitt Romney’s “tangled web” entraps Obama and recalls Sir Walter Scott.
Obama sells himself in a softer way than Beowulf does. is he right to do so?
The current political situation calls for us to be Beowulfs.
Obama has had to to resist black male anger such as that described in Eliison’s “Invisible Man.”
Thackeray would attribute GOP anti-government fervor to the perverse logic of ingratitude.
Ellison’s “Invisible Man” helps us understand Obama’s and America’s, intricate dance with race issues.
Liberals appear to have won the media wars–or have they?
Like the oysters in “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” Americans are being lied to about GOP plans for Medicare.
Pundits have recently been turning to literature to comment on the 2012 elections.
Posted in Bierce (Ambrose), Burdick (Eugene), Lederer (William), Rand (Ayn), Shakespeare (William), Trollope (Anthony) | Also tagged Ambrose Bierce, Ayn Rand, Eugene Burdick, Fountainhead, Mitt Romney, Oscar Wilde, politics, Presidential race, Richard II, Ugly American, William Lederer, William Shakespeare |
The process of writing a book applying “Beowulf” to contemporary American politics has brought me insight and hope.
The Romney weekend fundraising event in the Hamptons uncomfortably mirrors the parties that occur in the Hamptons in “The Great Gatsby.”
Maureen Down is accusing Obama of the grandiosity of Hemingway and the detachment of Walker Percy’s moviegoer.
Mitt Romney’s favorite novel, “Battleship Earth,” is a throwback to an America that no longer exists.
Obama’s youthful love letters see him moving seamlessly between great ideas with sexual desire.
