Tag Archives: Human Stain

Roth and the Hamline Mess

By Robin Bates | Published: January 17, 2023

Roth’s “Human Stain” has lessons for Hamline’s recent mess-up over an art teacher. It has also given me a new perspective on my two sons.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged censorship, fathers and sons, Hamline University, Philip Roth | Comments closed

For Roth, People Were Always Complex

By Robin Bates | Published: May 31, 2018

The late Philip Roth’s novel “Human Stain” reenforced for me that humans are always more complex than ideological caricatures of them.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged lynching, miscegenation, Philip Roth, political correctness, racism | Comments closed

Is Sexist Lit Gaslighting Women?

By Robin Bates | Published: February 19, 2018

A Guardian article argues that critical praise for sexist male authors valorizes patriarchal attitudes.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charlotte Bronte, Donald Trump, Ernest Hemingway, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, Jane Eyre, Lolita, MeToo, Norman Mailer, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Sexism, Vladimir Nabokov | Comments closed

Uncomfortable Books that Help Us Grow

By Robin Bates | Published: April 22, 2010

Streep and Kline in Sophie’s Choice A recent survey of the Tea Party movement has revealed that the movement is overwhelmingly white, educated, middle class and conservative, and people are now studying what it all means. I love this post Ta-Tehisi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic. As occurs in the world of the […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aruhdhati Roy, Diversity, Emily Bronte, God of Small Things, Native Son, Philip Roth, politics, racism, Richard Wright, Sophie's Choice, Tea Party, William Styron, Wuthering Heights | Comments closed

Shadow Projections on the President

By Robin Bates | Published: September 18, 2009

A couple of months ago I wondered on this blog whether some of the vitriolic attacks on Obama (as distinguished from reasoned disagreement) were driven by racism, and now I see that others are wondering the same, including Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Carter. But a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish has a more […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Absolon Absolon, All the King's Men, Andrew Sullivan, Barack Obama, Beloved, Daily Dish, Flannery O'Connor, Gloria Naylor, Joseph Conrad, Linden Hills, Philip Roth, right-wing anger, Robert Penn Warren, Secret Sharer, Sophie's Choice, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, William Styron, Wise Blood | Comments closed

Is Father-Son Conflict Inevitable?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 22, 2009

I had an interesting conversation with my two sons yesterday as we drove them and my daughter-in-law to the Portland airport, marking the beginning of the end of our summer vacation. The conversation began with me wondering why there weren’t works of literature that accurately capture the kind of father-son relationship that I feel that […]

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens, Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Defoe, David Copperfield, fathers and sons, Great Expectations, Hamlet, Henry IV, Homer, Lawrence Sterne, Nicholas Nickleby, Odyssey, Oedipus, Oliver Twist, Philip Roth, Road, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, Tristram Shandy | Comments closed