The David Petraeus affair–is it 19th century melodrama or high tragedy?
Posted in Hugo (Victor), Shakespeare (William), Sophocles, Tolstoy (Leo) | Also tagged Anna Karenina, Antony and Cleopatra, David Petraeus, Macbeth, Notre Dame de Paris, Othello, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare |
One thing I appreciate about the New York Times is that many of its columnists routinely mention literature. Maurine Dowd probably does so the most (note this passing reference to T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland), and I once wrote a column on Roger Cohen’s use of The Great Gatsby in a piece on President Obama. (Cohen wrote [...]
Film Friday Before there was celebrity culture there was celebrity culture. That’s what we learn from The Last Station, the fascinating recent film about the last days of Leo Tolstoy. The year is 1910. Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) is seen as a national treasure and there is a struggle underway over who owns his work. His [...]
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus What have I learned about literature and pain this past week? First, that writers have taken up the topic, just as they take up every aspect of human existence. They imagine what it is like to feel pain and, through poetic images and fictional stories, convey that experience to readers. By entering [...]
Posted in Marlowe (Christopher) | Also tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christopher Marlowe, death of a child, Death of Ivan Ilych, Doctor Faustus, Heart of Darkness, In Memoriam, John Milton, Joseph Conrad, Name of the Rose, Pain, Paradise Lost, Rachel Kranz, Suffering, Umberto Eco |
I’ve had a chance to revisit the two classics that immediately came to mind the other day when I thought about literary depictions of pain. Both were as powerful as I remember. In D. H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, the death of the mother goes on and on, page after page. As her son [...]
Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Body in Pain, Canticle for Leibowitz, D. H. Lawrence, death and dying, Death of Ivan Ilych, Elain Scarry, Euthanasia, Pain, Sons and Lovers, Suffering, Walter Miller |
Nick Ut’s famous photo of children burnt in a napalm attack In Friday’s post I mentioned how we read and discussed the first few pages of Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World in our most recent salon, held to support colleague Alan Paskow as he battles with cancer. Scarry [...]
I’ve had fun discussing the reading of Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas over the last couple of days, and while I’ve come up dry on further posts about the Supreme Court and literature, it has given me the idea of periodically dipping into reading stories of other political figures. I’ll start a list here, beginning [...]
Posted in Alexander (Elizabeth), Angelou (Maya), Bible, Camus (Albert), Carle (Eric), Dickey (James), Fleming (Ian), Frost (Robert), Marquez (Gabriel Garcia), Morrison (Toni), O'Neill (Joseph), Robinson (Edward Arlington), Service (Robert), Sheridan (Richard), Stendahl, Tolstoy (Leo), Twain (Mark) | Also tagged Abraham Lincoln, Al Gore, Albert Camus, Barack Obama, Bible, Bill Clinton, Book of Job, Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Cremation of Sam McGee, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Edward Arlington Robinson, Elizabeth Alexander, Eric Carle, From Russia with Love, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George W. Bush, George Washington, Ian Fleming, James Dickey, John Kennedy, Joseph O'Neill, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Mr. Flood's Party, Netherworld, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Proverbs, Richard Corey, Richard Nixon, Richard Sheridan, Robert Frost, Ronald Reagan, School for Scandal, Shooting of Dan McGrew, Song of Solomon, Stendahl, Teddy Roosevelt, The Red and the Black, The Stranger, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Toni Morrison |
