Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” has an urgent message for us in today’s political battles.
With a little imagination, “Moby Dick” can be dramatized as a story about race relations.
Narrative has become more important than ever in political campaigns.
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", Barack Obama, Election 2012, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O'Connor, Flies, If, Jean Paul Sartre, Langston Hughes, Martin Dressler, politics, Rudyard Kipling, Steven Milhauser, Thomas Love Peacock |
“Beowulf” teaches us that rewarding extremism encourages rather than moderates it. The GOP should not therefore be rewarded with the presidency.
Political campaigns have come to be seen as competing narratives, providing those who understand fiction with special insight.
In his evasiveness and malleability, Romney resembles the Greek sea god Proteus.
Mitt Romney would find a kindred soul in Joseph Heller’s cynical entrepreneur Milo Minderbinder.
Holden Caulfield would definitely apply his favorite word to Mitt Romney.
Like Henry Crawford in “Mansfield Park,” Mitt Romney is inconstant and will say anything.
Mitt Romney’s “tangled web” entraps Obama and recalls Sir Walter Scott.
Mitt Romney resembles the dead leopard in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in multiple ways.
Mitt Romney’s characterization of 47% of the American public as people who won’t take responsibility for their lives signals that he is a dragon in the Beowulf mode.
Mitt Romney, like Citizen Kane, is a cipher. What drives him other than a desire to appear big?
Clint Eastwood’s argument with an invisible Obama sums up the Romney campaign.
Thackeray would attribute GOP anti-government fervor to the perverse logic of ingratitude.
Like the oysters in “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” Americans are being lied to about GOP plans for Medicare.
Romney’s call for us to trust him on his taxes and policy specifics reminds me of Lewis Carroll’s “little crocodile.”
With Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential choice, Ayn Rand’s novels have taken over the GOP.
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, Barack Obama, Eugene Burdick, Fountainhead, Oscar Wilde, politics, Presidential race, Richard II, Ugly American, William Lederer, William Shakespeare |
Perhaps some entrepreneurs need to believe their success is solely due to their own efforts, as Bounderby, Willy Loman, and the speaker of “The Road Not Taken” do.
“Appointment at Samarra” and “Things Fall Apart” help explain why Mitt Romney is so inept on the campaign trail.
Fitzgerald’s insights into the rich help us understand Mitt Romney (and John F. Kennedy also).
The Romney weekend fundraising event in the Hamptons uncomfortably mirrors the parties that occur in the Hamptons in “The Great Gatsby.”
To understand Mitt Romney’s lying, look not to “Pinocchio” but to “Alice through the Looking Glass.”
Mitt Romney’s favorite novel, “Battleship Earth,” is a throwback to an America that no longer exists.
Lewis Carroll, Kundera, and Dostoevsky help us understand why Mitt Romney’s laugh makes us nervous.
The high school incident where Romney forcibly cut a classmate’s hair is less “Lord of the Flies” and more “Rape of the Lock.”
Klaus Mann’s novel “Mephisto” applied to Mitt Romney gives us insight into whether can give a strong presidential performance while being inauthentic.
Think of the 2012 Republican primaries as “The Great Gatsby,” with Romney as Tom Buchanan and Santorum as Gatsby.
In movie allusions used to capture the presidential primaries, Santorum is Dorothy, Romney is Terminator 3, and Gingrich is Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense.”
