Tag Archives: Philip Roth

Anti-Vaxxers Ignore the Past

By Robin Bates | Published: July 10, 2023

Anti-vaxxers should read 19th century novels, which describe high mortality rates

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "University Hospital Boston", anti-vaxxers, Birds' Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Charlotte Bronte, Childbirth, Cholera, Daniel Defoe, Jane Eyre, Journal of the Plague Year, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Mary Oliver, Nemesis, Oliver Twist, plague, Polio, Robert Kennedy Jr., Scarlet Fever, Secret Garden, Small Pox, Turberculosis, typhus | Comments closed

Reading Lit to Cope with Prison

By Robin Bates | Published: May 10, 2023

In his book about reading lit in prison, Genis talks about how novels helped him understand fellow inmates and discover his own Jewishness.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged 1Q84, Alan Moore, American Gods, Bohumil Hrabal, Daniel Genis, Franz Kafka, Good as Gold, Haruki Murakami, Herzog, Jaroslav Hasek, Jorge Luis Borges, Joseph Heller, Neil Gaiman, Portnoy's Complaint, Prison, reading in prison, Saul Bellow, Sentence, The Good Soldier Svejk | Comments closed

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, Human Stain | Comments closed

Tennis Fiction and Osaka’s Brilliance

By Robin Bates | Published: September 14, 2020

Literary fiction that mentions tennis can raise our appreciation of the game, including the play of figures like Naomi Osaka. Nabokov, Roth, and Wallace have all written about tennis.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged David Foster Wallace, Goodbye Columbus, Infinite Jest, Lolita, Naomi Osaka, tennis, Vladimir Nabokov | Comments closed

Using Tennis and Roth to Assess Character

By Robin Bates | Published: September 9, 2020

Tennis professional Petkovic uses Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” to arrive at an important insight: to assess someone’s character, play tennis with him or her.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Goodbye Columbus, Novak Djokovic, tennis | 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 Human Stain, lynching, miscegenation, 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, Human Stain, Jane Eyre, Lolita, MeToo, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Sexism, Vladimir Nabokov | Comments closed

The President Who Loved Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: January 16, 2017

In a remarkable interview with “The New York Times,” Barack Obama spoke about the importance of literature in his life. The range of his reading and the sensitivity of his responses is astounding.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Barack Obama, Bend in the River, Colson Whitehead, Doris Lessing, Ernest Hemingway, Fates and Furies, Garcia Gabriel Marquez, Gilead, Gillian Flynn, Golden Notebook, Gone Girl, Jack Kerouac, Jhumpa Lahiri, Junot Diaz, Lauren Goff, Liu Cixin, Marilynne Robinson, Martha Nussbaum, Maxine Hong Kingston, Moveable Feast, Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Road, Saul Bellow, Song of Solomon, Tempest, Three Body Problem, Toni Morrison, Underground Railroad, V.S. Naipaul, Warrior Woman, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

Did Western Liberalism Give Us Trump?

By Robin Bates | Published: December 26, 2016

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat suggests that, to understand Trump’s rise, we look not to novels like Sinclair’s “It Can Happen Here” and Roth’s “Plot against America” and instead turn to works by French novelist Michel Houellebecq. These helps us understand the crisis of Western liberalism, which Douthat sees as the major culprit.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Donald Trump, Elementary Politics, It Can't Happen Here, Michel Houellebecq, Plot against America, Soumission, Upton Sinclair | Comments closed