Tag Archives: Road

McCarthy: Dark, Occasionally Hopeful

By Robin Bates | Published: June 14, 2023

Although the late Cormac McCarthy had a very dark vision of humanity, one can find glimpses of hope within his novels.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged All the Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy, Passenger, Russo-Ukrainian War, war | 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, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Song of Solomon, Tempest, Three Body Problem, Toni Morrison, Underground Railroad, V.S. Naipaul, Warrior Woman, William Shakespeare | 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, Human Stain, Lawrence Sterne, Nicholas Nickleby, Odyssey, Oedipus, Oliver Twist, Philip Roth, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison, Tristram Shandy | Comments closed