Lilac time
I live in an area of the country lilacs love. This time of year when I take my walks, it seems that every few yards I pass tall lilac bushes loaded with blossoms. Their fragrance hits me before I even … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Literature and writing
Swine flu threat?
It’s always possible, of course, that this time it will be the terrible pandemic that is feared. But I wonder. When I did a search of this blog for “influenza,” for example, I came up with this post from the … Continue reading →
Updike on the Kennedy assassination
When writer John Updike died last January I wrote this tribute to him, as well as this discussion of his brave and well-articulated stance on the Vietnam War, a position that estranged him from many of his friends and the … Continue reading →
Obama and the disturbing influence of Frank Marshall Davis
Much has been written about the fact that Frank Marshall Davis was a mentor to the young Barack Obama. But Davis was an unusual role model for a boy; not only may he have been a sometime pedophile, according to … Continue reading →
The Girl From Ipanema returns
[NOTE: While we’re talking about Brazil (and why not? I’m tired of talking about Obama) let’s revisit an old post of mine with a Brazilian theme: “Lost in translation: the girl from Ipamema.”] A while back we had a discussion … Continue reading →
Obamlet?
Sam Schulman offers an interesting notion of Obama as Hamlet. We differ on certain things; Schulman does not believe Obama to be a radical, whereas I currently strongly favor that interpretation. But the following sounds about right: [Obama] is a … Continue reading →
Notes from Chairman Lenin—and Dostoevsky
A few days ago a commenter here offered a link to this page of Lenin quotes. Some of them seem pretty apropos in light of recent developments, and so I offer them to you for your contemplation [I’ve emphasized some … Continue reading →
Tears, idle tears: we know not what they mean
We sometimes speak of having a “good cry,” reflecting the common assumption that crying when upset can lead to a release of tension and make us feel better. This NY Times article reports on research that indicates that this is … Continue reading →
It’s been quite an odyssey for the Odyssey
Yesterday I was browsing in a bookstore. I had gone to the mall for something else (pillowcases, to be exact) and had some extra time to spend wandering, and so I ambled into this particular mall’s only bookstore: B. Dalton, … Continue reading →
Updike and the literary lights on war and peace
I first read John Updike’s Vietnam War essay “On Not Being a Dove” in 1989. That’s when his memoir Self-Consciousness, the book in which it was included, was first published. At the time the essay seemed to me to be … Continue reading →
Updike At Rest
John Updike has died at seventy-six. In the last decade or two, his work had increasingly grappled with issues of aging and death, so perhaps his actual death should come as no surprise. But somehow it does—as it may have … Continue reading →
Inaugural verse: poetry and power all the way
I applaud yesterday’s attempt to inject poetry into the inaugural proceedings. But the poem that Elizabeth Alexander composed and read was trite, the sort of thing that helps me understand why many people decide they hate poetry. When I took … Continue reading →