Let’s talk about Politics. Yes, I heard you groan. But, I think you may have misinterpreted the opening sentence. Let’s talk about Politics, the book. (Then again, maybe it was the idea of discussing Aristotle that caused you to groan.) Has the level of political discussion declined of late? Yeah, rhetorical question. Thoughtful disagreements on the political issues of the day seem to be forbidden by some unwritten rule. The causes for this state of affairs are undoubtedly overdetermined, … [Read more...] about Shall We Talk About Politics?
Great Books
Wright’s Unbearable Rage
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death! That is truly one of the great rallying cries of all time. (Trivia note: as you know, Patrick Henry is the source of that line. But, he probably cribbed it from Addison’s play Cato: A Tragedy which has the lines: “It is not now time to talk of aught/But chains or conquest, liberty or death.”) Richard Wright’s collection of short stories could well have been entitled with Patrick Henry’s immortal line. Instead, he called it Uncle Tom’s Children. Five stories … [Read more...] about Wright’s Unbearable Rage
A Cautionary Tale
“You know these new novels make me tired….Everywhere I go some silly girl asks me if I’ve read ‘This Side of Paradise.’ Are our girls really like that? If it’s true to life, which I don’t believe, the next generation is going to the dogs. I’m sick of all this shoddy realism. I think there’s a place for the romanticist in literature.” Thus says a character is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. (Gotta love Fitzgerald having a character complain about Fitzgerald’s previous … [Read more...] about A Cautionary Tale
Roth and Original Sin
“The past is never dead. It's not even past.” William Faulkner wrote that line in Sanctuary, published in 1931. In this sense, Philip Roth is Faulkner’s heir.Roth is a strange author to recommend. He writes beautifully, wrestles with deep questions, and his books are quite well described by his own definition of satire: “Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art.” But, along with the good, you have to take a lot of ruminations about sex. Fifteen years ago, I tried to read Roth … [Read more...] about Roth and Original Sin
Faith and Uncertainty
There is something about the human mind that does not like uncertainty; a mystery leaves a hole in the psyche that simply must be filled. This is a rather good thing for the survival of the species. If you heard a strange growl behind you and you didn’t wonder what was causing it, you might not be around to generate offspring. That doesn’t explain, though, why we like to know what happened in a bit of fiction. Consider Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw.” The story is Henry James looking … [Read more...] about Faith and Uncertainty
Frontier Justice
“Gil and I crossed the eastern divide about two by the sun.” We just left civilization behind. The Wild West is the protagonist in Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s The Ox-Bow Incident.The genre? It sure look like a novel, a Western with cowboys and all, but it really belongs in the political philosophy section of your library. Great Book. The story: Gil and Our Narrator roll into town just in time to hear about some cattle rustling which resulted in the death of a cowboy. The sheriff is not … [Read more...] about Frontier Justice