In John Keats’s poems, death crops up 100 times more than the future, a word that appears just once in the entirety of his work. This might seem appropriate on the 200th anniversary of the death of Keats, who was popularly viewed as the young Romantic poet “half in love with easeful death.” Death…
John Keats: How His Poems of Death and Lost Youth Are Resonating During COVID-19
The Glad Game: An Old Guy Discovers ‘Pollyanna’
One of my best friends in high school was a teenage Shirley Temple. Just seeing this girl was to step into sunshine. A cheerleader, a budding actress and director, and a member of student government, she always carried a smile, listened to the woes of any number of her classmates, and looked on the bright…
Undermining the Foundations: Lessons From Fyodor Dostoevsky’s ‘Devils’
Early in March, I was sucker punched by a Russian. A dead Russian, as a matter of fact. Let me explain. Late in December, I made a New Year’s resolution to read at least six classics that were new to me in the coming year. Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe” was my first choice, and I…
‘The Time Machine’: An Everlasting Matter of Time
In writing “The Time Machine” 125 years ago, Herbert George Wells not only invented the catchphrase “time machine,” but he also invented a time machine of imagination, for its pages whisk the time-bound reader beyond the constraints of the numerical continuum of space and experience, leaping into a bizarre future that is both beautiful and…
Truth Tellers: Virginia Woolf, ‘I always tell the truth’
Virginia Woolf asks us—we hear her own voice, by way of a BBC recording—“How can we combine the old words in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth?” This was Woolf’s life question, her life quest, the catalyst of her genius. She struggled with it,…
Literature Versus Tyranny
The stormtroopers of modernity have trampled much underfoot on their monstrous march across the historical landscape. Having abandoned the lessons of the past in the reckless pursuit of an imaginary future, these slaves of the Zeitgeist have killed millions in the name of a mythical progress. The progressives of the French Revolution ushered in a…
Anne Frank: A Voice for All Times
In this time of cancel culture, how can we explain our values to those who might not want to listen? How do we overcome the constant spew of hatred, and refuse to react defensively? How do we live a good, successful life no matter what our personal circumstances are? We look to those who have….
A Book of Hope in a Bad Season: ‘That Hideous Strength’
In a recent article about Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe,” I made a New Year’s resolution to read old books unfamiliar to me. Having selected Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s “The Devils” as my next conquest, I had just commenced that story of Russian radicals when another book, not quite so old but still important, snared my attention and…
Book Review: ‘The Enduring Tension: Capitalism and the Moral Order’
One of the selling points for those who embrace far-left progressivism and even socialism is the “morality” of redistributing income and even wealth from productive, hard-working Americans to others. Opponents of these tried-and-failed philosophies can cite the empirical numbers, demonstrating that the outcomes of states and nations that have moved toward socialism have botched their…
For Dog Lovers: ‘The Dog Lady of Mexico‘
Making a difference one animal at a time is a theme Alison Sawyer Current comes back to time and again in her heartwarming, sobering, and ultimately uplifting autobiographical novel, “The Dog Lady of Mexico.” Based on Current’s actual experiences, this 2018 work is worth a first or second look as it shows just how much…
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