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How Moliere Is Saving France
Friday Few writers are able to apply literary lessons to contemporary politics as well as The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. In a very smart article, he says that French president Emmanuel Macron is...
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Putin as Murakami’s Boris the Manskinner
Vladimir Putin Tuesday To understand why the Russians intervened to help Donald Trump, experts consistently advise us to “follow the money.” More than anything, Vladimir Putin hates the Magnitsky...
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Murakami on Ideology’s Hollowness
Wednesday In yesterday’s discussion of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, my students seized upon a diatribe against narrow-minded ideologues. In the novel, Murakami mentions leftwing radicals who...
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Marquez: How GOP Can Regain Its Soul
Thursday I am currently teaching One Hundred Years of Solitude in my Magical Realism course and am struck by how magical realism might be the only genre that could do justice to our current politics....
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Swift Predicted Trump’s Lies
Gustave Doré, Satan rallies his troops Tuesday Washington Post satirist Dana Milbank has alerted me to a Jonathan Swift essay on “Political Lying” that is only too relevant. Political lying took some...
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How Fantasy Keeps Us Human
The bad and good angel in “Good Omens” Thursday I understand better why Neil Gaiman and the late Terry Pratchett are so beloved after teaching them in my British fantasy course. The two have found...
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What Is Truth? Cowper’s Beautiful Answer
Nikola Ge, “What Is Truth” (Pontius Pilate Questioning Christ) Wednesday To hear Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani glibly proclaim “truth isn’t truth” while working for a man who has told over 4229 falsehoods...
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Vote for the Best Lizard
Friday My brother David just reminded me of the following Douglas Adams passage (from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish), which is always relevant but never more so than now as U.S. Covid deaths...
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An Xmas Story about Political Polarization
George Richmond, 1851 portrait of Elizabeth Gaskell Tuesday Yesterday, I wrote about the enormous popularity of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Carol in 1843. Of course, whenever a publishing venture...
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