The story about my niece yesterday reminded me of another “monkey” story that I had been meaning to post here. But first, you need some background information. Rhodes College, where I teach, is in Midtown Memphis, which just so happens also to be the location of the world-famous Memphis Zoo. The college sits on one…
Read MoreAs much as I love this time of the year, and I genuinely do, I really hate shopping for gifts. I’m not a very enthusiastic or patient shopper, and the malls drive me crazy. Also, I always want to get people the perfect gift, but more often than not find that such gift is either…
Read MoreRemember Han Solo? That smarmy, proud, devil-may-care mercenary from the “Stars Wars” movies? As best I can remember, I think he’s the first “anti-hero” I loved. After Han, I think the next one for me was the narrator of Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground. Since then, I’ve been collecting them like some sort of neurotic hobbyist….
Read MoreI read Don DeLillo’s 1985 masterpiece White Noise as an undergraduate in an American Lit course at the University of Memphis about ten years ago now. I was still developing my postmodern muscles at the time, and I loved DeLillo’s novel, despite its overly stylized and sometimes too-precious prose. In particular, I loved the very…
Read MoreFirst, a caveat: The following post is NOT intended, primarily, to advocate or oppose any particular Presidential candidate. A couple of days ago, NPR correspondent Robert Seigel interviewed Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. (You can read the transcript of the interview here.) Initially, it seemed like the main focus of Seigel’s questions was Romney’s health care…
Read MoreWe concluded the semester in my “Search for Values” class with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Specifically, we ended with the end of the Nic Ethics, Book X, in which Aristotle defends the life of contemplation as both the highest achievement for human beings and the “truly” happy and virtuous life. I always find that Book X…
Read MoreMany of you have probably read the now-famous text by historian James Loewen Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. I find that many of my students, especially those who come from liberal or progressive backgrounds, read it in high school or in some other context before they reached college….
Read MoreOkay, so I am now willing to retract– or at least severely qualify– my earlier disavowal of psychoanalysis. My sincerist apologies to Sigmund. As you may remember, a few days ago I wondered (in a post entitled “Mind Over Mater“) what was so damn compelling about the Freudian reading of Sophocles’ inimitable tragedy Oedipus Rex?…
Read MoreOn this blog, almost exactly a year ago, I posted an entry on the importance of what I called the work of mourning. That post was prompted by my attendance at the SPEP business meeting, which every year includes eulogies of the SPEP members who have passed in the previous year. I was disturbed by…
Read MoreMy “Search for Values” class began our section on tragedy at the end of this week with Oedipus Rex. (We’ll read Antigone next week.) Sophocles’ “trilogy” is one of those works of literature that I always need to read again to remember how great it is. Part of that, I think, is due to the…
Read More
Recent Comments