Erictheblue

LATEST ARTICLES ( 229 )

• Bloomsday

  

  Another Bloomsday, this one coinciding with Father's Day--which seems poignantly fitting, for Mr Bloom lost a son in infancy and has never fully recovered:... Read more

  Posted on 17 June 2013 BOOKS

• Joyce's Dubliners: "Eveline"

  

  Harry Levin once observed that, likely as a consequence of having lived his life in near blindness, Joyce's fiction is of "low visibility. Read more

  Posted on 14 June 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Joyce's Dubliners: "Araby"

  

  The third story in Dubliners is "Araby."  I wrote very briefly about it here.  It's the one you are most likely to have read, for it is... Read more

  Posted on 08 June 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Joyce's Dubliners: "An Encounter"

  

  The title refers to "an encounter" that two Dublin boys have while skipping out of their Catholic school one late spring day. Read more

  Posted on 04 June 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Joyce's Dubliners: "The Sisters"

  

  No one has ever been able to figure out why the first story is called "The Sisters," for it is about the troubled priest, who dies in the course of th... Read more

  Posted on 01 June 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Children's Stories

  

  What's going on, Louis Menand once asked, in The Cat in the Hat?  Two young children, home alone on a rainy day, the door unlocked, under the supervision... Read more

  Posted on 28 May 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Reading and Forgetting

  

  I got a kick out of this, from Ian Crouch at The New Yorker Blog.  I recognized myself, having come to the bottom of the last page--". . . Read more

  Posted on 23 May 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Jane

  

  I'm not a Janeite, but I enjoy Jane Austen's novels, and over the spare quarter hours of the past week have been happily sunk in Persuasion. Read more

  Posted on 18 May 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Books of the Bible: Job

  

  Its reputation is such that it pops up on lists of the masterpieces of world literature, such as the Guardian's compilation of "the top 100 books of all... Read more

  Posted on 11 May 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Family Pic: Before

  

  All my pretty ones. Now that the Minnesota House has voted to permit same-sex marriage, we're really worried about what will become of them! I'll post another... Read more

  Posted on 10 May 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• More About R.A. Dickey

  

  When I last wrote about R. A. Dickey, his book Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball had just been published, and,... Read more

  Posted on 04 May 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Roger Ebert and the Art of the Pan

  

  Though Roger Ebert, whom I tried to pay tribute to here, sometimes seemed to me too determined not to sneer, he also was capable of saying what had to be... Read more

  Posted on 03 May 2013 ENTERTAINMENT, MEDIA, MOVIES, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• In Our Democracy

  

  Since public opinion polls show strong support for tougher gun laws--around 90 per cent of respondents favor background checks like the ones provided for in a... Read more

  Posted on 27 April 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Schopenhauer

  

  Arthur Schopenhauer was born at Danzig (now known as Gdansk) in February of 1788.  His father was a successful shipowner and merchant; his mother, a more... Read more

  Posted on 22 April 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Brian v Alex

  

  I was, on account of unusually rapid progress from waiting room to exam table to clinic exit, home before the normal hour Monday and relishing the prospect of... Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• The Masters

  

  It's a cold, sleety Sunday afternoon and I am home alone with a couple of napping girls.  The Twins game has  been postponed on account of the... Read more

  Posted on 14 April 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Roger Ebert

  

  Roger Ebert, who died Thursday, was the author of perhaps the most worn volume in our house: Roger Ebert's Movie Home Companion, 1990 edition. It must have... Read more

  Posted on 07 April 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• R. J. Hollingdale

  There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about the literary scholar George Lyman Kittredge, who despite never taking a Ph.D. was both the greatest Shakespearean... Read more

  Posted on 02 April 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Books of the Bible: Amos

  

  Begins with the prophet denouncing, in formulaic phrases, the wickedness of nations that experts in ancient Mideast geography will recognize as neighbors of... Read more

  Posted on 29 March 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Best Picture?

  

  The other movie we saw in L.A., when I was fresh from being released from the hospital (and therefore too limpy for walking tours) and Amanda was fresh from... Read more

  Posted on 27 March 2013 POLITICS, SOCIETY