The Professor's Bayonet

Thinkers at the time of the Enlightenment or Age of Reason were engrossed with the project of imposing order onto the universe.  With the God-given faculty of reason, they argued, humankind, above and beyond every other creature, could navigate the world with greater insight and influence.  They saw themselves, in other words, as Adam-like in the sense that their mission was to "tend the gard...

I first read James Fenimore Cooper’s classic The Last of the Mohicans when I was around twelve years old.  Somebody had gifted me a set of abridged versions of a selection of American classics, and I devoured them one after the other.  It was not until I taught a section of Cooper’s work to my Honors students that I learned that the 19th century author was doing something quite clever in his telli...

According to Jewish mythology, Adam’s first wife was not Eve.  The Adam from the Book of Genesis was first wed to a woman named Lilith; however, she was not quite on board with her expected station in the Garden, so she was summarily banished, ejected, kicked out.  The insurrection in heaven had already taken place, which meant that Lilith, in her exiled state, was not exactly alone.  She was amon...

Years ago, when I was teaching in Spain, I discovered a museum that altered my understanding of what it means to be an artist.  Born in 1863 in Valencia, Joaquin Sorolla was a well-known painter, plying his craft just as the Modernist movement was picking up speed.  I had expected to be immersed in a world of experimentalism and the avante garde; however, I was quickly corrected when I was exposed...

One day, inexplicably, Gregor Samsa, the protagonist in Kafka’s 1915 novella, wakes up to find himself transformed into a bug. Common depictions have him as a cockroach. No matter the case, the metamorphosis is shocking yet quite telling. Samsa is, after all, a salesman who works a dead-end job to provide for his family. In many ways, his lot is one we can all relate to. Days turn into weeks, and...

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was not the only female writer to challenge the Doctrine of the Spheres.  The torch that was lit by Mary Wollstonecraft in her notable work “Vindication of the Rights of Women,” which was published in 1792 was carried forth by a number of aspiring liberators of the so-called weaker sex.  The Bronte sisters, Kate Chopin, George Eliot, Jane Austen, Louisa May Alcott, Fanny F...

John Steinbeck once wrote that “there is a line of old men standing on the edge of the Pacific, angry at the ocean for stopping them.”  He was, of course, referring to those who spent their youth as explorers, trackers, soldiers, cowboys – men who bridled at the very notion of remaining in the long-tamed East, preferring, instead, to strike out into the vast unknown – the West – brimming with poss...

“A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift  Swift’s 1729 essay in which he proposes that, to alleviate their economic troubles, the poor people of Ireland should sell their children to the well-to-do for food, is standard fare when it comes to teaching satire. The Anglo-Irish writer lays out a quasi-reasonable argument and then happily suggests recipes for how the children be prepared kitchens across t...

“Of all tyrannies,” C.S. Lewis writes, “a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”  Abusive power, in other words, sometimes comes in sheep’s clothing.  The twentieth century was no stranger to this phenomenon.  To be sure, it was an era of totalitarian regimes: the Nazis and the Communists taking center stage.  Lewis, the famed author of The Chronicles...

In retrospect, it was an easy trap to fall into.  The loss of my father when I was nine-years old ignited in me the zeal to survive.  I mowed lawns.  I shoveled sidewalks and driveways.  I delivered papers.  I once even walked down to a local shop to ask for a job.  I had no idea what they produced, but I assured the bearded man that I could sweep up the sawdust – keep the place tidy.  I was turne...

The In-Between by Hadley Vlahos  Published by Ballantine Books  Years ago, when my sweet grandmother lay on her deathbed in a room in a house her husband and brothers had built after the war, in rare moments of lucidity, she wondered aloud about the man sitting in the kitchen, waiting for her. He had simply shown up and was biding his time. No one else, of course, could see him, yet that made litt...

Those of us who teach writing for a living have long had to contend with students who, for whatever reason, fail to complete the assigned reading. They forgot. They do not have the book. They were just too busy. The list of reasons is long. I even once had a student claim that she could not do the reading because, and I quote, “her poodle exploded.” You can’t make this stuff up. This particular ch...

Thanks to Petrach, women even today face an impossible standard. The 14th century poet famously penned love poems to a woman by the name of Laura, which, in and of itself, would have been harmless were it not for the fact that he appropriated the language of praise and worship to express his affections. Language meant for God, in other words, was applied to a mere mortal. No longer was God alone p...

Tom Joad and the Silence of Saint Joseph  Tom Joad, Steinbeck’s hardscrabble protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath, delivers a resounding farewell speech in which he asserts that, quote, I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready.  That line, in particular, has always stuck with me – for its poignance, for its ability to draw me into something human, real, recogniz...

When I started this podcast, I did so with the intent of offering honest commentary on literature and culture.  The world is filled with too much mindless chatter.  Perhaps my attempt at being sincere and insightful would be well-received.  I had no plans to review films as that medium seems to dominate our lives too much as it is; however, I recently came across a movie that captured my imaginati...

The Possibility of Evil by Shirley Jackson  Adela Strangeworth, the seventy-one-year-old protagonist in Jackson’s 1965 short story, has a gripe with evil, which is really to say anything that could upset the delicate balance in the social ecosystem of a town she reminds us was built by her grandfather around a lumber mill.  She is proud of her ancestry and carries herself as such: the single remai...

Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross  Sixteenth century Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, writes that “[i]f you purify your soul of attachment to and desire for things, you will understand them spiritually. If you deny your appetite for them, you will enjoy their truth, understanding what is certain in them.” To the material world, St. John of the Cross attributes spiritual qualiti...

Park’s memoir about her escape from North Korea exposes a plethora of evil that is difficult to fathom. Only a couple of weeks past her thirteenth birthday, she was almost raped by a Chinese broker moments after Park and her mother crossed the Yalu River, fleeing the Hermit Kingdom. Had it not been for her mother insisting that the broker take her instead, an unspeakable horror would have taken pl...

For me, it has always been a head-scratcher when I hear some folks claim to be spiritual but not believers in God – to claim the existence of ghosts but not their Creator – to appoint godparents for their children but have no idea what godparents are truly for.  They are behind the existence of all things supernatural, yet they struggle with having any relationship with God whatsoever.  They decor...

It was not Chekhov’s critique of Tsarist Russia that captured my attention.  As the working-class sledge driver Iona transports cruel and dismissive patrons around the frozen streets of 1886 St. Petersburg, Russia, I was struck by the sense that there was much more happening – that the actions and dialogue were all very surface level – that Chekhov was telling a story within a story.  Yes, the bou...

I belted out the song like any other grunge wannabe in the early 1900s, but I had no idea what I was saying.  Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain likely did not know what he was saying either.  Content wasn’t the point.  Explosive expression was.  The Nevermind album both shook the music world and shaped the culture for years to come.  Grunge gave way to nouveau punk, and that genre, as all genres do, eventuall...

A few years back, I was on a spiritual retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia where I experienced an epiphany about my place in this world.  God, I realized, does not need me.  The sun will rise and fall without me.  The tides will ebb and flow without me.  The flowers will bloom.  The rivers will flow.  My presence in creation is not needed for creation to do its thing. ...

American individualism was simply the result of people trying to hold on.  Far from their normal resources, early pioneers who wanted lives free from entrenched social and political hierarchies – lives where they could be whatever they wanted to be, live however they wanted to live – also had to learn skills well outside their wheelhouse.  Tailors became loggers.  Lawyers became furniture builders...

Most folks have at least heard of Dante’s fictional descent into the bowels of hell.  Accompanied by ancient Roman poet, Virgil, the fourteenth century Italian poet travels circle by concentric circle toward Satan himself, witnessing along the way a vast host of punishments meted out, in many cases, to the political and social elites of Dante’s time.  It is a colorful and harrowing allegory that c...

Of late, I have been reflecting on death – the inevitability of my own and that of so many loved ones throughout my life.  It is heavy – indeed, antithetical to how we understand ourselves and others, especially those we hold most dear.  How can such a fate befall this person or that?  They were so full of life … so unique … so precious … beloved.  My aunt, for example, just passed.  She was only...