These comments about Hemingway’s “Indian Camp” were forwarded to me from the Hemingway mailing list (Heming-L) by a friend. I thought, since my entry on this subject gets more attention than just about any other, I’d post them here. The email is signed only “Dan,” so if anyone knows the full name of the one [...]
Archive | Notes RSS feed for this section
New Media’s Golden Mean; Or, How Do I Post to the Blog, Again, Dr. Lucas?
At times knowledge brings merely an enlightened impotence or paralysis. One may know exactly what to do but lack the wherewithal to act. (Winner “Mythinformation” 594) Janet H. Murray, in her work Hamlet on the Holodeck, discusses the future of narrative within digital environments, and she suggests the importance of “author” to narrative in particular [...]
Hector: Family Man, but Hero First
Book VI of Homer’s Iliad shows the contention in the heart of Hector, Ilium’s champion, but also a husband and new father: he is torn between his responsibilities as a hero to his people and as a the head of the household. Like so many soldiers going off to battle today, Hector is a new father who must risk his life to maintain his people’s way of life.
Fighting Beyond Their Fates
Book 16 of the Iliad epitomizes the height of the chaotic struggle between the Achaeans and the Trojans as each try desperately to gain the upper hand. Lost in the rage of battle and spurred on by Zeus, Patroclus gains the upper hand after killing Sarpedon, the adopted son of Troy, yet only to be taken down by Apollo, then killed by Hector.
Notes on Naturalism
A basic tension between head and heart was characteristic of our naturalistic novelists. Their intellectual commitment to scientific determinism and its attendant implications regarding humanity’s place in nature is to be seen in the forms of their works — in explicit and implicit commentary, in character conception, in the use of background, in the dynamics [...]
Euripides’ Medea: Patriarchial Terrorism
Medea does leave the audience with a sense of pity and terror, even perhaps more than Oedipus Rex in its unnaturalness, if that’s possible. Euripides’ play seems to suggest that in order for the patriarchy to understand its inherent double standards, one must strike it at its very center: those who would continue its tradition.
South Again
Today, despite the cool weather, I donned my new jacket and, once again, headed south. My destination: the 25th annual conference for the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. Walter, Tom, and I are to give a panel on Lem’s Solaris at the conference in Ft. Lauderdale, and I decided that I needed [...]