May 14, 2019
On Richard Powers’s The Overstory
It’s an almost universally accepted notion now that good literature comes down to character. Scholars have long argued that the rise of the novel in Europe coincides with the rise […]
May 18, 2018
On Character Motivation
In Will in the World, Stephen Greenblatt argues that Shakespeare’s characters are compelling because he makes their motivations purposefully unclear in order to create greater psychological complexity: “Shakespeare found that […]
January 1, 2016
Gus, All Too Human
“I swear, Gus. You’d argue with a possum.” -Call Is Lonesome Dove the greatest miniseries of all time? I’ve definitely watched it more times than any other miniseries. Watching Roots […]
July 30, 2015
Teach This (Part V)
[Continued from earlier posts on teaching poetry] Robert Hayden’s “Night, Death, Mississippi” is a poem that horrifies me. Each time I encounter the domestic scene and colloquial voice, it feels like […]