James-o-tate

James O. Tate is a contributing editor to Chronicles. He is a professor of English literature at Dowling College on Long Island.
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Articles and Posts by James-o-tate:

• The Creaturely Myth(25)

  Dickens’ Great Expectations obviously has an ironic title, and to appreciate the point, we have to read the book alertly and even think about what we remember. Such an approach would not bear fruit with the Karl Rove romance, however. His book has a title that is the opposite of ironic, whatever that might be.

• Too Much Monkey Business: Inherit the Agitprop(0)

  Watching a disaster or beholding a disintegration is inherently destructive, but there is also an element of morbid fascination. Might there be, as well, a redemptive element in tracking the entropic parabola of the great fall of yet another Humpty Dumpty?

• The Big Bore of Arkansas(0)

  Now, the first book I want to mention, which is also the best book I scanned, has merits beyond its own intrinsic and immediate appeal. Ric Flair’s To Be the Man tells the story of a boy from Memphis (just across the Big Muddy from Arkansas) who will never find out with certainty who his biological parents were. He was adopted in corrupt circumstances by kind and cultured Minnesotans but could not relate to the demands of conventional life, and his parents had the wisdom to let him go his own way.