If you have enjoyed The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or maybe even the Silmarillion, it might be time to explore some of these or other of Tolkien’s lesser-known stories.
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Quantum Mechanics, Contingency, and Freedom in Ted Chiang’s “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”
Sooner or later each of us confronts the question of what it means to be me. Who am I as an individual existing in this time and place, as part of this family and this people? This most basic question is thrown at each of us, and there is no predetermined script.
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Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and Flannery O’Connor
Quentin Tarentino’s film “Pulp Fiction” and Flannery O’Connor’s stories smell of nihilism. But at the end of the film, and at the end of O’Connor’s stories, the light of Providence glimmers tantalizingly. So there was a meaning after all! But it was not the meaning I was expecting.
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On the Importance of Forgetting
Most attention in our culture is given to the importance of remembering. But it turns out that forgetting can be just as important. The inability to forget can be as destructive as the inability to remember.
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“Thoughts that Wound from Behind:” Literary Allusions as Pedagogical Opportunities
Dante places the ancient hero Ulysses into the eighth circle of hell. A fraudulent counselor of war, deception, and exploration beyond the bounds of God’s law, Ulysses suffers eternal encasement in flame. But Tennyson’s poem, great in its own right, calls Dante’s judgment into question. The tension between these two poems – one epic, one lyrical – gets at the very question of the meaning of life.
