TJ West

Screening History: “Ben-Hur”(1959)

Some time ago, I wrote a 3-part series of blog posts about the rise and fall…
The Great “Golden Girls” Marathon: “Flu Attack” (S1, Ep. 21)

Well, it has been a long time since I wrote a post on The Golden Girls. So, to…
Things you think about when you’re in the ICU holding your dad’s hand and he’s still under anesthesia from open heart surgery but he opens his eyes for the first time

Originally posted on Metathesis: Note: When I agreed to write for Metathesis this month I planned on…
Reading Tad Williams: “Stone of Farewell” (Book 2 of “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn)

Today, I continue with my reviewing of the corpus of the fantasy author Tad Williams, and…
Coda: Converting Art — Literature During Political Repression

Originally posted on Metathesis: I went to the Early Modern Conversions Symposium at the Folger Shakespeare…
Film Review: Eros, the Bittersweet–“La La Land (2016)” and the Melancholy of What-Might-Have-Been

Warning: Spoilers follow. In her remarkable book Eros: The Bittersweet, the classicist and poet Anne Carson eloquently argues…
Film Review: “Moana (2016),” a Fable for the Trump Era

Sometimes, you want a movie that helps you to see that it’s not all hopeless, that…
Legalizing Repression: “Muslim Registries” and English Recusants

Originally posted on Metathesis: On my last day at the Early Modern Theatre and Conversion symposium…
Reading “The Lord of the Rings”: “Minas Tirith”

I’ve always found the first half of Return of the King to be some of my favourite parts of the…
Reading Tad Willams: “The Dragonbone Chair” (Book One of “Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn)

A recent piece in The Guardian made the trenchant point that Tad Williams, author of the…