John Baker’s Blog

Dick Jones on Patteran Pages examines the changing role of the hero in our lives:
I don’t think I’ve ever had any actual heroes. However, when I was 5 or 6 Winston Churchill’s name still struck gold: we kids in playground & street accepted as an article of faith that he was the warrior-god who had [...]

This is a deconstruction of Homer’s Odyssey from the wife’s point of view. Margaret Atwood lends Penelope a twenty-first-century voice and allows her to retell the story of her marriage and life with (and without) the hero of Greek myth, Odysseus.
. . . he took a cable which had seen service on a blue-bowed [...]

I have to smile at the popular images of community living, as depicted in film and television. These often show groups of naïve young people being manipulated by a cynical older man. There is usually some form of exploitation going on, drugs or mind-zapping religious theories, and we are led to believe that most of [...]

It is mooted from time to time that place in fiction can be seen as a character acting within the movement of the narrative. One thinks of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County or of EM Forster’s Marabar Caves. Classically there are the examples of Mrs Gaskell’s Cranford, of Joyce’s Dublin and Conan Doyle’s London, while closer to [...]