Tag Archives: romance novels

The Stroke of Lightning

Posted on December 30, 2025 by Abigail

Tonight I want to revisit an experience whose status in modern culture is typically regarded with skepticism. The French call it the stroke of lightning (le coup de foudre). It’s the sudden descent/visitation of romantic love. It’s not the same … Continue reading →

Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, American politics, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical Archeology, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, Confessions of a Young Philosopher, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, Desire and Authenticity, dialectic, eighteenth century, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, fatherhood, female power, femininity, feminism, filial piety, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, Jesus, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, Married Philosophers Discuss Confessions, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, medieval, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, power games, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, racism, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, Renaissance, repairing the culture, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, terrorism, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, Truth, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged absolute risk, antiromantic skepticism, Brooklyn Connections vs Core Curriculum, choice at the crossroads, Coup de foudre, Dante and Beatrice, Dante’s Divine Comedy, detachment of the observer, Edmund Husserl, failing to rise above it, failing to stay detached, first kiss, Jerry Martin and Abigail Rosenthal, knowing you are in love, life choice, maintaining detachment, meaningful kiss, meaningful relationship, Medieval romance and gnosticism, Medieval romance and otherworldly, Medieval romance as model, medieval romance as subversive, mistaking infatuation with love, mutual attraction, no guarantees in love, obeying the summons of love, observer and observed, peak experience, phenomenological bracketing, phenomenological reduction, resisting the summons of love, rising above it, Romance, romance in fiction, romance in psychology, romance novels, Romantic Love, romantic risks, saving Brooklyn College, Saving the Brooklyn College Core in The New York Post, Saving the Brooklyn Core in The Jewish Daily Forward, saving the core curriculum, Saving the Core in The Chronicle of Higher Education, self awareness, self deception, skeptical of romance, the meaning of a first kiss, the stroke of lightning, The Stroke of Lightning vs societal norms, the summons of love, Tristan and Iseult, two paths in the wood | 1 Comment

Time Travel

Posted on December 31, 2024 by Abigail

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun In present-day America, it is said that young people have little interest in their ancestry. They see their choice of life partner as a … Continue reading →

Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, anthropology, anti-semitism, appreciation, art, art of living, atheism, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, Bible, Biblical God, bigotry, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, childhood, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, fatherhood, female power, femininity, feminism, filial piety, films, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, Industrial Revolution, institutional power, Jesus, Jews, journalism, Judaism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, martyrdom, masculinity, master, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, Messianic Age, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, mysticism, Nihilism, nineteenth-century, non-violence, novels, ontology, oppression, pacifism, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, political, political movements, politics, politics of ideas, power, power games, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, terrorism, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, Truth, TV, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, victimhood, victims, violence, war, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged American youth, Amy Harmon's What the Wind Knows, ancestors' influence, Biblical origins, Biblical recollection, bodice busters, empathy for bygone cultures, empathy for earlier eras, Europe carrying its history, European difference in marriage choice, exogamous marriage, family karma, far memory, fashionable irony, fashionable opinions, fashionable skepticism, fashions in literary opinion, fashions in reading, finding one's true love, forebears' influence, foretelling the future, grandfathers, high brow literary criticism, historical romance, intermarriage, Ireland in the 1920's, Irish history, Irish memories, Karmic legacy, last wishes, losing one's true love, mixed marriage, modern opinions, Motherland, past-life memories, recollecting the past, return to Ireland, revisiting the past, revolutionary struggle, romance novels, romance novels and historical insight, romance novels as thought experiments, taking romance novels seriously, The Irish Troubles, the past never dies, the weight of history, the weight of the past, thwarted romance, time travel, true love and culture, true love and history, true love and truth, updating the Biblical country, William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun, yearning recollections, young people and their ancestors | 2 Comments

A Writer’s Conscience

Posted on May 28, 2024 by Abigail

I just finished reading – actually skimming – what I’m tempted to name as the worst book in the history of the world. It’s a romance novel titled Forever Amber, set in seventeenth century England, which came out originally in … Continue reading →

Posted in absurdism, action, afterlife, agnosticism, alienation, anthropology, appreciation, art, art of living, authenticity, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, bigotry, book reviews, books, chivalry, Christianity, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, ethnicity, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, health, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, id, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, immortality, institutional power, journalism, law, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, motherhood, novels, ontology, oppression, past and future, peace, philosophy, poetry, political movements, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, remembrance, repairing the culture, roles, romance, romantic love, romanticism, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, seventeenth century, sex appeal, sexuality, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theism, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged a Protestant sensibility, a writer's double-vision, a writer’s motives, a writer’s self-condemnation, ancients vs moderns, banned books, Barbara Taylor Bradford, bodice busters, denounced books, editing one’s experience, experience and authenticity, experience as grist for the writer’s mill, experience as the first draft, experience giving self-knowledge, fact/value coexistence, fact/value split, facts and values, female vulnerability, fiction and real life, fiction’s influence, filtered experience, heroine without conscience, historical fiction, historical panorama, honoring human experience, immoral heroine, Joan Didion’s On Keeping a Notebook, Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Kathleen Winsor’s Forever Amber, life without conscience, living as the first draft, living at second hand, modernity’s fact/value split, moral choice, novelist, predicaments of Restoration England, raw experience and interpreted experience, reign of Charles II, Restoration England, romance novels, self-awareness and ego, self-knowledge, seventeenth century England, social ambition, social panorama, society from bottom to top, the cost of being a writer, the cost of living one’s talent, the Great Plague of 1665, the writer’s vocation, time travel, time travel through fiction, time travel through novels, unedited life, values and the writer’s vocation, war of the sexes, writer’s conscience, writers and ego, writers using experience as material | 2 Comments

Sex and Porn

Posted on August 23, 2016 by Abigail

Sex and Porn O boy! A hot topic! I bet I get a hundred million followers! Some years ago, a friend of mine, a well-known feminist writer, discovered that her psychiatrist husband was being unfaithful to her. Worse, his infidelity … Continue reading →

Posted in academe, action, alienation, art, autonomy, chivalry, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courtship, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, ethics, evil, exploitation, faith, fashion, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, guilt and innocence, health, history, history of ideas, id, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, literature, love, male power, masculinity, master, mind control, nineteenth-century, oppression, philosophy, political, political movements, power, psychology, relationships, roles, seduction, self-deception, sex appeal, sexuality, slave, social conventions, sociobiology, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, work, writing, Zeitgeist | Tagged a life of one's own, Abigail L. Rosenthal's "Getting Past Marx and Freud", addiction, animality, art of being a woman, Arthur Schopenhauer, being with-it, betrayal, book reviews, Charles Darwin, contemporary mores, Darwin’s Origin of the Species, decadence, divorce, enforcing consensus, erotic expectations, Friedrich Nietzsche, German Romanticism, getting hooked, group pressure, historical romance novels, human motivation, human nature, hypnotic therapy, ID, infidelity, inhibitions, Intellectual fashion, libido, Linda Tarazi’s Under the Inquisition: an experience relived, losing inhibitions, medical malpractice, Nancy Jo Sales’ American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers, obsession, past life regression, past life therapy, past lives, peer pressure, Peggy Orenstein’s Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, pleasure, political correctness, pornography, post modernism, primal aims, prudish, psychiatric malpractice, reductionism, repression, reviewers, romance novels, settled science, sex, Sexuality, sociobiology, soft porn, Spanish Inquisition, species aims, the new normal, The New York Review of Books, the unconscious, theory-driven, traditionalism, trauma, trendiness, uptight, will-to-life, will-to-power, woman’s wisdom, Zoe Heller | Leave a comment

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