Read What You Love, But You Should Love Moby Dick
Motoko Rich had an interesting piece in the NYT about the “read what you love” approach to teaching kids to read. In essence, the idea is to let them pick whatever books they like rather than putting them through the paces of certain school classics. Diane Ravitch plays the curmudgeon:
What child is going to pick up ‘Moby-Dick’?” said Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University who was assistant education secretary under President George H. W. Bush. “Kids will pick things that are trendy and popular. But that’s what you should do in your free time.”
I’m with Kevin Carey in thinking that this is misguided. As he says “being well-read is the work of a lifetime; the most important thing schools can do is get that project started and heading in the right direction.” And the necessary prerequisite for that is knowing how to read. There’s a very big problem in the United States with people who have very limited literacy capabilities, so anything you can do to get young people actually knowing how to read books is valuable.
The other thing is that I think curmudgeons need to try to think more clearly about having realistic expectations for reading in one’s free time. Between 1939 and 2009, human ingenuity has invented a lot of new things one can do with one’s time. Human ingenuity has not, however, invented a method for stuffing more hours into the day. Consequently, if you look at just about anything that people could do in 1939—read for pleasure, take care of children, cook, etc.—they do somewhat less of it in 2009. People who are really into books, or cooking, or natalism, or what have you tend to interpret this inevitable crowding of the timespace as a sign of cultural crisis and decline but it’s an inevitable result of heterogeneous preferences and innovation.
All that said, I love Moby Dick. Every American should read Moby Dick, it’s our great national epic and you can’t understand the country without it.
168 Responses to “Read What You Love, But You Should Love Moby Dick”
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September 1st, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Fuck Moby Dick.
There is not a single reason why the people of this country should give a hairy rat’s ass what liberal arts elitists think are “good for them”. Literature — like art — is something that should be left for people to do on their own time.
This stupid ass waste of time is why our college graduates are so ignorant. They don’t know shit about the power structures that control their lives, how the military works, many of them never fucking heard of political philosophy, they have a keyhole view of human history, they know nothing about technology much less what new technology will be coming down the road and they don’t even know something called the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds even exists — much less what is in it.
Our K12 and college curriculum are designed to enslave the common citizens by wasting their time for 16 years, by putting them deeply into debt, by keeping them deeply ignorant of the world and of structures which keep them enslaved and by ensuring they don’t go off and create competition for the Fortune 500.
That is why many self-made billionaires are college dropouts or people who didn’t take college seriously.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I don’t see the need to read Moby Dick until college or later. It’s a book best enjoyed when its not being shoved down your throat.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I have sympathy for the teacher in this article. It is quite likely that her students are possibly not very bright or motivated or simply have never developed good reading habits in grammar school. The challenge is just to get her students to read something.
The students are either going to be presented with _Oedipus Rex_, _Othello_, and _Moby Dick_, ignore the reading assignments, and finish with a barely-passing grade, or they are going to spend the year reading, finishing, and absorbing something they decide they like. As long as more capable and more motivated students have an opportunity to take more traditional English literature classes, there is no problem here. These classes that get students to read whatever they want are essentially remedial English classes. That has a place in our schools as much as a great books curriculum does.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Had I actually read Moby Dick as a kid or young adult, I’d have hated it. I finally read it at 40 and agree that it is fantastic.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:15 pm
What are you smoking? The stupid book had 100 pages on whale giblets and their commercial use shoehorned into the middle of it. The only book I’ve read that was more painful than Moby Dick is The Scarlet Letter, and that’s because the characters are so two dimensional that they shouldn’t even have names, just labels like “physical manifestation of guilt”.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:16 pm
It’s such a weird choice to knock. Not only is Moby-Dick a truly great novel, aside from the at-times interminable non-fiction sections about whaling, it is a supremely enjoyable, fun adventure story. Weird one to pick.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:17 pm
In place of Moby Dick I would recommend Clayton Christensen’s
“The Innovator’s Dilemma”. Plus Michael Porter’s “Competitive Strategy”
September 1st, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I’m with John I. The problem is that to get a lot of serious literature, you need some life experience. I read Moby Dick at 14 for school and didn’t get any of it. I reread it recently and was surprised at how good it is if you skip all the chapters on whale biology.
The whale biology chapters are still awful, though.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:18 pm
Oh, bother. I had to read Melville’s Billy Budd in 9th grade, and I have had absolutely no interest in reading anything else by him. My idea is that requiring certain classics to be read puts people off of these classics for life.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Don Williams’s preference would be for English classes to teach The Collected Blog Comments of Don Williams instead of any works of literature.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I’m with everyone else on the when (as opposed to the whether) of reading Moby Dick. Generally, exactly why we require children to read books written for adult audiences has never been clear to me.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm
There is not a single reason why the people of this country should give a hairy rat’s ass what liberal arts elitists think are “good for them”. Literature — like art — is something that should be left for people to do on their own time.
Seven minutes later:
In place of Moby Dick I would recommend Clayton Christensen’s
“The Innovator’s Dilemma”. Plus Michael Porter’s “Competitive Strategy”
September 1st, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Moby Dick is awesome. I read it as a senior in high school in one sitting, and I’m one of the slowest readers alive. (It took me over a year to finish Infinite Jest.)
I’m dismayed by the fact that kids in junior high and high school no longer read literature and that schools are increasingly taking a “read what you want so long as you read something, anything” approach. It seems to me that one of the chief benefits of being in secondary school is that you have the time to interact with the sort of texts that you won’t have time for later in life.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Re tomemos at 10:
Our entire national political discourse is a work of literature. That is why the nation is so badly fucked up — liberal arts majors think bullshit equals Reality and that numerical evidence is just too hard to deal with.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:25 pm
I wonder what that “Before the shark” tagline is referring to, as this is a poster from a 1956 version of Moby Dick?
September 1st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Dave NYC,
What the f*ck are you smoking? _The Scarlet Letter_ is a great book, and one of my favorites.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I think Don needs laid.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Ravitch doesn’t care if students are relatively unlikely to appreciate Moby Dick when they are 16 years old. She and other educational right-wingers conceive of American literature and history as a series of monuments before which students ought to be led and then instructed to bow reverently. The point, for such as them, is to indoctrinate students in the greatness of America, not to provide a mirror by which the student can see more clearly who he is and how he came to be.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:29 pm
In retrospect, by problem with what I was taught in school is that “English” always meant “fiction,” maybe with the occasional bewildering poem thrown in. And writing always meant doing a compare-and-contrast between two stories. Seems to me that there are other kinds of writing worth studying.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:30 pm
“I think Don needs laid.”
Wow, you talk like my Dad. Are you from Pennsylvania?
September 1st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
This stupid ass waste of time is why our college graduates are so ignorant.
Because they spend too much time reading old literature? English is a popular major, but it isn’t exactly dominant, and there are _legions_ of plug ignorant government/poli sci, economics, and “hard science” majors out there, who successfully avoided the “waste of time” of old literature and yet are very, very far short of total enlightenment.
I actually believe the old argument that learning about literature helps to instill values of (1) skepticism: you learn to recognize how what you read is trying to work on you; (2) empathy: you practice identifying with the situations of others.
I don’t particularly care if people Like To Read. I suppose it’s a nice enough quality in a person, but so are a lot of things, like Liking To Drink Beer. Those are just tastes for certain leisure activities. But I care more if people Like To Think and Like To Care. And books are pretty effective machines for accomplishing those ends.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
I am one of the unfortunates who had Moby Dick shoved down my throut in high school. Hmmm, somehow that sentence doesn’t sound quite right. Anyway, I won’t give it a second chance.
Hopefully, with age I will be able to finally expunge all that stuff about whale blubber from my memories.
I actually thought Billy Budd was ok, though.
One problem I have with received wisdom about literature is the idea that a book can only be great if it has a tragic ending.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Re Steve at 17: “I think Don needs laid.”
Hmmm. Did you pick up that grammar template from Moby Dick?
September 1st, 2009 at 1:32 pm
“Generally, exactly why we require children to read books written for adult audiences has never been clear to me.”
Well, define “children.” A 17-year-old is reading near the peak of his or her abilities, in most cases. High school was when I was assigned Great Gatsby (still probably my favorite book), plus two books by Toni Morrison, stories by Raymond Carver and Flannery O’Connor, The Stranger, and of course a few plays by Shakespeare—the elephant in the room, it seems to me. I might have come to some of this on my own, but I might not, and even if I did would I be able to make sense of French existentialism or Shakespearean language without the help of a teacher?
Which is why I think a combination is required—assigned works supplemented by a reading circle, maybe, which is more or less how it worked in freshman English. School is about challenging kids, in math and science in addition to lit. If we give up on that entirely, our culture will be much poorer for it in the long term.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:33 pm
“There’s a very big problem in the United States with people who have very limited literacy capabilities, so anything you can do to get young people actually knowing how to read books is valuable.”
I think this ties a few different educational pursuits together. A “reading” class typically where we teach people “how to read.” Later, we add literature to introduce students to things like “national epics.”
On the other hand, modern college composition courses have an interesting take on this. Way back in the 70s when the universities started getting flooded with less-prepared students, the initial reaction was to flunk them all. As this threatened the entire social experiment, the next reactions was to pass them all no matter what. Since then, a whole curriculum has grown up around the idea of “challenging” all students with incredibly dense reading and expecting them to respond to it. At the University of Pittsburgh, the basic comp course (and even courses designed for remedial students) often assign INCREDIBLY hard readigns from Edward Said, Susan Sontag, etc.
That is, the idea that we should allow students to read what they want in order to usher them through basic reading and writing is hardly the standard approach.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:34 pm
isn’t the main problem here that a liberal education is wasted and forgotten on most young people, and older people are too busy to bother?
i’m glad that i had the opportunity to get a good liberal education, in public school no less, but most of the other people in my classes were not so into it.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I agree with the sentiment that the “just get the kids to read ANYTHING” approach goes way too far to the lower-expectations-so-we-can-be-proud-of-achieving-them end of education reform. I read Billy Budd and Moby-Dick in high school, and I admittedly got much less out of Moby-Dick than I would if I went back to it now, but being forced to learn how to read, and think about what you’re reading, is an invaluable lesson that seems unteachable with taste of the month type stuff.
I’ve gotten push-back on this argument that what I’m really arguing for is secretly to force everyone to only read dead white guys. Maybe I’d argue there should be a bias towards books that have stood the test of a little time, but we read Native Son right after Great Gatsby, so they don’t have to be white, just dead!
September 1st, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Don Williams: Our entire national political discourse is a work of literature.
Ah, but that’s why we need people to learn how to read it! So as _not_ to fall for the bullshit. You don’t have to read the national political discourse for pleasure. You can read it like a critic, and expose how it works.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:34 pm
I’d say Huck Finn is more definitively American than Moby Dick.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:37 pm
This English professor fellow at your college wrote his dissertation on that book. It was started in the 1960s and remained unfinished several decades later. It was rumored to be more than 3000 pages long.
He’d say things like: “Thoreau had an erotic, excremental relationship to the earth.” You heard he’d said to another class: “these papers are shit. You are all bourgeois fucks.”
September 1st, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I also disliked this idea that was fed to us in high school. But once you watch _Clerks_ and hear Dante explain to Randal why Empire is better than Jedi, you start to understand why the received wisdom on this matter is correct.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I’ve always encouraged my kids to read what they loved, always bought them whatever books they wanted, even when they were inane or tacky or comic books or teen magazines. Guess what my son began to pick up in his spare time? Moby Dick. And The Odyssey, and Huckleberry Finn, and 1984, and The Golden Ass, and a whole host of other classics.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:42 pm
I think “Moby Dick” is the greatest American novel ever written, if not the greatest novel ever written, period. That said, I tried reading it when I was younger, didn’t get far, but then when I was around 30 I picked it up and saw things my younger self never did. I consumed that book like a fine meal and am still nourished by it almost 15 years later.
The classics are classic for a reason, but they were not necessarily written for schoolchildren and should not be forced on them. There are plenty of excellent “young adult” books which were written for young people, so let them begin their literary journey of a lifetime with those books. They have all their lives to mature to the point where books like “Moby Dick” are a pleasure, not a chore.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Anyone complaining about the the “boring whale biology” chapters doesn’t understand the book, period. It’s like only enjoying The Sopranos as an exciting yarn about the mob, aside from all that weird stuff that happened in the last two seasons.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Stanley Fish has a column in the NY Times, titled:
“What Should Colleges Teach?”
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/?ref=opinion
It begins thus:
“A few years ago, when I was grading papers for a graduate literature course, I became alarmed at the inability of my students to write a clean English sentence. They could manage for about six words and then, almost invariably, the syntax (and everything else) fell apart. I became even more alarmed when I remembered that these same students were instructors in the college’s composition program. What, I wondered, could possibly be going on in their courses?”
ha ha ha ha
September 1st, 2009 at 1:46 pm
There’s also the issue of how comprehensible the characters are to kids of a certain age. Even as a reasonably mature 17-year-old, I was just flummoxed by The Great Gatsby—the characters’ behavior doesn’t really make sense to anyone who hasn’t experienced adult life. Moby Dick felt similar—it’s hard to relate to Ahab until one’s actually worked for a few monomonaical asshole bosses.
With that in mind, if I were teaching English with an eye to getting the kids to actually read, I think I’d focus on stuff where the motivation’s a bit clearer— Wuthering Heights and Jane Austen. Not sure exactly what I’d substitute for Moby Dick in the 19th-Century American Epic slot, though.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
A 17-year-old is reading near the peak of his or her abilities, in most cases.
I’m not sure what “abilities” means in this context, but my point was more about subject matter, themes, and such, not difficulty–I just don’t see the point in forcing even a 17-year-old to read something that wasn’t intended to be appealing to 17-year-olds in the first place.
By the way, on this:
Our entire national political discourse is a work of literature.
How very po-mo of Don.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:47 pm
start kids where they feel comfortable and maybe they’ll get to a place where they’re willing to challenge themselves. Even if they don’t reach that place, they’ll at least have picked up some vocabulary, awareness of syntax and grammar, and maybe learned to think a little more critically — thereby improving their literacy– which might not have happened if great literature they aren’t ready for is shoved down their throats and rejected causing them to think of all reading as unbearable.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Generally, exactly why we require children to read books written for adult audiences has never been clear to me.
I find that strange. I also find it strange that educating children means enshrining some very old books in this “classics” hagiography. Languages are constantly changing. So the further you go back in time, the more difficult the language becomes. Shouldn’t a period piece like Melville go where it belongs; in a college 19th century lit. class?
September 1st, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Re James at 36: “Not sure exactly what I’d substitute for Moby Dick in the 19th-Century American Epic slot, though.”
The Confidence Man.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:50 pm
@ Eric – that “before the shark” line is particularly odd, as this would be after Pinocchio, which featured a big, scary sperm whale.
As for the general debate – I have to agree that it makes a lot more sense to have kids read books that they might actually enjoy rather than received classics. I’m not saying this because I’m anti-canon, but because kids (and adults) won’t read any of the canon if they aren’t reading at all.
One change that might serve students well would be offering a choice of a few books, so that they are reading something they are interested in at least part of the time. Obviously this creates some difficulties for teachers, but I could see a class being broken up into three groups, with one group interacting with the teacher at a time and the other two groups reading quietly. Or maybe it requires more flexibility in switching students between teachers in middle school, etc.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I loved to read as a kid, in part because my parents let me read anything. They restricted my TV watching, but I could pick up any tawdry piece of crap and they were o.k. with it. It made me think books were exciting and scandalous and full of secrets. I still feel that way, I just read politics now.
And there is a middle ground. Teachers can find classics that would be interesting to a kid. My sixth grade teacher did a phenomenal job of assigning books that were classics, but age appropriate. We read The Hobbit, Night (Elie Wiesel), I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and To Kill a Mockingbird. All the stories (except The Hobbit) were about kids. It’s been 25 years and I still remember the reading list. How’s that for a great teacher.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Huckleberry Finn is good enough for the young ones. There is enough darkness and questioning there
America as psychotic idealism in Moby Dick or corrupt hypocrites as in Gatsby may need some maturation. Although there are even gentler versions of those themes in HF.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:57 pm
“Even as a reasonably mature 17-year-old, I was just flummoxed by The Great Gatsby—the characters’ behavior doesn’t really make sense to anyone who hasn’t experienced adult life.”
I respectfully disagree. I loved it, as I said above, but more importantly most of the other students in my class did too, judging by how engaged the discussions of it were. These were 17-year-olds, too, in public school, admittedly with a great teacher.
The hard thing we have to face up to here is that most kids don’t like school, period. A lot of people posting on this blog probably did like school, but most kids don’t. So while I definitely think we should emphasize approachable literature in high school, including some contemporary and/or non-canonical works, the idea that we’re going to be able to lower the bar enough that everybody (or even a majority) enjoys reading is wishful thinking.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:58 pm
While some exceptional kids might get something out of being forced to read Moby Dick or the Scarlet Letter, most kids will learn only one less: reading is boring.
It’s good to challenge kids, especially those in advanced English classes, but you have to be reasonable about it. There are many great works of literature out there that are far more readable than Moby Dick or the Scarlet Letter. I think there’s a middle ground between getting credit for reading the latest in the Twilight series and impenetrable and dull works from the early 19th century.
Moby Dick is awesome. I read it as a senior in high school in one sitting, and I’m one of the slowest readers alive.
JRE, unless what you read was actually a heavily abridged Reader’s Digest version, this is highly unlikely. I imagine it would take something like 20 hours of dedicated reading for an average reader to get through Moby Dick.
aside from the at-times interminable non-fiction sections about whaling, it is a supremely enjoyable, fun adventure story. Weird one to pick.
Freddie, I hate to say it, but you don’t know “Dick”. There is a tiny germ of an adventure story in there somewhere (mostly in the last chapter), but anyone who describes Moby Dick as “fun” must have read a different book. Even the (pretty decent) John Houston adaptation wasn’t any fun at all.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I’m vaguely sympathetic to Don’s otherwise luddite sensibility, because the way EngLit is taught at an undergraduate level in the US — until perhaps the senior year — is pretty remedial. But this–
liberal arts majors think bullshit equals Reality and that numerical evidence is just too hard to deal with.
–is just some fucking top-grade bullshit from a man in love with his own textual effusions. Somebody who’s been properly taught to appreciate literature ought to be well equipped to unpack the bullshit of political discourse, and also have a better-attuned sense of social dynamics on both a smaller and larger scale.
Anyway, I’m somewhat in agreement with Atrios, in that there are books that deliver their payoff well to younger readers — not kids’ books, but books that dovetail well, like Gatsby and Wuthering Heights — and others that don’t truly click until you’re a bit older. On the other hand, you have to be willing to challenge and stretch the capabilities of late teenage readers.
I was a voracious and somewhat indiscriminate reader as a teenager, which had its pros and cons, though I’d like to think that it was better to read where my inclination took me, than being forcefed The Classics of some canon or other in rote fashion at an early age.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Hmmm. Did you pick up that grammar template from Moby Dick?
You’d have been able to offer a better comeback than this tepid drool if you’d read Moby-Dick.
In any event, I found Melville’s approximation of Elizabethan language too affected (he didn’t write like that in “Bartleby”! (I don’t think)), the whale biology and whaling industry both disagreeable (and here I probably fail the pathetic fallacy test), to amount to more than a slog.
I stand with those who think that Moby-Dick isn’t great fodder to introduce kids to classics when there are so many other novels that are more vibrant, crucial, and accessible, Gatsby being chief among them. Anyway, I’d offer Gravity’s Rainbow as a superior national epic.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:59 pm
44:Should have been “gentler versions of even those themes” I suppose.
JR? McTeague Pynchon? Robert Stone?
September 1st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
I’m an English teacher in a public high school. I have never heard of Moby Dick being assigned reading at this age. When great authors are taught, it’s usually their simpler pieces. I personally try to bring in literature I think will grab the students’ imaginations, strike their fancy. I find I can generally get them to appreciate Shakespeare, even if they don’t enjoy the reading through the murder and sex and wordplay. Greek myths I approach through getting them to see the dysfunction (indeed, it was an eighth grade student at an urban alternate school who pointed out to me that “The Greek Gods were more dysfunctional than were are!”). A Scarlet Letter is a puzzle — I loved it, and I think it’s simple enough for their young minds, but I think that kind of morality is too antiquated for them (unlike some classics, has not withstood the test of time), not to mention none of the characters is really likeable and the language is off-putting. There has to be SOMETHING to bring them in. So it is possible to teach classics and there is some value to it, but I do incorporate current young adult fiction, and interesting non-fiction as well.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Yeah, I could see how it’d be right up your alley.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:06 pm
i had a similar experience to broadsnark. Reading something is better than reading nothing.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Re pseudo at 46: “Somebody who’s been properly taught to appreciate literature ought to be well equipped to unpack the bullshit of political discourse, and also have a better-attuned sense of social dynamics on both a smaller and larger scale.”
———–
Well, we certainly saw the American People doing that during the Iraq pre-invasion debate, no?
The characters were underdeveloped, the plot was unbelieveable, and the dialogue was trite.
I could not force myself to finish reading it. How did it turn out?
September 1st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Children need to learn how to read. Basic literacy is obviously an important tool, and advanced reading comprehension is a valuable tool in most careers.
On the other hand, it’s not clear why knowledge of English literature is particularly important.
Is being able to appreciate and understand a great work of literature more important than being able to understand a great work of cinema or fine art? Being able to intelligently discuss Moby Dick, Citizen Kane, and Starry Night increases your ability to converse at certain cocktail parties, and probably makes you a more well-rounded person in some way. But all this art appreciation seems pretty far removed from the tools one needs to be a productive member of society.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
[...] 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment I agree with Matt Yglesias’s positive opinion of the build-your-own-reading-list trend that teachers have started to use. This is unquestionably [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
I feel I have to note that most of the recommendations are about the archetypical rootless adventurer without family, in other words, androcentric to near misogyny. Most Americans had families.
Might give a thought to Wharton or Cather.
All the King’s Men (much better novel than movie) and Raintree County (same) are underestimated Americana.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Vonnegut is generally pretty approachable and nicely cynical toward power, as is Catch 22. Nothing wrong with teaching more recent works like The Road or Atonement. And if you want to introduce kids to Pynchon, it might not be a bad idea to start with the Crying of Lot 49, which has the distinct advantage of being short. Assigning Gravity’s Rainbow to high school kids is even more ridiculous than assigning Moby Dick.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:13 pm
JRE, unless what you read was actually a heavily abridged Reader’s Digest version, this is highly unlikely. I imagine it would take something like 20 hours of dedicated reading for an average reader to get through Moby Dick.
Nope — it was the Norton Critical Edition, if memory serves correct. Perhaps “one sitting” was a bit of hyperbole; “one solid day of early in the morning until late, late at night reading” would be more accurate.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:14 pm
“I find I can generally get them to appreciate Shakespeare, even if they don’t enjoy the reading through the murder and sex and wordplay.”
Funny; in my high school a heavy emphasis on the sex and violence was how they generally sold kids on Shakespeare.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Rob, I agree that Gravity’s Rainbow, notwithstanding its slapstick, shouldn’t be on the syllabus for a high school English class, and was saying instead that it’s portrays national mythologies better than Moby-Dick, is all.
Are high schools assigning anything from the His Dark Materials trilogy? I’m a plodding reader, but I inhaled those books like air.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
“Is being able to appreciate and understand a great work of literature more important than being able to understand a great work of cinema or fine art? … [A]ll this art appreciation seems pretty far removed from the tools one needs to be a productive member of society.”
People say this all the time, and I don’t think they realize how little sense it makes. You don’t need to know algebra or geometry to be a productive member of society either. You certainly don’t need to know cell biology. To be a productive member of society just requires the skills everyone should have down by eighth grade: basic literacy, basic arithmetic, following instructions. Yet we require kids to learn about all kinds of superfluous subjects—advanced math and science, the history of the World Wars—anyway. Is it to make them better cocktail party conversationalists? No, it’s because a well-rounded education creates a better citizen, and because some of these kids will want to practice these subjects themselves, or teach them, and to do that they need to be able to learn them. The idea that learning how to understand and appreciate works of fiction and art is somehow not related to this is nonsense, and is just pure anti-intellectualism.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Longer than War and Peace, and not nearly as much fun.
Reading plays has always been an iffy one for me. Sure Shakespeare is good stuff, but just reading it is difficult since it wasn’t designed to be read, it was written to be performed and watched. There’s also the issue of having to translate some of the phrases and slang into modern equivalents.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Are high schools assigning anything from the His Dark Materials trilogy? I’m a plodding reader, but I inhaled those books like air.
I have a hard time seeing that playing in Kansas.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Literature has the same Malign effect on the American Mind as 24, Fox News and Organized Religion. In all cases, indoctrinating people into believing that a made-up narrative is Reality.
In the Iraq debate, The Republicans presented their Morality Play, the Democratic Leadership made a few token redlined corrections, and the News Media sent it to the Presses.
Several liberal arts wienies here have made the same argument: Literature teachs you how to Think. As pseudo said at 46:
“Somebody who’s been properly taught to appreciate literature ought to be well equipped to unpack the bullshit of political discourse, and also have a better-attuned sense of social dynamics on both a smaller and larger scale.”
But Reason does NOT remedy Ignorance. At least, not unless you have a very long time. Years. If we were flying on an airliner, would we want the Pilot to move aside and let a English Lit Major “reason” his way into landing the plane?
GIGO, as the computer wonks say. Garbage in – Garbage out. Reason is not sufficient. You need Knowledge of Facts that have been through a stringent peer review gauntlet.
Cheney’s Iraq Meme was ridiculous to anyone who consulted military sources like James Dunnigan. Who rated the US land combat power at 2,488 and Iraq’s at around 82
Our college graduates need Knowledge. Of the Important Things. Which they do not currently get. Because they waste time on Literature.
Which is why Republicans can convince 50 percent of the population that we are constantly under threat of being destroyed by “The Others” — even though our defense budget of roughly $1 Trillion almost equals the rest of the world combined.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Every American should read Moby Dick, it’s our great national epic and you can’t understand the country without it.
Without disagreeing with this, I’d say Huckleberry Finn is also in that category.
By the way, Matt, did you throw in the towel on Infinite Jest, or what?
September 1st, 2009 at 2:30 pm
If we were flying on an airliner, would we want the Pilot to move aside and let a English Lit Major “reason” his way into landing the plane?
No, but you wouldn’t want the aerospace engineer who designed the fuselage doing it either. What’s your point, other than to ride a stupid fucking hobby-horse and show your inability to self-edit?
September 1st, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Moby Dick is my favourite book and has been since i first read it at age 12. I adore the whale anatomy chapters. That being said, I’m not necessarily your normal american reader.
I think schools might get more mileage out of the classics if they combined the two ideas, ie: here’s a list of ‘classics’ – read any 3 that strike your fancy and compare xyz
September 1st, 2009 at 2:36 pm
“All that said, I love Moby Dick. Every American should read Moby Dick, it’s our great national epic and you can’t understand the country without it.”
The great thing about this nation is that it doesn’t have a national epic. Our country doesn’t make a lick of sense, and no one can understand it with or without Moby Dick.
However, if I had to pick one single dramatic work that captures the essence of America, I’d go with Glengarry Glen Ross. First prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:38 pm
we certainly saw the American People doing that during the Iraq pre-invasion debate, no?
Who’s this fucking we, kemo sabe?
You’re pretending that the Iraq war narrative was sold by a bunch of rhetoric majors to a bunch of rhetoric majors. While I’ll grant you the slender point that Ken Pollack managed to con a few people who should have known better, you can raid a library to see authors through the ages, in fiction and non-fiction, making the point that societies have a tendency to seek out a nice, neat unthinking war when the alternative is to ask tough questions of themselves about power.
So, again, what’s your point? Because if it’s that literature “indoctrinat[es] people into believing that a made-up narrative is Reality,” then tu fucking quoque, with a tinfoil hat on it.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:41 pm
@29: I was wondering when someone would mention Huckleberry Finn
and @36: I’d say, with 43, that Huck Finn is perfect for the great national epic. In fact, my understanding was always that it, contrary to Matt, was the great American story (perhaps story is distinct from epic here). More than that, I always heard that it was the first truly American story. I have not yet read Moby Dick, so I can’t compare, but I loved Huck Finn and I love Mark Twain (his essays more than his novels, though).
September 1st, 2009 at 2:41 pm
The first assigned class I had to read was Animal Farm. I loved the book and read it all the way quickly. Then, we were given a test to see if we read the first couple chapters that required knowledge of details. I had never read for details before — only enjoyment. I failed. At that point, I stopped reading books in school for enjoyment, and didn’t enjoy a classic until college. It isn’t just the choice of books that make reading boring in high school, but also the teaching approach to reading.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:42 pm
Re pseudo at 65: “No, but you wouldn’t want the aerospace engineer who designed the fuselage doing it either. What’s your point,”
———
Well, several:
1) The aerospace engineer builds something tangible, with tangible value.
2) So he doesn’t have to pretend that his craft is good for lots of other, unrelated things. He doesn’t have to pretend that studying aerospace engineering will show you how to grow healthy vegetables, for example. And that everyone should be required to study aerospace engineering.
3) A plane fucking flies or it doesn’t. It doesn’t meta-fly. Or worry about what the New York Review of Books thinks.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:44 pm
Literature has the same Malign effect on the American Mind as 24, Fox News and Organized Religion. In all cases, indoctrinating people into believing that a made-up narrative is Reality.
Don, if you really can’t tell the difference (a) between TV dramas, Fox News, and organized religion, and (b) between those and literature, and (c) between reality and a fictional narrative in a piece of literature, all that is not an indictment of literature so much as an indication that you might need to look into anti-psychotic medication.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
> 3) A plane fucking flies or it doesn’t.
> It doesn’t meta-fly. Or worry about what
> the New York Review of Books thinks.
I am sure you are familiar with the ongoing saga of the Boeing 787 project. To this manager at least quite of few of the problems Boeing has encountered have been due to managers and executives who are not good at thinking organizations and politics through deeply, and who are vulnerable to surface-level management guru fads. Some of that is due to lack of respect for traditional engineering, to be sure, but a lot of it is due to failure to the ecology and sociology of a complex organization, particularly when attempting to virtualize it.
Cranky
September 1st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
“He doesn’t have to pretend that studying aerospace engineering will show you how to grow healthy vegetables, for example. And that everyone should be required to study aerospace engineering.”
But—but—weren’t you arguing that we should be teaching kids tangible skills, rather than literature? And now you’re saying everyone shouldn’t study them?
Don, you are the least coherent person I’ve ever seen—and here you are arguing against teaching literature. It’s just too perfect.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Our college graduates need Knowledge. Of the Important Things. Which they do not currently get. Because they waste time on Literature.
WTF-worthy remarks about English majors landing planes aside (I’m sure plenty of English majors become pilots and hence land planes, and untrained bio and poli-sci majors couldn’t land the damn plane either), the real issue with your remarks is that you don’t, what’s the word, reason through, or quantify, the extent of this vast and devastating Waste Of Time. If your objective is for every citizen to know how to land planes and only how to land planes, then, sure, spending time on literary works is a waste. Most people don’t need to land planes, and spending time teaching them to do so would be… a waste, no?
And I just about guarantee that the overlap between people duped by Republican war drums and people who spend time reading Big Serious Literature is extremely narrow. If literature is just an exercise in lying and deception, shouldn’t literary types have been the biggest Iraq war boosters in the world?
I think it’s on you to prove how learning about literature leads to being captivated and baffled by bullshit. I think you (like my father, an impatient hard-science partisan) are foundering on the idea that studying literature is appreciating and admiring it, rather than thinking critically about it and taking it apart and figuring out how it works and what it’s trying to do.
Either that, or you’re just rehashing a millennia-old commonplace that fiction is a form of lying and hence doesn’t belong in the commonwealth.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Now here’s the problem: you’re telling me that you never had a class assign a book for you to read until you were 12-14 years old?
This is why the “choose your own book” reading workshops are necessary for a lot of middle school and high school students– because they are completely unprepared for handling “the classics”. If you don’t have much experience with books, you have to start somewhere. The middle school and high school teachers are playing the role that grammar school and parents typically play for better-educated students.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:48 pm
tomemos/60: “To be a productive member of society just requires the skills everyone should have down by eighth grade: basic literacy, basic arithmetic, following instructions. Yet we require kids to learn about all kinds of superfluous subjects—advanced math and science, the history of the World Wars—anyway.”
I agree to some extent, but I don’t think math and science are superfluous in the same way literature is. Not everyone needs to know calculus, but advanced math is a requirement in many fields. Our society needs engineers, actuaries, statisticians, etc. Our society needs doctors and scientists.
When I went to high school, I had only one semester of art history; one semester on music appreciation; no class on cinema. But, I had a literature class every semester.
There’s a clear reason why most schools spend a lot of time on literature and very little on fine art, performing art, and cinema: because advance reading comprehension and the ability to write coherently and persuasively is important. But, you don’t need to read Moby Dick to develop those skills.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Re hum at 72: “all that is not an indictment of literature so much as an indication that you might need to look into anti-psychotic medication.”
———–
Well, me and 80 percent of the American voters.
Which might put a strain on that Obama Healthcare Reform Plan.
Or should I say “that MYTHICAL Obama Healthcare Reform Plan”?
Or maybe “the Allegorical Obama Healthcare Reform Plan”?
Still going through a lot of rough drafts.
Rumor has it the networks may cancel it for this season.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:55 pm
“Not everyone needs to know calculus, but advanced math is a requirement in many fields. Our society needs engineers, actuaries, statisticians, etc. Our society needs doctors and scientists.”
Our society needs writers, artists, critics, and humanistic thinkers, too, if it’s to be a society rather than just a big factory.
I take your points about how non-literary art is neglected in high school, which is a shame—not enough hours in the day, especially when there are so many standardized tests to take. Honestly, I think that’s due to a practical consideration: in English you can also teach grammar and composition (which Our Society Needs!), and so kill two birds with one stone. Plus, English pairs up with History extremely well, and together those disciplines can really help with literacy of all kinds. Visual art and cinema teach visual literacy, which is useful but not as essential as verbal literacy.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:58 pm
advance reading comprehension and the ability to write coherently and persuasively is important. But, you don’t need to read Moby Dick to develop those skills.
That’s true. You need reading material of some kind, but it doesn’t have to be Great Works. But what happens is that it’s quite difficult to come to a consensus about what the reading material should be, what provides the best bang for the buck in terms of raising the level of comprehension, coherence, and persuasion. Great Works are a fallback position for making that determination. And in part that’s why people fight about curriculums and canons.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Or should I say “that MYTHICAL Obama Healthcare Reform Plan”?
Or maybe “the Allegorical Obama Healthcare Reform Plan”?
Yes, very droll. But exposure to dystopian fiction certainly helps make sense of what the Republicans are trying to make people imagine as a horrifying vision of the future.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Re tomemos at 74: “But—but—weren’t you arguing that we should be teaching kids tangible skills, rather than literature? And now you’re saying everyone shouldn’t study them?
Don, you are the least coherent person I’ve ever seen—and here you are arguing against teaching literature. It’s just too perfect.”
————-
1) I don’t recall saying that aerospace engineering should be a required course. Unlike Lit Majors who featherbed by arguing you really ain’t educated if you haven’t passed through their union shop.
2) I did list several subjects I thought would be useful in a real college curriculum –and of greater value than Literature.
But rather than attack what I proposed, tomemos constructed a strawman and attacked it.
Which is one of those dysfunctional reasoning patterns that Lit Majors seem to acquire like ticks. Because they are not subject to the discipline of reality. Hence a false claim is just as good as a true one.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I hope everyone has read Malcom Gladwwll on Atticus Finch. Such a great takedown, and since I do believe that everything he notices was intended by Harper Lee, I would no longer assign To Kill a Mockingbird at anything under college level. Lee’s intention was apparently the opposite of the common reading.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Re RPX @ 2: *All* books are best enjoyed without being shoved down your throat. I encountered many books in my adult years, and learned to love them, that I would hate to this day if I’d been forced to read them.
My earliest memories of school are of something that interfered with genuine learning, in the same way a job interferes with genuine productive work. All my life, I have been temperamentally disposed to view anything that an authority figure considered “good for me” to learn to be bullshit, and resist it with every fiber of my being. Whenever I see one of those PSAs that start out “Did you know…,” my immediate reaction is “No, by God–and I still don’t!” If the current crop of anti-drug PSAs had been around when I was in high school, I’d have wound up out-toking Tommy Chong. I can be persuaded by equals, but the merest whiff of authority brings out the Martin Luther in me.
Last May Hastings Books’ sign announced it carried Watership Down and the rest of the Summer required reading list for the local public schools. I first read that book when I was about 40, and loved it. Thank God the public schools didn’t have a chance to make me hate it, as I surely would have if it had been shoved down my throat.
The public school system is designed to teach kids to view the only important tasks in life as those assigned by an authority figure behind a desk, and to view any self-chosen and self-directed interest as a mere “hobby.” In the process, it teaches kids to absolutely hate learning as something imposed on them by others.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:13 pm
It doesn’t meta-fly.
Ah, you’re going with the standard quarter-digested “bad critical theory” approach to EngLit, which means that you’re just pissing in the vague direction of something you don’t actually understand. Thanks for making it clear that you’re whacking away at a strawman entirely of your own creation. Since this thread isn’t about you, we can now ignore you.
(But for what it’s fucking worth, one of the most detailed early post-mortems of the rhetorical con-trick over Iraq? That would be courtesy of Michael Massing at the NYRB.)
September 1st, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Re Kevin at 84: “The public school system is designed to teach kids to view the only important tasks in life as those assigned by an authority figure behind a desk, and to view any self-chosen and self-directed interest as a mere “hobby.” In the process, it teaches kids to absolutely hate learning as something imposed on them by others.”
—————–
1) I concur. I have several works of literature on my bookshelves –but I would never argue that someone should have to read them.
It is hard to see Society being justified in requiring citizens to learn anything more than readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic. Plus a coverage of what the laws are, some half-hearted justification re why the laws are what they are, and an explanation of how to change the laws.
2)In my opinion, use of Literature hurts more than it helps in English composition. We need people to have the ability to write clear, simple, easily-comprehended text.
Does anyone think that the vast bulk of writing done by US citizens — news, political, military reports, intel reports, business reports,engineering specifications, medical reports — should be done in the manner of James Joyce, Doestovesky, or Herman Melville?
If someone wants to write as a profession, then let them take a trade school course in Literature. Although Tom Clancy managed to succeed without the training and some might argue that English Lit as a discipline is taking a vow of poverty.
You know many different ways of saying something — but have nothing to say.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
The public school system is designed to teach kids to view the only important tasks in life as those assigned by an authority figure behind a desk, and to view any self-chosen and self-directed interest as a mere “hobby.”
I’m sorry you had a bad experience, but this is way too reductive. Many people have a great time in public school English classes, learning critical thinking, discussion, and, yes, enjoying the text.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Too bad for me that I hate Moby Dick. I’ve tried three times and never get much past leaving nantucket in chapter eleventy millon of nothing happening.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I have several works of literature on my bookshelves
*snrk*
If someone wants to write as a profession, then let them take a trade school course in Literature.
*srnf*
Although Tom Clancy managed to succeed without the training
*spfffhahaHAHAHAHAHA!*
September 1st, 2009 at 3:33 pm
Re pseudo at 85: “But for what it’s fucking worth, one of the most detailed early post-mortems of the rhetorical con-trick over Iraq? That would be courtesy of Michael Massing at the NYRB.”
Such an INTERESTING word: “Post-Mortem” . AFTER the deaths, I believe it means.
Why didn’t English Lit ever creat the word “PRE-Mortem”? Before the Death. Reasoning to avoid the deaths in the first place.
Sure would have been nice if some of those English Lit majors at the New York Times had discussed that concept with Judith Miller, no?
September 1st, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I wouldn’t even know where to begin with this thread. I too teach English lit, but in a private school. Of course you don’t get the same thing out of a book when you’re 17 that you will later. Cynthia Ozick says that all reading is really the re-reading, and one of the things I hate about growing older is that I won’t have time to re-read all the books I loved. Huck Finn is probably the most quintessentially American novel (Hemingway said that all American lit comes from one book, and that book is HF). As for comparing HF and MD, why should you have to? The critic, Stanley Crouch, says that once a book has crossed the line from good into great, there’s no point in comparing them; they’re just great. And since I seem to be quoting my betters here, I’ll add that John Updike said, “A writer is a reader moved to emulation.” People really can’t write well these days, and that’s in part because they don’t read. You can’t quantify what reading does for you, but it certainly can make a difference in the quality of your life. A world without art and literature would not be a world I’d want to live in. There’s so much more I could say, but I’m on my way to a Music History class (another one of the arts that elevates us). When my son was in 4th grade, he wore a t-shirt that we got from the museum that said ART SAVES LIVES, and a fellow student asked him, “Who’s Art?” ARRRGGHHHH!
September 1st, 2009 at 3:41 pm
In place of Moby Dick I would recommend Clayton Christensen’s
“The Innovator’s Dilemma”. Plus Michael Porter’s “Competitive Strategy”
I do actually think that’s pretty much all we need to highlight when arguing with Don Williams. He hasn’t even gotten to the level of Deidre McCloskey on how economists heavily rely upon rhetoric. Much less gotten to somebody like Donald MacKenzie or Albert Hirschman.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Our college graduates need Knowledge. Of the Important Things. Which they do not currently get. Because they waste time on Literature.
No, Don, having just graduated from the University of Chicago – which is supposed to be one of the top five nerd schools on the planet – I can tell you that this statement is dead wrong.
Many, if not most, of my peers lack Knowledge not because they waste time on Literature, but, rather, because they seem be interested in nothing.
I think that this, my generation’s general lack of curiosity, is the real problem. It would be one thing to say that my generation is uninterested in mathematics or engineering; but I found that, even in liberal arts classes, most of my native-born classmates were incapable of critical thought.
Although I have no idea where to gather the evidence to support this assertion, I feel that my generation represents the product of the militant anti-intellectualism that, while always extant in American public life, has pervaded our national discourse since probably Reagan.
I might not comment as regularly as you, but I would hope that, at least last night in the “Death Star” thread, you recognize that *I* do try to expand my Knowledge, especially concerning military history, wherever I can; however, what I have found – and please recall that this is limited to my own experience – is that, outside of a number of close friends, my peer group is either unwilling or incapable of discussing anything of value.
For a long time, I thought this was a natural byproduct of my early exposure to, say, military or economic history or political theory or economy or, yes, literature. But increasingly I notice that the epithets used by my “friends” to describe me – cynical and negative – are used by adults who *have* been exposed, or at least *should* have been, to the world.
Frankly, Don, I would kill to discuss literature or film or politics or warfare, and that is why I usually spend part of my day at this site. Outside of this admittedly uneven forum, I find the only consistent source of stimulating conversation to be with my favorite professor, my former boss, and a few family friends, all of whom are well over 60, and several over 80.
Meanwhile, I am constantly frustrated when my friends tell me not to talk about “serious” things, by which they generally mean boring. I attempt, then, to steer the discussion towards something they *like*. Invariably, that something is almost never scientific or mathematical – or even historical or literate.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Tomemos at 89: “Although Tom Clancy managed to succeed without the training
*spfffhahaHAHAHAHAHA!*”
—————
Er.. by succeed I meant actually convincing people that they should pay money for his work. I realize that is probably a foreign concept –or maybe Holy Grail? — for most English Lit majors.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:48 pm
@83: Interesting take on To Kill a Mockingbird from Gladwell. I long ago took a dim view of that book because I believe it essentially pits “po’ white trash” against blacks, with the white elite sitting by stroking their chins. It would be nice for middle and upper class whites to think that all of our race problems stem from the racism of the poorest and most ignorant whites because that let’s everyone else off the hook.
That same trope (those dirty redneck racists) is used fairly often in literature (for example, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and also in many lesser works) and is also a convenient political shorthand for a certain type of intellectually lazy liberal.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:55 pm
I’m sorry — I’ve yanked you guys’ chains enough.
I think Literature has great value and elective courses in its study should be offered in colleges. I just don’t think it should be required study for anyone other than a major. I think it is one of those things that should sell itself to the student. And if it doesn’t at that point in time — then the student should go on to other subjects.
And while the teacher has to be a guide, I think the students should be consulted on what books they choose to read –which ones are most likely to resonate with that student at that point in his life.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:55 pm
What tomemos said, Don. You’ve proved yourself not worth the efforton this. Go and read some more Tom Clancy, then come back and whine about how Macbeth has no value because it’s not even an accurate account of medieval Scottish monarchy.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Moby Dick is a great book. Yes, yes, yes.
It strikes me as funny, though, that few or none of the Chinese engineers who made the motherboards you’re using nor any of the Indian engineers who programmed them ever read Moby Dick.
Which makes me think of two things. One, if you want to increase the appeal of English literature, promote writers from the developing world. I doubt that Joyce Carol Oates is a hit in India.
Two, a lot of comments here imply that you don’t open yourself to ideas that change the world if you don’t read and learn to think critically.
I think that overestimates the importance of critical thinking in daily life. Not everyone gets to be in a position of power because they can weigh arguments. And not everyone who gets to be in a position of power wants to weigh arguments critically. See Palin, Sarah.
Also, people who aren’t English majors aren’t uncritical automatons. Go design something (anything — a motherboard, maybe), build it, and make it work. It isn’t as easy as it looks.
Furthermore, people aren’t as moved by books as they are by technology. How many people read Walden and actually moved out into the woods? Hell, even Walden is within walking distance of Concord town center. Thoreau went there to get groceries. When Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth, did people walk to the movie theaters? As they say, resistance is futile.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:58 pm
Re Don at 78:
Well, me and 80 percent of the American voters.
So you’re basically conflating Fox-News-type partisan spin and distortion with what literature does. You don’t see any functional difference between literature and propaganda intended to get the populace to swallow lies, and you think reading literature actually has that effect.
Then again, your idea of literature is apparently Tom Clancy, so maybe you have a point.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I long ago took a dim view of that book because I believe it essentially pits “po’ white trash” against blacks, with the white elite sitting by stroking their chins
Um, Rob, you realize that is exactly how the South was able to put a million men in arms, when the vast majority of Southern whites were impoverished and slaveless?
To quote Calhoun, “With us, the two great divisions of society are not between rich and poor, but white and black”
One of the big reasons Reconstruction *did* work for a decade was that the Radical Republicans were able to convince those same poor whites that they could benefit as much, or more, than freedmen.
If anything, TKM was great because it depicted a realistic understanding of how racism worked in the South: as a powerful tool of social control. And the character of Atticus is so powerful precisely because, and Gregory Peck does a fantastic job of conveying this in the movie, he recognized how fucked up this artificial conflict really was.
My bigger problem with the book is that Harper Lee might not have written it.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Re pseudo at 97: “Go and read some more Tom Clancy, then come back and whine about how Macbeth has no value ”
————
Er.. I actually talked my local theater into putting on some Shakespearean plays –including MacBeth. I argued that –like Tom Clancy — they needed some bodies on the stage when the curtain came down.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Local Audiences loved the idea, by the way. Were getting tired of the modern artists who had actors sitting around pulling their pud and complaining of their petty personal problems.
Troupe now usually puts on one Shakespearean play a year.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Er.. I actually talked my local theater into putting on some Shakespearean plays –including MacBeth. I argued that –like Tom Clancy — they needed some bodies on the stage when the curtain came down.
Heh, well, let’s be honest, if Shakespeare were around today, at best he would be Spielberg, and he’d probably be a Bruckenheimer or a Cameron; massive epics with huge body counts.
Although I don’t know where the transvestism that’s in every third play would come in.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Shakespeare was a success because, like Tom Clancy, he focused on the Important Things. War. Politics. Statecraft. Treason.
Compare and Contrast.
As opposed to those who think Great Art is sitting around masturbating about the petty details of life.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
pseudonymous in NC:
(But for what it’s fucking worth, one of the most detailed early post-mortems of the rhetorical con-trick over Iraq? That would be courtesy of Michael Massing at the NYRB.)
Massing:
The view “among even some senior intelligence analysts” at the CIA, they wrote, “is that Mr. Hussein is contained and is unlikely to unleash weapons of mass destruction unless he is attacked.”
In other words, he’s not that bad. If you nothing about Saddam this piece of shit article would not inform you at all.
Fuck the CIA and the horse they rode in on. So George “Slam Dunk” Tenet wasn’t reflecting the views of “senior intelligence analysts”? Well, heckuva job there.
I am so glad Obama pulled the CIA from interrogating/torturing terrorist suspects at black sites and gave the job to the FBI. The CIA should be disbanded.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Now here’s the problem: you’re telling me that you never had a class assign a book for you to read until you were 12-14 years old?
I’m sure I was assigned books before them, but never a classic and never for purposes of dissection. We just read for fun before then. I hope I am not an example of the problems of not assigning books earlier. I turned out okay.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:20 pm
It’s kind of cute the way you are still pimping for the Summer of War in 2009. Says way more about your inability to ever recognize when you are a moron than it does about the great Iraq Attaq, but continue it amuses me.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Um, Rob, you realize that is exactly how the South was able to put a million men in arms, when the vast majority of Southern whites were impoverished and slaveless?
Well, yeah. That’s precisely my point. The elite of the south (really the nation at large) played that “let’s you and him fight” game forever basically. I don’t see TKM as decrying that situation. I see it as ignorant of it. The only real racists in town are the po’ white trash. The elites are all above that sort of thing.
@Gmorbgmibgnikgnok
Actually, I’ve been working as a computer programmer for the past 10 years and I have an MA in creative writing. All of the best programmers I know are either English majors or majored in other similarly non-concrete fields.
The two most important skills in computer programming are communication and creative problem solving. I would imagine the same holds true in other engineering fields. I would not assume that the Indian and Chinese engineers who design computers and motherboards are unfamiliar with English literature, or with the literature produced in their own language.
Personally, I would hire an English major over a CS major for a programming job any day, all else being equal. Not everyone agrees with this, but there is tremendous merit in studying the world outside of a rigid vocational field. There is really no disputing that.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I did like Donna Tartt’s “The Secret History” and its depiction of academia. But that is more of a secret vice. Probably not suitable for undergraduates, poor dears.
heh heh heh
September 1st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
I think that is very true. When we read it enhances or abilities to interpret so many valuable things but not just interpretation but unlocking unsolvable equations, mysteries, and problems that have stymied us. When a child has that enhancement he or she can truley see their worth and potential as well as mazimize it and that is what books are for, maximizing potential.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:36 pm
They reissued the 1956 movie after Jaws came out. It is indeed referring to Jaws.
http://mikedurrett.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_mikedurrett_archive.html
September 1st, 2009 at 4:37 pm
“”liberal arts majors think bullshit equals Reality and that numerical evidence is just too hard to deal with.”
[Don Williams]
–is just some fucking top-grade bullshit from a man in love with his own textual effusions. Somebody who’s been properly taught to appreciate literature ought to be well equipped to unpack the bullshit of political discourse, and also have a better-attuned sense of social dynamics on both a smaller and larger scale.”
[DTM]
Well, let’s make a distinction, here. To the extent the liberal arts major is studying literature–yes, that hones the mind in a way consistent with the skills DTM describes. To the extent that they are immersed in theory, then you may wind up with the bullshit Don describes.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:42 pm
I think it’s a worthy goal to have Americans read some of the great American novels; mutatis mutandis for Swedes and the English or Scots. There is a perhaps sometimes-inconsistent goal, and that is to get students to love reading. Melville is a horrible writer stylistically, though I know he can be taught in a way doesn’t turn off high school seniors (at least some of them). Mark Twain, on the other hand, is very readable and should be read by every American.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:47 pm
@pronk
“Is being able to appreciate and understand a great work of literature more important than being able to understand a great work of cinema or fine art? Being able to intelligently discuss Moby Dick, Citizen Kane, and Starry Night increases your ability to converse at certain cocktail parties, and probably makes you a more well-rounded person in some way. But all this art appreciation seems pretty far removed from the tools one needs to be a productive member of society.”
Maybe it’s not very instrumentally valuable. (I suspect you underestimate common knowledge of literature might tie together people in a nation, but OK.) But it is intrinsically valuable, I think. The sort of thought that goes into reading good literature is a human good *per se*, part of what it is to flourish for a human being.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I don’t see TKM as decrying that situation. I see it as ignorant of it. The only real racists in town are the po’ white trash. The elites are all above that sort of thing.
I guess that’s why I like Atticus, because he *does* understand the whole lie about them being “above it;” although, he’s clearly not part of the town’s elite. As remarks pointedly to Scout, they’re poor.
But then, I’m sure that if Atticus existed in real life, he’d have been run out of town on a rail – or lynched – for being communist or Jewish or something when he tries to prevents the lynching.
With, of course, the silent support of the elite.
Who would all be KKK, since you couldn’t *not* be and be part of the Southern leadership at the time.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Personally, I would hire an English major over a CS major for a programming job any day, all else being equal.
So… you hiring?
September 1st, 2009 at 4:58 pm
RE FlipYrWhig at 75: “Either that, or you’re just rehashing a millennia-old commonplace that fiction is a form of lying and hence doesn’t belong in the commonwealth.”
————–
Er..what I am arguing is that the education of the Citizens of a Commonwealth should provide them with the basic Knowledge that they Need to distinguish Fiction from Reality.
If you are Ignorant of important facts, it does not matter how well you reason in a technical sense (avoiding logical fallacies,etc). You will still fail until you research and acquire the information you need.
Given that Judith Miller received the 2002 PULITZER Prize for Explanatory Reporting , I’m not holding my breath.
I acknowledge the value of Literature as a private pursuit — but in terms of priorities for core courses , I think it should be pretty low down on the list.
Won’t happen, of course. If anything, Literature’s place in the Canon will Rise not fall.
Because the creation of Convincing, False Narratives –whether on Wall Street, Capitol Hill or Silicon Valley — is one of the few Growth Industries that America has left.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:59 pm
@Greg
…
“Frankly, Don, I would kill to discuss literature or film or politics or warfare, and that is why I usually spend part of my day at this site. Outside of this admittedly uneven forum, I find the only consistent source of stimulating conversation to be with my favorite professor, my former boss, and a few family friends, all of whom are well over 60, and several over 80.”
I hope you stay around, Greg. Good post.
September 1st, 2009 at 4:59 pm
And in the News Media also. Can’t leave them out.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:05 pm
It’s kind of cute the way you are still pimping for the Summer of War in 2009. Says way more about your inability to ever recognize when you are a moron than it does about the great Iraq Attaq, but continue it amuses me.
So George Tenet didn’t tell Bush finding WMDs was a “slam dunk.”
Massing:
The view “among even some senior intelligence analysts” at the CIA, they wrote, “is that Mr. Hussein is contained and is unlikely to unleash weapons of mass destruction unless he is attacked.”
Seeing as I was an English major, let me see if I can dust off my reading skills and unpack this sentence. The first think is to note the importance of the word “some” in the first sentence, as in “some senior intelligence analysts.” Not all of them agreed, which isn’t surpring since they had no info on Iraq and Saddam was bluffing mightily. Also note that “they” believe Mr. Hussein will unleash WMDS, but only if he is attacked. This makes one think he would have to have WMDs in order to unleash them. If attacked. Because he’s not that bad a guy.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:09 pm
If anything, Literature’s place in the Canon will Rise not fall.
Because the creation of Convincing, False Narratives –whether on Wall Street, Capitol Hill or Silicon Valley — is one of the few Growth Industries that America has left.
So this part isn’t you “yanking our chain”? You actually believe literature is about fooling people into believing that its fictional narratives aren’t fictional?
In the real world (not Don Williams’s “Reality”), the study of literature helps you see through sham narratives put forth by those in power.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:13 pm
Might give a thought to Wharton
Heavens, no!
Reading ‘House of Mirth’ as a Sophomore was almost as big a disaster as ‘Hundred Years of Solitude’.
I hope everyone has read Malcom Gladwwll on Atticus Finch.
This is a joke, right? That piece was awful.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:14 pm
@Rob Mac
OK, I’ll take your word for it that English majors are good programmers. Most of the good ones I know are physics majors. As far as CS majors go, it depends. I know a few from MIT. One is amazing. One is the worst programmer on earth. One uses his “communication” skills to bamboozle VC’s out of their money. And one lives in a van full of marijuana.
As far as Indian and Chinese engineers, I hope you didn’t misunderstand me to think that they don’t read anything, whether in English or their own languages. What I meant was that they do not read books central to the American experience and yet lead productive, happy lives. In fact, they may read quite a bit of English literature — by Indian or Chinese authors.
If any of that literature happens to speak to 1/3 of the world, perhaps it’s worth a little of our time, too. See, I’m an ethnic type who couldn’t get into “Wuthering Heights” because I honestly couldn’t give a rat’s ass about any of the characters. Very shallow of me, yes. I’m a terrible person. But English class continually dragged me to 18th/19th century England and America, and after a while it began to feel like indoctrination.
If the ivory tower wants a wider audience, it’ll have to cast its net farther to find great books.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Re hum at 121: “You actually believe literature is about fooling people into believing that its fictional narratives aren’t fictional?
In the real world (not Don Williams’s “Reality”), the study of literature helps you see through sham narratives put forth by those in power.”
————–
So how is that working out?
You virgins sound like psychologist Dr Martin Seligman — who had the fucking CIA to his house right after 911 but then was shocked when it was later revealed that the CIA was applying his theory of learned helplessness to breaking Al Qaeda prisoners.
Who else is hiring English Lit majors?
For non-sexual services, I mean.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:20 pm
I think that teaching literature before college is a huge waste of everyone’s time. There is so much that is well written and worth reading that is not part of the literary canon, yet is left out of almost every curriculum. I managed to avoid reading almost any literature until I reached college, and it was a blessing; the little that I was forced to read nearly ruined me for reading Shakespeare later on.
Well-intentioned high school English teachers shoving “great literature” down the gullets of children who, if they are lucky, will be able to make sense of a newspaper by the time the graduate (provided there are any newspapers left) have done more damage than good. Why is it that no public schools teach history using classic well-written texts, when history has always been a form of literature (a form that predates the novel by centuries)? Instead, students are force-fed history written by committees beholden to wingnuts on both left and right working overtime to influence education in TX, CA, and NY! Then they are force-fed Dickens, Beowulf, etc., all irrelevant, and much of it just plain bad.
My daughter read Moby Dick in her English class and loved it, so I started reading it again. She thought that the book contained a strong homo-erotic theme, which utterly escaped me, given what I know about daily life in 19th century America. She remained convinced.
I didn’t finish reading Moby Dick, and have no regrets. Not all “great” books are great for all readers. The consolations of literature are not for everyone. And fiction, say what you will, is not high literary art that everyone must learn to love, any more than everyone must learn to love opera.
Come to think of it, why don’t we force all high school students to read music? Then we can ruin music for them, too!
September 1st, 2009 at 5:22 pm
“You actually believe literature is about fooling people into believing that its fictional narratives aren’t fictional?”
Still, isn’t it charming that Don is still grappling with Plato’s criticism of poetry?
September 1st, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Well, Don, let’s leave aside your vague ranting about Fox News and the American Sheeple, and your apparent total conflation of psychology and English literature as areas of study.
Just please answer these questions for me: (1) Do you believe that the intent of literature is to fool people into thinking its stories depict events that actually happened in the real world? (2) Do you think reading literature has that effect on its readers: for example, that they would tend to believe that Ahab really existed, and the events described in Moby-Dick really happened?
September 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
“Come to think of it, why don’t we force all high school students to read music? Then we can ruin music for them, too!”
I think they are; at least junior high kids in Illinois in the 70-80s were. I’m very grateful for that. I’m also grateful for my K-8 general musical education. I learned a ton there.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:39 pm
As opposed to those who think Great Art is sitting around masturbating about the petty details of life.
That would be you, Don, based on this thread. You really haven’t quite worked out the difference between fiction and reality in your characterization of Eng Lit. Apparently, in Don’s World, the failure of the 2002 MLA Convention to derail the Iraq debacle with a pointed panel discussion makes the discipline culpable.
Oh, and Poptarts? Ahmed Chalabi needs his cock sucked, so get to work doing what you’re best at, instead of trying to out-Don Don in making this thread all about you.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Still, isn’t it charming that Don is still grappling with Plato’s criticism of poetry?
It’s more like Father Ted explaining perspective to Father Dougal.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I had a great high school teacher for an elective literature class. We read the Scarlet Letter and some classics, but I don’t remember much about them. The books that really made their mark on me were As I Lay Dying (Faulkner), Slaughterhouse 5 (Vonnegut), Crime and Punishment. We also read The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, The End of the Road, The Hobbit, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Right Stuff (I think. That could have been a college class.) We were assigned a book a week, and a recommended reading list. Anyone who liked to read would have found a genre that interested them.
Too bad we don’t have an underline option, I’m too lazy to put in all those quotation marks right now.
I’ve heard University students complain about reading 40 pages over the weekend. It’s not just that there is an aversion to reading literature, there is an aversion to reading at all. When I go back to the university in January, if I want to have a discussion about anything beyond class material that will result in a grade, I’ll have to meet up with old-timers. Apparently they think that being young makes them cutting edge, and they don’t need to pursue anything independently to be tops in their fields. These kids don’t seem to know how to converse either, but they sure do talk a lot. If advancing in their field requires nuanced communication skills, they might want to start working on that now.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Re hum at 127:
“Just please answer these questions for me: (1) Do you believe that the intent of literature is to fool people into thinking its stories depict events that actually happened in the real world? (2) Do you think reading literature has that effect on its readers: for example, that they would tend to believe that Ahab really existed, and the events described in Moby-Dick really happened?”
—————
1) I think that any author asks the reader to “suspend disbelief” and accept that the world he has created is real. Just like television. Why else would the reader want to read the story and have any interest in the characters?
Authors do not mislead readers into thinking that their fiction is real in the sense that con artists and politicans do.
But the techniques of literature can obviously be applied for malign results. What else does a con artist –and I’m using the term broadly — do but create a plausible story? A script for a play. With compelling emotional appeals? E.g,
“The Islamofascists hate you because you are Christian”
How many readers read literature with the same critical analysis that they bring to reading a stock prospectus? A bill for services? A contract or engineering specification at work?
Like watching television or driving on an interstate, reading literature induces a suggestive state that hypnotists recognize and love.
2) Re literature’s effect on people, it depends upon what you mean by “literature”. Most voters do not read that much of what you would probably consider “literature”.
But if by “literature” you mean our Dominant cultural forms — then sure. I think the vast majority of Republican voters have a mental view of Islamic insurgents that was spoon fed into their brains by Fox’s 24.
NOT upon what actual workers in the intelligence field –like CIA officer Michael Scheuer have reported.
NOT upon the facts. But upon the Fiction created by 24’s producer. Buttressed by the fiction created by Fox News.
Even today, the American population is separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans. Relatively few travel abroad to any extent and Everything we know about “foreigners” we learned on TV.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Or in the Movies.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Moby Dick was the best reading experience I’ve ever had. I was mid-college, had a great teacher, a small, interested class, and it was almost all I was doing for a few weeks. I liked every part of it, but I’m not sure I would have liked it as much without the teacher and class discussion. I pick up Moby Dick every 10 years or so to rethink ideas or relive old memories.
But I don’t think Moby Dick, or any single book, is critical. None of us can experience every notable thing. And what clicks for me may not for you. The secret of literature is that, under the right circumstances, magic can happen. It can expand your mind by connection with another great mind. And teach universals of experience. We are fortunate to live in a world with enough great literature to go around.
The secret of teaching is to get the magic click to happen to students. Or to get them on the road to self-discovery. There are no perfect strategies, but there are good ones.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Moby-Dick is AWESOME. I tried to read it at age 8 (precocious child) and failed. Tried again at 12 and got about halfway. Finally read it in my 40s, after many years in the Navy Reserve. Maybe it helps to be a sailor, and a writer, but I think it’s hilarious, and worth reading sentence by sentence. Melville is a genius.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:06 pm
I was thinking of Faulkner’s characters a few nights ago. One of the good things about everyone having television no matter how poor, is that there may not be many people that ignorant of the world left in the U.S. TV culture is better than no culture.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Don,
Thank you for answering my questions.
But the techniques of literature can obviously be applied for malign results. What else does a con artist –and I’m using the term broadly — do but create a plausible story?
I’d comment that the study of literature helps give you the tools to see through that. I’m talking about really reading and thinking about real literature, not escapist beach reading or watching 24 while knocking back a six-pack.
I’m suggesting that the relative rarity among the populace of such actual engagement with literature is part of the reason why so many of the sheeple fall for the con. Literature in that sense — the original sense of the post — is part of the solution, not part of the problem.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:24 pm
For example, if you want to see how English majors brainwash the American public — look at the career of Princeton English major Howard Gordon. Scriptwriter and now executive producer of Fox’s 24. Mr Gordon probably had much to do with convincing a large portion of the American public that having the US Government torture human beings –and I’m talking about AGONY — is a Good Thing.
Note that Mr Gordon’s did not spend much time inquiring into the events that MOTIVATE Al Qaeda — because when you write Fiction you can IGNORE inconvenient aspects of Reality. That is what Literature Majors DO.
Maybe Hum would like to check with Princeton and see if they taped Mr Gordon’s recent Speech at Princeton. Titled
“Content and Discontent: The Impact of Popular Culture on Public Policy”
See http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S24/26/75A05/index.xml
September 1st, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Instead of Plato, why don’t we check in with Aeschylus? Specifically, his play “The Persians”.
The Persians vs 24: Compare and Contrast.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Don,
I don’t doubt plenty have gone over to the dark side. But there’s an obvious difference between deliberate manipulation of narrative techniques for purposes of persuasion, based on an understanding of how narrative/literature works, and getting manipulated by those techniques because you’ve never thought about how they work.
“That is what Literature Majors DO” is just desk-pounding.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
” Did Howard Gordon choose to betray the values of Western Civilization –and get filthy rich thereby — because he was an English Major or because he was a Princetonian?
Discuss. “
September 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
122:”Malcolm Gladwwll on Atticus Finch.
This is a joke, right? That piece was awful.”
Googling, it appears to have generated some controversy.
Gladwell’s piece may have some minor flaws, but it does have its iconoclasm and the advantage of turning bourgeois liberals apoplectic.
And from my understanding of Harper Lee in NYC in the 60s, Atticus Finch as racist accomodationist makes much more sense than AF as liberal hero. She was telling us that another century of working gently on “hearts and minds” with kindness and magnanimity was not gonna work. The South had no decent effective liberals. Time to call in the FBI and National Guard.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Peyton Place helped my understanding of America.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Re: Peyton Place helped my understanding of America.
Good book, that.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
If the ivory tower wants a wider audience, it’ll have to cast its net farther to find great books.
The expansion of the canon was very much in progress when I was in grad school nearly 20 years ago.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Television uses the repetition of images to do most of its dirty work.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:07 pm
A little history might help. How many thousand Southern “liberals” did the blacks recruit for “Freedom Summer” in Mississippi? Why exactly did they have to go to Oberlin and the Five Corners to reruit volunteers for the voting registration?
After Brown vs Board and 1955-65 it wasn’t just the National Review, but almost every Southern liberal begged that the South be allowed to solve its “special problem” in its own way, at its own pace. That is the context that To Kill a Mockingbird was written.
Atticus Finch is a self-aggrandizing useless piece of shit, who tells Scout not even to hate Hitler while Tom Robinson is being killed.
It is a very great book, one that should shame Obama’s own attempts at accomodation.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:15 pm
“She thought that the book contained a strong homo-erotic theme, which utterly escaped me, given what I know about daily life in 19th century America.”
Right, because if there wasn’t a Castro Street then there certainly could have been homoeroticism, especially not in literature. Have you ever heard of Walt Whitman, you boob?
All of the “don’t teach literature!” clowns are collectively providing the best argument for why we should make sure to do so.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Don’s first argument was that English majors were too clueless to see the crimes of the Republicans as they were happening. Now his argument seems to be that teaching people language skills allows them to misuse them and commit Republican crimes. You’ll find something that sticks eventually, Don.
It seems like the simplest thing would just be to ban the written word altogether. We’ll count on our memories like good honest folk!
September 1st, 2009 at 7:43 pm
@Rob Mac
At my school you can take an English major and read no English in the process. In its place you read graphic novels and lots of gay Cuban writers and the like.
My school is not alone.
September 1st, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Moby Dick was my favorite book in college. I’m such a nerd that I even enjoyed all the history-of-whaling chapters!
September 1st, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Re Steve at 17: “I think Don needs laid.”
Hmmm. Did you pick up that grammar template from Moby Dick?
Don, I doubt you got the string of F-bomb in your post (…er, more like rant) from something the caliber of Moby Dick, so you’re one to speak.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
RE tomemos at 149: “Don’s first argument was …”
———–
No contradiction, tomemos. Let me introduce to a little something we engineers use to cut through Literature’s bullshit: The Venn Diagram.
Using that we see that English Majors can be ignorant fools OR they can be villains.
Not that the OR is not an Exclusive Or (XOR).
I.e, some people can be both.
On the well known rule that if you can’t do something useful then you have to make your living doing something corrupt. Political speechwriting. Advertising copy,etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XOR#Truth_table
September 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I have no idea why anyone even reads Don Williams’ comments, much less replies to them.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Ok, that’s about two years after they lost my interest. After that, it’s been electrons and photons for me.
Actually, I’ve been in start-ups that resembled the Pequod — mercenary engineers and an insane CEO on a doomed quest. One of the companies I worked at hired 200 engineers and burned through $197 million with nary a sale. If I could write, I would write about that.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:35 pm
a little something we engineers use
Ah. Engineers. Using another Venn Diagram, it appears that they can either be Steven Den Beste or Don Williams, but never both. And the intersection with Real Life is the null set.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:58 pm
[...] – Drum, Yglesias and Kevin Carey all have good stuff. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Books from the [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 9:35 pm
I loved Moby Dick. At one point in my teens and 20s, I read it every other year, but I could see where someone would balk at it. To an adult, I’d recommend anything from Melville except Pierre or Mardi. A teenager could start out with Billy Budd and find Melville’s moral seriousness in a form a young reader could get his mind around.
I wonder about the reading habits of some of our commenters. Has X read Dreiser’s Frank Cowperwood novels? Apparently he’s under the impression that artists don’t understand power.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:00 am
Oh, an engineer. Well, that makes things different. My dad the physicist had pure contempt for engineers, to the point where he found the laudatory use of the phrase “rocket science” to be an affront to real knowledge. “Rocket scientists are engineers,” he said once. “Most of THEM still believe in God.”
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 am
He sounds like a pompous and a bitter old dick. Sucks to be you.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:33 am
[...] I suspect that there are a few bright thoughts about books in the 160 comments to a post by Moby-Dick enthusiast Matthew Yglesias. But, because the very first line of the very first comment is “Fuck Moby [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
I’m just completing a Ph.D. in philosophy. In 20 plus years of schooling by far the most rewarding thing I have ever done is read Moby Dick. The first day of class we worked through only the first sentence. The second day the second sentence. The third day we finished the first paragraph. The whole book is endlessly engaging. My professor at the time got cancer, and canceled his other class, but kept ours because he said that he was very curious to see how his reading of Moby Dick would change given his illness. And he remained profoundly moved by the work, even though he had taught it for over 30 years. Here here.
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
[...] about Moby Dick yesterday, I said “Every American should read Moby Dick, it’s our great national epic and you can’t [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Greetings to one and all:
Well, I’ve looked over what has been said about writing books. I didn’t read all that has been said, but a good much of what was said.
I too, am a writer. I’m a full time writer and an ordainded minister as well.
With that having been said: most will know that all of my books will contain much about Christanity. If this would be your guess you would be right on.
Even so, all three of my books are Christian adventure stories. My first book which is named: Reviving the dead church by remeniscing the day of Pentecost. The second one, of which I will also leave a link: Beyond the Golden Sunset and by the Crystal Sea. My third book which is awaiting my getting around to putting the finishing touches on the final editing is named: Off to visit the Prophet Elijah. Then, my fourth book is still within the beginning stage. Have a great day and will chat with you again hopfully.
Warm Regards
william Dunigan
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/BeyondTheGoldenSunsetAndByTheCrystalSea.html
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I read that Barack Obama’s favorite novel is Moby Dick. No wonder he saw through the neocon hallucinations on the Iraq invasion.
September 3rd, 2009 at 10:03 pm
[...] this page was mentioned by Sara Mead (@saramead), Literacy San Antonio (@literacysa), Ryan Cordell (@ryancordell), mattyglesias (@mattyglesias), Matt Yglesias RSS (@yglesias_rss) and others. [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 8:12 am
[...] prof Diane Ravitch suggests this sort of program means no kid will ever choose to read Moby Dick, Matthew Yglesias responds: I’m with Kevin Carey in thinking that this is misguided. As he says “being well-read is the [...]
September 5th, 2009 at 8:27 am
[...] dass „Moby Dick“ Drum offenbar nicht besonders beeindruckt hat. Matthew Iglesias, der grundsätzlich den Standpunkt vertritt, dass „belesen zu sein“ ein Lebensprojekt ist, dass in der Schule nur angestoßen [...]