“It is very hard to find people interested in literature — even in departments of literature!”
Axé.
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“It is very hard to find people interested in literature — even in departments of literature!”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I have to confess that I’m not, so much, although in a way I am.
I don’t consider myself that interested either, but I think I am more interested than many.
Dare I ask what they are interested in?
That’s my big question but it includes foreign language learning and teaching, sociology, and other things.
The reason I like the quotation is that there are so many people in literature departments who like bad and/or yawning middlebrow literature (i.e. bland bestsellers like Isabel Allende, etc.), and then there are those who have decided it is hipper to study Rin-Tin-Tin.
Most people are too superficial to relate to great literature.
That, I think, is the main point.
Hmm. Well, I guess I can see it. Literature is nice and all, but it’s not half as interesting as the real world. I mean, it only is interesting insofar as it illuminates the real world. But then, this is why I am a historian.
The thing is that it does, with much greater depth than what most historians and social scientists can reach. But as I say, you have to realize literature isn’t formula fiction and so on, which was more or less my friend’s point (the one I am quoting in the post).
Oh no you didn’t lump historians together with “social scientists”! My discipline can totally beat up your discipline. And theirs! 🙂
In all seriousness, you’re right… Literature is awesome when it’s about real things. But it’s not always.
At least it isn’t economics, which is never about real things, but instead is about stupid fake models which, if you point out that they actually have no correspondence to the real world, the economists then tell you the real world is wrong.
It’s also considered a feminine pursuit, the reading of literature. The Lost Generation and Post WW II vets like Styron and Mailer tried to make a case for the manliness of literature. That is why many men in English departments continue to tout their work. And no, I don’t think they are good writers. They lack depth. (Hemingway and Fitzgerald, on the other hand, were first class if overly histrionic at times.)
I participated in an online seminar once with a mixture of fiction and non-fiction assignments. The other students were fascinated by *Guns, Germs, and Steel,* with all its speculation and fabulations and just plain made up stuff, but the realities of Morrison’s *Paradise* turned them off. It became clear to me, reading their postings, that they did not know how literature worked. A novel like *Paradise* that rises above mere entertainment, that takes actual work to understand, was too difficult for them, so they just made stupid remarks about it.
Those things, again, are key, I think.
Also, a lot of women are in literature because they’ve been steered there since it is feminine — not for better reasons.
That’s why I don’t want an academic career in literature. To have to “appreciate” literature rather than tearing it apart for the nuggets you hope to find, doesn’t seem very invigorating to me. I don’t at all like the idea of the feminisation of literature, if that is what it leads to. Also I am not part of the cultural “middle class”. What could I possibly have to say to them?
Zimbabwean emigrant, Stephen Mandivengerei has given my book a substantial review — it is the first review of substance I have had, although Marianna’s was also very honest and she took her grappling with it seriously. Mandivengerei goes further with it, though, because he is from the current Zimbabwean diaspora, and can relate to it on a personal level:
The book is undeniably a good read and among the best in the category of intellectually stimulating I have had the opportunity to read in the last year.It captures the essence of innocence and the trauma that ensues when that nascent innocence is shattered.The psychological battle to reclaim it and yet realise that its not reclaimable, the picking of the splinters as new reality though a reality one would rather not come to terms with, are all brought to the fore in language that is lurid,vivid and all the more imaginative and inviting debate. It shows the human condition of being “other” in a society that is intolerant and teeming with prejudice. My only comment is that if being uprooted from one’s society is a blow to the brain and the brain in recounting such exeprience begets this, I will be forgiven to say being uprooted is therefore not so bad after all. couldnt drop the book until after a … reread!
Well, the literature as sentimental reading for women comes from the 19th century, right… ?
In college and graduate school we studied it scientifically, but then when I started working as a professor I discovered that some English departments were enforcing the idea that you should have students emoting with it. I was revolted and this was part of my decline.
I owe you a review, I know! Where’s Stephen’s (it’s not on Amazon)? I could write comments on Amazon any time but they wouldn’t be “substantial” — they’d be commentary. I’m still thinking that when I really do it I’ll do it for some actual journal. I’ve got an article to finish and a book review by the 31st; I’ll try to do this in the spring, finally.
Most women I know are not interested in literature except as some sort of social bond. They belong to book clubs and such. They will report that they liked a book or didn’t like it, but for them it’s mostly about getting together with other women. After all, women have not gotten to the point where you can go hoist a few with the girls without some sort of excuse. Middlebrow culture serves women as a way of bonding with other women. This has nothing to do with literature, but it sells books.
The female professors I had were mostly interested in polemical sorts of writing. They played roles with respect to literature: the high priestess of The Word, the flame-throwing feminist, the hippie heroine, etc.
I did have a few professors, both male and female, who loved literature, shared their enthusiasms, and taught their students to read and write intelligently and creatively.
All of that is spot on, once again, I say.
Human — I love Economics, it’s one of the degrees I want to go and get. It’s mainstream U.S. courses and the business and “money” pages of U.S. newspapers that are full of poor work. That’s not economics, it’s some fiction invented to keep Americans’ dreams in line so corporations can do as they will. Here’s an alternative, for starters: http://www.urpe.org/
Nice. That looks like a cool organization.
I have met a decent number of economists and they are stupid, cruel people. They like to advocate for things like a tax on gas that triples the price (or more). When you point out that the system that supplies our grocery stores means that food prices are DIRECTLY tied to gas prices, and that if they do this a lot of people will go hungry, or even starve, they shrug their shoulders and say of course it would be difficult at first but people would get used to it.
I am aware of claims for the existence of some economists who are not this vicious, and who do not show this level of disconnect with reality and humanity, but I have never actually met one.
Maybe you think I am exaggerating, but I am not. And I think any academic discipline that allows itself to become what you say, a cheerleading club for American corporations, deserves to be drummed out of existence.
I believe you! I know, there’s probably a reason I didn’t actually go into the field.
I’ve just gotten such a good economics education, in a lay person’s sort of way, by reading Latin American economists writing in Sunday supplements of newspapers, explaining what is going on (like the problem of the direct connection of food and gas prices) in a way that really makes sense and really is humanistic … and then having students from LAS who are in Econ and who study very cool and intriguing topics such as the economics of corruption.
It’s just that the topic, how money and finance and so on really work, intrigues me massively, since it so informs everything that happens.
Literature, like religion (and unlike, unfortunately, politics and drinking) is a private thing, a communion inside the reader’s head, rationality and memory. I happen to love literature, and I always have, and I make no bones in not at all subscribing to all the bells and whistles of deconstructional lit crit that have combined to reduce academic lit courses, especially on the grad school level, to pointless, though arrogant, incoherence. My favorite authors are the “greats”: Zola, Orwell, Hemingway, Chekhov, Gogol, Kafka most prominently, and I don’t much like straying beyond them.
As a college lecturer, who has frequently taught literature in my courses, (these being mostly Western Civ. and Middle Eastern History), I have been repeatedly dismayed by the difficulty young US students have with reading, understanding, and appreciating literature. However much colleges try to remedy this by more College reading courses, more computer tech, the problem is sytemic throughout the educational system, and , I think, it has to do with overall social breakdown and the rise anew of the “mass man”, so feared by Ortega y Gasset. What literature needs to thrive is a culture encouraging individuality, real, thinking individuality, and not just “I will do what I want, dammit!” To properly read a book that demands some individual reflection, after all, one needs a quiet place to concentrate, a sense of apartness inside one’s mind and outside one’s body.
Right, Mark.
Students need to be taught to read fiction. The cues we pick up instinctively don’t register with them. Many of the students are quite intelligent but very literal minded; they just aren’t accustomed to fictional devices, even simple ones such as foreshadowing, (OH, something is going to happen!), and so they don’t have the keys of the kingdom.
I have seen this, Hattie – my students are SO literal minded, even the bright ones. I don’t understand it at all. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that someone who is recounting events might want to shape the narrative to suit their own goals or whatever. They just take whatever is printed on the page at face value. They did papers a few weeks ago about a freed slave’s autobiography. He wrote that he was smarter than other blacks because he had a white father. So many students wrote in their papers that he “was smart because of his white father.” I wanted to pull my hair out.
What is up with this? Is it a new thing? I don’t remember thinking that way when I was a young undergraduate, but maybe I did and I have forgotten. It’s so hard for me to understand.
Honestly, I think it’s NCLB. They are taught to do reading comprehension on standardized tests and the way you do that is, you pick out a quotation and you repeat it verbatim. No interpretation allowed.
The LSAT is like that, too. I did poorly on reading comprehension the first time I took it because all the questions were on classics of literary criticism I had read. I chose answers that went to the point of what the passages were saying; the “right” answers were all direct quotations and not always complete answers if you had actually read the text.
But my students can pass a reading comprehension exam with flying colors, on a passage they could not summarize or discuss if their lives depended upon it (or so it seems).
Even professors, and those who are at least a decade older than I am, cannot seem to understand irony. They don’t expect to meet it, so they read everything literally, and then become angry or disturbed, until you explain it to them.
Yes, I notice this too. In real life conversation, unless I am simultaneously translating myself, I mean very little of what I say literally, and people never get that. I first became aware of it about 30 years ago, so it isn’t new, but it’s becoming more rampant.
It does create an awkward situation, when somebody that you have credited with some intelligence and subtlety turns around and behaves in such a way that it becomes clear that they haven’t understood you at all.
What to do? It depends on how ‘far gone’ the person is in relation to their inability to understand. You asked me on my blog how we can discern when somebody is acting from the lizard brain, and one of the aspects I have noticed is that we tend to become far more literal-minded under stressful circumstances. It is of course the lizard brain that gains executive control over the rest of the mind under such circumstances (facilitating survival), so the “dumbing down” that has become so common these days may be an expression of societal stress. (And of course, when you are dealing with someone who is from a different culture to begin with, you are already more stressed.)
We know that NCLB is not about real education. But it is hard to imagine any reason to design tests and instruction this way except a desire to actively make people stupider. Maybe I am too cynical.
But why would the LSAT be this way? Do we want stupid lawyers?
I guess I am confused!
And re: economics, the economics of corruption sounds fascinating. It is not that I don’t find these issues interesting, I do very much, but I am way past the end of any patience I once had with economists generally. It’s nice to hear the ones outside the US aren’t so infuriating.
What a fascinating discussion! You sure threw out the right question, Professor Z!
Oh, it’s a remark, nonetheless…
Hattie: It is a pretty good remark, isn’t it! And I’m not the one who made it!
Jennifer: Stress leading one to be literal minded, yes, I see that. I realize I even do it. Literal minded policies, societal stress, yes.
Human: Economics, I believe you; have surely not had to deal with as many economists as you; have met some real buffoon economists.
LSAT, NCLB, do we want people to be stupider, well I think yes. I think the designers and acceptors of these things have a really low opinion of people and don’t know what they’re doing, either. I think outsourcing education to these testing company types is an expression of ridiculous American capitalism and so on, etc.