“I must take the view, your Grace, that when a man embarks upon a crime, he is morally guilty of any other crime which may spring from it.”
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Deductive logic + emotional realism + murder and danger + intelligent narrative + fascinating characters=Sherlock Holmes
Strange Maps has this.
221B Baker Street page here.
The patient is etherised upon a table…or so suggests our author. It’s now time:
“…[to] spur a process whereby not just literature, but the larger field of the humanities recover some of the intellectual momentum and “market share” they have lost to the sciences.”
Copy “science” and regain “market share?”
“So instead of steadily building a body of solid knowledge about literature, culture, and the human condition, the field wanders in continuous circles, bending with fashions and the pronouncements of its charismatic leaders.”
Well, this should come as no surprise. Shakespeare and Melville were artists. Studying them gives pleasure, enhancing linguistic expression and understanding within the scope of their creative imaginations. I suspect most literature students want to be great artists as well.
The scientists are…well…doing science.
As Camille Paglia has pointed out, many literature departments have gone the way of cultural relativism. Too often do they confuse literature with politics and current thinking. As a result, they’re particularly aimless right now…
…with consequences for all of us.
Market-share?
See Also: How To Study Literature: M.H. Abrams In The Chronicle Of Higher Ed… Should You Bother To Get A Liberal Arts Education? Allan Bloom, Camille Paglia and Anthony Kronman.
by kinkazzo Poor Old Harold Bloom
Addition: Andrew Sullivan has more here with a link to Literary Kicks here.
Full article here.
David Mamet, the playwright, has a interesting article about finally questioning his belief that people are inherently good, while republicans and corporations are bad, and the ideas that provide the backdrop for such beliefs. He even praises the Constitution.
Some artists may suspect that this means Mamet’s giving up his art; or at least questioning the deeper ideas he never questioned while producing his art. I’m reminded that William Butler Yeats held seances with Madame Blavatsky, and of course, we don’t remember Yeats for the seances.
Is this somehow a failure on Mamet’s part as an artist? an awakening as a thinker? or maybe just failure of leftist thinking to provide a backdrop to his art?
I’d suggest Mamet keep a keen eye on Christopher Hitchens, the reformed marxist who now advocates a set of anti-religious arguments with particular, perhaps, almost ideological zeal.
You don’t just change decades of habits, ideas, and ways of thinking overnight.
Addition: Merely a ploy (comments) to get people talking about his new play? Even though Mamet now seems to understand the wisdom of a different set of ideas (the other side, for him), I’m not sure what he’s driving at to claim so publicly.
The Independent has more.
A lot of wit, wisdom and political theater. As for Vidal, I find him a fascinating character, first-rate essayist, second-rate writer (A Thirsty Evil?), but I don’t follow his thinking to his grimmer vision of America, the empire. He has been condemning it for well over 40 years now, and he’s still around (here’s the Nation’s bio of him, which in the best sense, I wonder if he didn’t write himself).
Maybe being a hero to some is better than a leader to all.
Addition: The debate gets heated. Really heated.
Another Addition: Buckley will be missed. One deeper dispute between the two men stems from Vidal’s adherence to certain principles (I will call them aesthetic), which allow him to illuminate the plight of the poor and the racial divide, as well as observing (too cynically for me) the nature of politics. What I admire in Buckley is that he, perhaps through compassion though more through honor and nationalistic pride, stands for the troops in Vietnam and the political realities this created.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
It seems many people suspect that there has been something wrong with the quality of a Liberal Arts Education in the United States for some time, and the more serious-minded writers on the subject have tried to address the many broader social and cultural consequences that such a failure might have.
1. Allan Bloom’s Closing of The American Mind (good overview here) has a fairly wide intellectual vision, from Plato’s Republic, to Rousseau’s Emile, to many enduring works of literature. Bloom argues that many forces conspire to prevent American college students from having a platform upon which to engage these works: thus being able to liberate their minds from the current prejudices, beliefs, social and intellectual trends into which they are born. Without a central cultural vision of why these books are important, they, and we, suffer.
Personally, I think some of Bloom’s arguments suggest that he’s partially upset at living in a democracy at all, and his idealism certainly has its dangers, but he lays out some intelligent arguments.
2. Camille Paglia’s consistently offered scathing criticisms of feminism and English department excesses (or the way in which Academies have co-opted 60’s radicalism). Paglia particularly dislikes the way in which many English professors adopted Lacanian and Foucaultian metaphysics and thus in her opinion, pursued intellectual French faddishness at the expense of their students’ learning.
Personally, I think she’s probably upset that English departments will likely always seek some metaphysical ground for their thinking, however faddish…I think Paglia took Nietzsche onboard long ago (as did Lacan and Foucault) , and I take issue with many of her arguments as a result (you can’t always call them arguments). She’s consistently objected to the darker side of feminism, the totalitarian urges and the intellectual threat-making by which it has sometimes succeeded. I find her a healthy voice of dissent.
3. Currently, there is a book out by Anthony Kronman, entitled Education’s End (one review here, another here ). Kronman is a former dean of Yale law school and current professor, not having read the book (yet), I can’t say very much.
The crux of Kronman’s argument though, seems to be similar to Bloom’s, and this line of thinking has become a current staple of the right, who, in my opinion are in danger of holding up the current straw men of feminism, multiculturalism, diversity group-think merely to galvanize their position; regardless of how well-made the arguments. That’s an easy danger anyways.
**Interestingly, Kronman apparently suggests that a German approach to American schooling is partly to blame….I remember first coming across that argument here.
Thanks for reading.
Please click here.
Some of what you’ll find:
“It seems like a really original and interesting read.”
Penguin turns down chapters from Pride and Prejudice, submitted by David Lassman.
and…
“When not writing [Ira] Levin used to play the piano in his Park Avenue apartment, and watch his neighbours through a giant telescope.”
Obituary, The Daily Telegraph.
Merry Christmas.
“…I feel sympathetic toward young people who go to law school for the purpose of acquiring that tools to use toward the ends they select and who then encounter a complicated critique of the law. I think law students expect us law professors to give them things they can use. They may feel outraged if we tear apart the system they are devoting themselves to learning how to work within. We need to respect their autonomy, even as we challenge them.”
She describes the Kaplan story at the University of Wisconsin. It may be worth a look; though it seems to be occuring on the fringe.
I find myself deeply suspicious of so many current popular schools of thought which rest on epistemologies that can deny the existence of any reality beyond ourselves; or at least those which often leave many of their own ideas unchallenged while criticizing the institutions they rely on for sustenance and that they seek to change.
Our political discourse (and political unity) can become distorted under such a lens….
This can make it hard to be liberal and wisely compassionate when liberalism has grounded itself in such ways of thinking…and it will make it harder to be conservative and hold up the conservative principles too, I suspect. To be fair, the current administration isn’t helping matters.
My guess is that the institution of law could see more of these trends:
1. Students encouraged to join in the critique before they gain the knowledge and experience necessary to be good lawyers
2. More highly theoretical scholarship…and more pressure on everyone to publish, publish, publish.
3. More of a gap between the schools and the practice.
Maybe not, though. I’m really going out on a limb here.
Addition: How accurate might Althouse’s statements be?
Addition: Althouse has more here.
Mead has a new book entitled God and Gold: Britain, America and the Making of the Modern World. He’s quite a politically motivated thinker, and you’ll find a certain boldness and zeal that’s not unrefreshing in his book. He reminds me of a pamphleteer, but in the better sense of that term.
The thesis, which seems a little self-congratulatory, is that the way which theology, religion, government, free-trade, and especially naval power have shaped these cultures which have thus shaped the world. Here’s a Mead interview at UC Berkeley to get you warmed up.
Some of this has been in the water (the Atlantic?) lately, but it’s quite interesting.
So, it’s easy to feel vaguely good about our relationship, as happens quite practically here, but let’s not forget moments like these:
This is a depiction (thanks to impiousdigest.com) of British troops burning the White House, as they indeed did.
Addition: If you want to get a Brit really mad, call him a limey. He’ll likely call you a yank, or worse.
If you have an hour or so, and you want to read one of the funnier short stories ever written, then read Uncle Fred Flits By, by P.G. Wodehouse.
I could not find it for free, but you can check out the first few pages at the above link.
Also, this recent piece discusses some of Wodehouse’s darker characters.
