now there was I mean, there's a little
aside, I don't think I want to go unless
people are interested in that. Part of
the argument that drop off between 1970
1980 really was precipitous. 7.5% of the
U. S. To 3.5. What in the world was
going on again? No one, no one really
knows why it leapt from 65 to 70 and then
fell off that cliff. But I do know that
we were we as a discipline. We misread
our historical moment. We thought, oh
my God, it's something about us, isn't
it? And so we wound up dropping requirements
all over the place, Virginia, which is
actually the first place. I thought I
was a graduate student. They only had
one required course in the entire major.
This was we called it's Norton, Norton
because it really was two courses bay wolf
to be able to Virginia wolf, a wolf,
to Caryl Churchill Bay Wolf to watch a
B. Whatever. All right. And uh, students
hated it. These were these were pretty
good students. They weren't they didn't
like the tour bus approach my group. My
group stopped looking at every man. We're
moving on to Doctor Faustus. Let's uh
second well, which is how those courses
went. And so the really smart students
put off that that stuff to their senior
year. So, it served no purpose. But
it was a vestige of that era when Virginia
decided we gotta stop the bleeding here.
The english major. We'll just drop all
our requirements. There was a time when
literature mattered. Here's a Brownfield,
korean, William Dean Howells is 18 85
novel. The Rise of Silas lapham. All
civilization comes to literature now,
says Brownfield, especially in our country.
A greek got his civilization by talking
and looking and in some measure of Parisian
may still do it, but we who live remote
from history and monuments, we must read
or we must barbara eyes once we were softened
if not polished by religion. But I suspect
that the pulpit accounts for much less
now in civilizing. There's a little echo
of Matthew Arnold here as well. But if
you take this at face value and you take
it as your starting point, that's when
literature was queen, then of course,
all we can say of ourselves is, oh, how
fallen, how changed from them? Who in
the happy realms of the late 19th century
clothes with transcendent brightness,
did civilised Myriads. And I admit it's
hard to read. Silas, lapham, my sense
of wistfulness for a time when the Nouveau
riche actually worried about which poets,
novelists they would have in their new
libraries. One strains to imagine donald
trump agonizing in a reality show over
whether he should acquire the complete
works of john Ashbury. Mhm. Some arguments
for core curricula in english and western
Civ, I find badly mistaken well meaning
but mistaken. The argument, for example,
that american society needs a common culture
in order to function coherently. Seems
to be patently false given the experience
of societies from Ireland to the Balkans
to the Middle East, where the existence
of common cultural reference points hasn't
not been conducive to social harmony.
I would suggest instead that what really
matters is a separation from the legal
and political social apparatus and the
cultural sense of belonging or the cultural
sense of identity. The more distance you
have between those things, the more you
can separate them and secularize them.
I think the better off you are the argument
that this common culture should take the
form of reading list in the humanities,
as opposed to, say, the bachelor or the
Survivor. What have you? Seems to me?
Away from people like me to flatter ourselves
and our subject matter, I returned again
to David Denby is great books because he
offers us this flattery and renders it
incomprehensible at the same time. First,
he says, I agree with William Bennett
and the traditionalists. Other traditionalist.
To this extent, men and women educated
in the Western tradition will have the
best possible shot at the daunting task
of reinventing morality and community in
a republic, now badly tattered by fear
and mistrust. Well, you know, I'd like
to believe this because it would mean that
I myself would be qualified to reinvent
morality and community. But unfortunately,
only 10 pages earlier, Denby had written
in a critique of canyon bashing critics
quote, Does anybody seriously imagine
we will achieve social justice in America
by reading bad or second or third level
books and by ignoring great ones. We will
not obtain it by reading great work either.
But at least we will not be confused about
what we are doing. Close quote. Isn't
that strange? Um, first of all, how
can both those passages reside in the same
book? How can great books impel their
readers to reinvent morality and community
but not pursue social justice. And what
if some, many, most great books do all
of these things or none. Sometimes I just
want to leap to the defence of texts and
forms of study that don't serve any immediate
social or political purpose that I can
think of all for an example from my own
field and a year, year and its full year
and yelled is never leak the form to the
finish mint folders full seldom for the
for the Riviera and the year after. And
you just as soon as the lepers so it after
other after Kristin mark on the club Birdland
tune the phrases flesh with the fish and
for the most simple. But then the weather
of the world with winter hits. Reppas
cold clinkers are doing clueless, uplifting
sheer shades, the rain insurance full.
Warm falls upon fair flat floor. Is there
soon both groaners and the graves grain
are here with this breed is basking to
build in brain like singing for solace
on the soft summer. The suis. Thereafter
the bunk and blossom was born to blow be
Royals which in rank in notes, nobody
not heard in water so long after the season
of samba with her soft windows with Quincy
for syphilis. Himself on Citizen Arabs
well the wind is, the water relaxes the
route in the dark and the truth drop us
at the levels to be the blissful brush
of the brits son. But then he is head
of this and hadn't and so on honest. Um
for the winter to Oxford rip, he'd raised
with drug just factories for the thrust
of the four to flee full here Roth window.
The welcome russell's with the son that
lives lost in from the lean and leaked
in on the ground and I'll graze the grass
of the grand I was there. Then our rips
and rotors that rose upon first and this
year is the year in yesterday's money and
winter wind is a young as the world asks,
no footage, tell me you'll miss one was
coming with winter wattage then think is
gone full son of his annual vintage. That
sounds like Jabberwocky, doesn't it?
There's one medievalist. Okay, that's
the beginning of book two of Going in The
Green Knight. And even in that poem,
these lines serve no immediate purpose,
but to narrate the passing of the year,
deliberately didn't introduce it for you,
for that, between the time going decapitates
the Green Knight in Arthur's Hall and the
time he is compelled to ride the Green
Knight's Castle to receive a similar blow.
I have loved this passage since I first
encountered in one of those core curricula,
english major courses. Uh, let's see,
25 6 years ago. I loved it. Especially
for the opening couple of the alien is
fully in yellow is never leaked. The forms
of the Finnish men, folders full of Selden
because well, look at the footnotes of
my edition, render it as a year passes
swiftly and events never repeat themselves.
The beginning is very seldom like the end.
You know, it loses something in translation.
Um, quite the couple. It doesn't really
tell you, You can never tell what a year
would bring. Yeah, we knew that but it
counters that cliche in this language of
the form, folding to the finish mint and
then reviving our sense of how in fact
the events of our lives don't always fit
our plans. I also like the fact the syntax
makes the most of the potential relation
of the form to the finish mint former defenseman,
what is it going to fold is good, You
know, I'll tell you it folds full Selvin
a discouraging word and these are at the
very end of the sentence and we imagine
maybe this once that things will work out
as we planned and of course, you know,
I don't need to add the language of Gawain
is a kind of english that just don't hear
these days, even if you're familiar with
middle english and are inclined to line
up that sumptuous rendering the seasons
with the comparatively much more famous
opening lines of the Canterbury tales were
on the opposite shore is sort of the dark
the march of the road and bothered every
venice which look or etcetera etcetera.
You know the rest which way too. And generally
the fluids, every sake and sweet breath
and spirit and every halt and have the
single crop is in the youngest son of mm
but I'm not gonna insult your intelligence.
Uh no, I'm not at the airport. I could
do a little insult your intelligence,
literate or not. It turns out the language
of Gawain is even wilder and thicker and
more richly textured and charters from
that exuberant bursting and burgeoning
bridges boost into building primly singing
to that completely alien what so belonged.
But I'm not going to insult your intelligence
by claiming that teaching this poem will
enhance student's sense of belonging to
Western culture or the importance of the
literature of Christianity. Both of them.
It is if anything, it will enhance student
sense of the strangeness of Western culture
and literature, of Christianity. And
that's a good thing to Gawain will allow
me, however, to engage one more argument
in favor of traditional curricula. It
is the argument mounted in Harvard's landmark
committee report of 1946 General education
in a free society known as the Red Book.
He's the argument the books whether in
verse or prose, whether epic drama, narrative
or philosophy, which have been the great
meeting points and have most influenced
the men who in turn influenced others are
those we can least afford to neglect.
It is a safe assumption that a work which
is delighted and instructed many generations
of ordinary readers and bend them. A common
possession, enriching and enriched is
to be preferred to a product which is on
its way to limbo and will not link together
even to school generations, close quote.
This argument has real merit. I don't,
I don't mean to dismiss it at all, I have
to quibbles with it one, it's predicated
if you go earlier in the paragraph in the
red book on yet another version of the
common culture belief. Uh This is the
belief that quote is the book ours is at
present a centrifugal culture in extreme
need of unifying forces. Close quote and
they're not thinking about the Super Bowl
two, the other equivalent can also serve
to shut down the hermeneutic process by
which we continually reinterpret our past
assuring us that the test of time has already
been conducted. We simply shut up too
late to propose reading the book of marjorie
kemp along with going. But even though
a core curriculum at Harvard or anywhere
else can't actually unify the nation the
way James caan and brian hoped it could
brian, I have to be good news for traditionalists.
It doesn't really need to, I can serve
the more modest, the more immediately
useful goal of giving one colleges undergraduates
a common foundation of reference. And
here, I don't see why more humanists,
traditionalist or not traditionalist or
anything else, don't get up and argue
in their own self interest. I mean, this
is completely self interested argument
for some people that taints it. I think
it hi makes them better. The humanities
faculty of Columbia for instance, work
with the enviable luxury of knowing that
every class they teach, they'll be dealing
with students who have already read or
in the process of reading or we're supposed
to read important works in America in a
western literature and philosophy. You
can presume that body of knowledge and
reference in every single class. Imagine
the pleasure of going to teach a class
on a loopy, quasi postmodern novel like
Nabokov's pale fire and knowing that when
you draw on book to don Quixote for analogies,
everyone in the room knows what you're
talking about and can contribute to the
discussion. Even the engineers in the
business majors, it would be something
like the pleasure I felt two days ago,
I was teaching another loopy quasi postmodern
novel, paul, Auster mr vertigo, which
opens with a mysterious character who makes
our hero and outlandish promise and adds
that if he fails to live up to the bargain,
our hero walt can chop his head off with
an ax. And one of my students remarked
on the similarity to Gawain doesn't happen
every day. Now, of course this is not
a trivial point either. It's not just
catch that allusion. You get five points
for getting the going. It's also because
if you catch the illusion you set up for
what kind of novel this is going to be
and how strange it really going to be.
It really is, especially for something
published in 1994. Now, of course, that
kind of required core curricula, either
in the humanities as a whole or in a single
department won't work at every university.
There are, I'm told some 19 and 20 year
olds out there who will resist mightily
any subject that is required for graduation,
even if it would be a event seminar, downloading
music from the Internet. But serious students
would benefit from a coherently designed
curriculum in the humanities, as would
those of us on the faculty who care about
our serious students. Two more points,
the Cannon and the curriculum don't have
to actually don't actually have to consist
of the best that has been known and thought
in the world. That's okay. But you also
can occasionally consist some of the 2nd,
3rd and 4th best. If that's pedagogical
useful. I'm thinking here not only of
every man, but defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
Um, really not a great work of art, either.
One of them absolutely central to english
literary history. Either way, the idea
behind the curriculum should be simply
this, people who hope to think seriously
about their place in the world have a positive
obligation to verse themselves in the history
of human thought and achievement. This
also means they have to be scientifically
literate to in this a written in the final
years of his life, the late Richard Rorty
just died this past summer offered a post
enlightenment, post romantic version of
an ancient ideal. The imagination he wrote
endlessly consumes its own artifacts.
It is as subject to time and chance as
are the flies in the worms. But while
it endures and preserves the memory of
its past, it will continue to transcend
its previous limits. The sort of person
I am calling. A literary intellectual
thinks that a life that has not lived close
to the present limits of the human imagination
is not worth living. This is still ready
for the Socratic examination. Socratic
idea of self examination and self knowledge,
the literary intellectual substitutes the
idea of enlarging the self by becoming
acquainted with still more ways of being
human. She thinks that the more books
you read, the more ways of being human
you have considered, the more human you
become, the less tempted by dreams of
an escape from time and chance, the more
convinced that we humans have nothing to
rely on save one another. The ancient
ideal, that's really the ancient idea
of course, is home assume humanae, Neelam,
alien ampato, nothing human is alien to
me or should be. And you know, okay,
what if in the course of learning about
these new ways to be human, our students
get acquainted with some forms of life
in ways of thinking that we might find
a part. I would certainly hope they do.
Maybe even in the Oresteia or the Iliad.
You never know, but I'll close with this
on which I would hope all parties might
be able to agree, no matter where you
are on the canon debate, we literary intellectuals
as Rudy's term, haven't tried nearly hard
enough to convey to our own students are
interested onlookers how truly thrilling
the pursuit of literature can be and why
they should keep reading widely even after
they graduate, whether they read literature
in the sense of imaginative writing or
in the broader sense of the entire field
of things written. That's one of the thrilling
things about the pursuit of literature.
It's not like you're ever going to catch
up to it. Our subject matter covers most
of the known world, from history to psychology
to physics and in some cases, features
of worlds not yet known to history or psychology
or physics. My missus is a staggeringly
capacious thing. Literature is my medic.
Not only of every conceivable personal
social, cultural and political question.
Humans have posed themselves since the
invention of written languages, but also
forms of behavior and social organization
that do not exist outside of the imaginative
world created by written languages. on
that subject, I have lately become fond
of referring my students to this passage
and Jared diamond's book guns, germs and
steel, particularly when I get despondent
about how fusty and antiquarian literature
is compared to new technologies. Certainly
the new technology building penn state
much nicer than ours and they forget they
were actually dealing in one of the most
remarkable and adaptable technologies the
world has ever witnessed. Here's Diamond
inventing a writing system. It means an
alphabetic writing system, not a hydrographic
one. Inventing a writing system from scratch
must have been incomparably more difficult
than borrowing and adapting one. The first
scribes had to settle on basic principles
that we now take for granted. For example,
they had to figure out how to decompose
a continuous utterance into speech units.
Regardless of whether those units were
taken as words, syllables or phone names,
they had to learn to recognize the same
sound or speech unit. To all our normal
variations in speech volume, pitch speed,
emphasis, phrase grouping, and individual
idiosyncrasies of pronunciation. They
had to decide that a writing system should
ignore all that, all that variation.
Then they had to devise ways to represent
sounds by symbols. Somehow the first scribe
solved all those problems without having
in front of them any example of the final
result to guide their efforts. The task
was evidently so difficult that there have
only been a few occasions in history when
people invented writing entirely on their
own. The two indisputably independent
inventions of writing were achieved by
the sumerians in Mesopotamia, somewhat
before 3000 Bc and Mexican indians before
600 Bc. Egyptian writing of 3000 BC.
In chinese writing by 1300 Bc may also
have risen independently diamond. His
point is that compared to writing the wheel
is child's play, literally the wheel was
invented all over the place people were
invented wheels. They woke up in the morning
they invented the wheel. It is those things
rolling down a hill. There's a wheel even
by people who had no productive use for
them. And this is diamond. Ancient native
Mexicans. This is one of my favorite factories
from, from this book. Ancient native
Mexicans invented wheeled vehicles with
axles for use as toys but not for transport.
That seems incredible to us until we reflected
ancient Mexicans lack domestic animals
to hitch their wheeled vehicles to which
therefore offered no advantage over human
porters. See, well, child play writing,
that's difficult. And finally I want to
pair Jared diamond's sense of writing with
a passage from pale fire. A passage I
love not only for itself but for the fact
that it comes out of nowhere in one of
the most playful, endlessly inv alluded
works of written a fiction ever written
in english. So in place of Jabberwocky
tonight, I'm going to leave you with Nabokov.
The narrator, of course, is Nabokov's
idiosyncratic or just insane. Professor
Charles kin boat, and he writes about
how writing gives us what Marianne moore
called imaginary gardens with real toads
in them. We are absurdly accustomed,
he writes to the miracle of a few written
signs, being able to contain immortal
imagery in evolutions of thought new worlds
with live people speaking, weeping, laughing,
we take it for granted so simply that in
a sense, by the very act of brutish routine
acceptance. We undo the work of the ages,
the history of the gradual elaboration
of political description and construction
from the tree man to browning, from the
caveman to keith's. What if we awake one
day, all of us and find ourselves utterly
unable to read? I wish you to gasp not
only at what you read, but at the miracle
of it's being readable, or So I used to
tell my students what I tell my students
now is that in the pursuit of literature
we find time and again, that our subject
is fugitive, like pale fire itself and
a few of its characters holding a mirror
up to nature, but sometimes just a hall
of mirrors. But such is the nature of
my missus when it takes the impossibly
difficult and delightful form of writing,
and we should mirror Professor Qin Boat
in this, only that we teach our students
to guess not only what they read, but
at the everyday miracle of it's being readable.
Thank you. That's right. Post might go
down to the questions So are reporting
right? So, uh, thanks for your talk.
Very interesting. I want to I want to
go back to the notion of the Cannon Wars
and some of the underlying assumptions
and the one that I've always found astounding
is the idea that something that we do in
the classroom is presumed to be so powerful
that it, you know, it shapes students
lives from then on. I used to teach a
lot of technical and business writing in
which students um wrote cover letters for
jobs and job resumes and so on. And the
most frequent phrase that I was always
editing was they would say, well, I was
exposed to great literature or I was exposed
to cultural diversity, or I was exposed
to this. And that image of students somehow
Shakespeare's flashing these students,
you know, they were they were exposed.
And somehow this this endlessly, um,
you know, changes their existence. I
think it gives us amount of power that
that I never thought I had. You know,
and certainly when grading papers, it
never seems to me that I've had the power
that that's being ascribed to me. But
the other, the other assumption is the
assumption that having, you know, the
right Norton anthology with the right contents
table of contents is in and of itself a
guarantee that students get exposed two
great literature. And a case in point
when I was a sophomore in college in the
seventies, I took an elective course called
Bad Poetry and the Norton anthology of
poetry was the assigned book. It was it
was a it was uh you know, and it was it
was a trick class by a visiting poet,
basically the idea of the course was week
by week. Students were assigned to find
a bad poem in the book and talk about why
it's really bad and what you were really
supposed to do. And you know, I only
figured this out long long afterwards as
I was supposed to pick Keats. Right?
This was the point. Of course, no, this
was this was this poet. This poet had
an ax to grind in other words. And so
I'm a stupid stuff, right? I was a stupid
sophomore and I didn't know you know what
he was getting at. And so I looked around
and I picked a poet I had never heard of
the palm just seemed close to me. It was
louis McNeice and I go into the room and
I was set up and the and the poet, you
know, I could have, I should have been
able to predict this at, oh, I actually
like louis McNeice and so my legs got cut
out from under me. You were exposed.
I was exposed. I was exposed. So, But
just the idea that somehow, because this
book was on the, the this was the book,
it's such an odd assumption that what's
going to happen in the classroom is somehow
guaranteed to produce some effect that's
going to change life forever. Thanks to
uh, two things to say about that. I'll
make it brief. They are brief. Um, one
colleague, my first book was all about
canonization, the process of contemporary
literary reception. In a sort of skeptical
older colleague of mine Illinois, threw
cold water all over me one day and said,
you know, we should have the can debate
on the last day the semester, watching
the students go back to the bookstore to
resell their books, Let's have it then.
And we'll see that's exactly what kind
of power we have. And the other thing,
the other anecdote that since it's coming
out day, october 11 favorite line from
a queer theorist friend of mine says you
know, people invested with the power to
convert people sexually, I can't get them
to do the reading. Um Having said that
though, I don't, I think it's sort of
a dose of reality uh just a few times in
the paper is a good thing. But occasionally
there are these moments where that students
do remember it. It's more occasional than
we would like the normal students who come
back and say you know Gawain really movement
and then not very often, but I can count
them on more than 11 digit Moby dick.
Uh My never saw this going on in my Antonio.
It's one of the few things, one of the
few areas where you actually, especially
now that email allows everyone to get in
touch with everyone else at all times.
You actually do hear from people 10 20
years later, so I don't wanna undersell
that entirely. Um and I was thinking as
I was working on this over the last week,
I went back and some of the people that
Rachel Donadio had quoted, I found this
wonderful bit from from Mark Lilla um that
sort of takes it out of our hands. His
line was the best reason to rely on the
great books and liberal education that
they are almost impervious to bad teaching.
A great teacher can make students, his
or her students up with a mediocre book,
but even a dull teacher will have trouble
ruining Moby Dick most attacks and defenses
of great books curriculum is at this point,
there is nothing sacred about these works.
They do not teach moral uplift good values,
uh, civic inclusion, toleration or proper
hygiene. The proper hygiene part especially
is really overlooked and um, they are
open radically. So the interpretation
and questioning. So I think the other
thing to resist in the candidate, but
I have made this case because a lot of
other people have in the last 20 years
is the reduction of the books to values
that have been imprinted on students heads.
You know, like the hand stamp you're in
the club you've been exposed to, don't
be shy, wow. While people are thinking
really bad teacher can kill a good book,
let's get that straight. Um, but it's
astonishing to me what students actually
take away from this. I was I was a T.
A. And of course I won't name with the
person that I thought was just killing
literature dead every week. Um and it
was of course in 20th century literature,
it was actually is what a lineup. It opened
with thomas mann's boudin brooks and wound
up I think with your head or pension.
And the thesis of the course I am not making
this up is that literature starts off realistic
and gets less so uh huh. Mhm. Which actually
is the problem, you know, boudin brooks.
It's fascinating. I mean monitors. No,
he's a great writer, thomas mann but in
wooden boxes, his first novel actually
one of the things that does, it chronicles
19th century Germany and in such a way
that in the early parts of the book there's
like a lot of heavy things, a lot of burgers.
There a lot of things are really heavy
wooden plate and the end it gets more and
more sort of almost neurasthenic until
there's a character, uh, the last of
the button brooks really too frail to live.
There's some that money will carry on in
death in venice. So you could teach this
thesis basically in the book itself. You
wouldn't need these other 12 books, Right?
And I talked to students being the to and
all outside the class. They loved every
aspect of the course. I said really hard
and they said, oh, we don't even listen
to that. This the books is just so great.
So it is possible. But there's nothing
that, you know, the the drops out of
this uh, about the candidate as if the
books really sort of come uh, in this
package way that can be reduced uh for
easy consumption and exposure. Your,
your courses sound really interesting and,
and indeed expensive. So I just wanted
to know what about the syllabus? Like
what's your principal uh, when, what
guides you? Oh goodness. Um, well,
one of the reasons I had a line here and
I took it out about because again, I don't
know, you're all where you are in your
curriculum, debate about people like me
who teach at places like penn state in
Illinois. If we care about Janet either,
we've made a separate peace. Well, we've
given ourselves over to a life of pushing
the rock up the hill and I've done the
rock bit in various contact last time I
think was trying to bridge this arts and
humanities curriculum at Illinois. And
the reason I'm answering this way is unless
you are working in something like a coherent
curriculum, you are basically working
on assembly line. Your, your, your,
your job is tail arised for you in the
most, you know, appalling manner. And
every once in a while, especially Illinois
where Illinois had an incredible bench
strength in american ists. And for me
even to reach back before the civil war
and I finally get to do scarlet letter
for the first time since graduate school,
I had to document, okay, I do Scarlet
letter, not gonna be too many scarlet
letters the semester. Okay, good. Um,
and it also leads to the fact that I was,
I was there when the first graduate students
started assigning Zora Neale hurston's,
their eyes were watching God, which wasn't
an easy task because it was out of print
in the early eighties. And it was brought
back by University of Illinois press.
But it also led to the phenomenon where
one semester there'll be 12 Zora Neale
hurston's on display and last time I taught
Maxine Hong Kingston's the woman warrior.
I've reread that book and I think there's
as much to say about disability and, and
uh, and cognitive impairment as it does
about patriarchy and student. One or two
students on the, uh, evaluation said
that's a great point, but I've already
read this thing two times and I can't compensate
for that. I try to shuffle up my syllabus
among a, my core 60 or 70 works. I'm
really working in 18 65 65 forward. Um,
for me to get the permission and protocols
to go back and do going again, I would
take a small military takeover in my department.
Although that's not, that's not true.
If I really wanted to wrestle them away
from an early modern person, I suppose
I could. Well, what I do is drawn about
60 or 70 works of american literature,
mostly fiction. Um, I'm down to really
a handful of poets. And don't you ever
talk the same syllabus twice? But it really
is just a matter of what I have basically
shuffling through over the last four or
five years. If I could look ahead of time
at what the other course offerings would
be and peg them to other, then I could
work around other people's assignments
and so we could actually put into practice
the kind of inclusivity I'm talking about
where we actually could have a okay, so
we're basically people either read the
same thing, maybe there are a couple things
twice, but they read as broadly as they
possibly can. But otherwise, I'm just
working on my own syllabus with my own
my own corpus of like I said, about five
or six dozen major work I do throw. I've
thrown in works that are really not all
that good and I've taught them once and
I feel every once in a while I should write
to those students five years later and
say, you know, that experiment didn't
work. I'm so sorry, House on Mango Street
teen teen book, really nice enough, but
not a college curriculum kind of thing.
Sorry, never happened again. You brought
me back to Colombia in the 19 eighties
where I made some different choices as
an undergraduate uh faced with the english
major. Um, and faced with the survey,
I remember so well you describe the 77
courses in british and the five courses
in american. I uh made a fateful choice
to really polish up my french and become
a comparative literature major because
at the time you could be a comparative
literature major comparing national three
national languages such as british american
and french, Right? Um uh it was this
huge, it's a huge loophole that, you
know, a whole lot of us kind of danced
through to avoid the english literature
survey, which I've been trying to make
up for ever since. But the fascinating
with that experience to me though, is
that at the time it brought me face to
face with the very different texture of
the Cannon when taught in a strict comparative
ist theological perspective and method
or were taught as it was in uh, literature,
humanities and contemporary civilizations,
all out of translation with the assumption
of the translations, you know, properly
homogenized the texts. So I guess I wanted
to ask you to speak to that, you know,
that problem, not of availability when
it comes to the Canada, that problem of
language and to the question general education
of to what extent a breath of examples
just of translated translated literature
is what constitutes uh, you know, a wide
range of learning and to what extent it's
actually whole set of what's called them
languages, technical, uh, means to get
somewhere that you couldn't get otherwise.
Okay. We're not leaving. No. Uh, that's
fabulous question. Thank you. The first
thing I have to say to it marshall my thoughts,
um, as if english were already the worst
organizational rubric that you can think
of. One of the reasons are majors and
structure is aside from temporal sequence,
what in the world would you do? There's
an interesting forum in the current PM
LA. The response, which is written by
Bruce Robinson, just throws out a thought
experiment the very beginning. Imagine
we hire people by genre instead of his
by period would deranged everything right.
But what other ruby do we have for organizing
the material other than period and then
you add to that. So even why should we
have for records, which of course has
been such order alone? Why should there
be 50 years, 40 credit hours of them?
Then you add in rhetoric, which I know
you t is access it was all made a separate
peace. And then in England in Colombia,
this is my way of explaining everyone who
doesn't know this. Colombian department
is actually a department of english and
comparative literature. As if you're english
itself weren't chaotic enough. Give me
chaos and more chaos now granted. Long
time comp lit was just the the Western
european languages, but nevertheless raises
let me get into language question One more
thing though, about about your evading
english back in the day. I don't exactly
when, what do you mean? Because I didn't
do my graduate work at Columbia. I did
at Virginia at Columbia. The graduate
students I knew in the early eighties,
uh, dreaded this sluice gate major authors
exam, which the major authors were chaucer
Milton and Shakespeare. That's it. And
the idea behind that, which is a good
idea that you master not only the body
of one of the major writers, but the entire
corpus of criticism on them over the past
couple of centuries. So you can see why
people would dread this. Um, and Virginia,
they were a little bit looser about this,
but it was only a play model because I
suggested just to be cheeky that pension
be considered a major writer. I didn't
even believe this myself. Let's, let's
let's throw that. Let's see what the arguments
are made against it. And the worst argument
of the world was made against it, namely
test the time isn't done yet. Uh, it
is proposed. Someone proposed 50 years,
50 years. Good enough point. But you
can imagine people waiting until 1972 to
comment on ulysses wait until 2000 and
two. Come on. An invisible man who,
in their right mind you, I don't know
about. You will see that. I'm not sure.
It's great. You have to wait. Damn another
45 years. Here's Edmund Wilson's axles
Castle, which is actually commenting on
Finnegans wake as it's being published.
Right? I mean, no, come on. Test of
time is the obligation of all of us about
the languages thing. I'm struggling to
remember the last name of the dissident
faculty member at Columbia who is the most
vocal opponent of the core in the eighties
shaven. Sorry, kill feather. Yes, Sherman
kill feather. And when David Denby gets
around interviewing her, very curious
thing happens, he's looking for some person
to chant, Hey, hey ho ho! Right. And
she even kill feather hits him with. first
of all, these are works in translation.
You're reading them on the cheap to you
go through them. She didn't say that.
I did a tour bus driven by Sandra Bullock
again just as quickly as possible. You
know, we got 18 and 19 year olds of vastly
different different preparations. She
did say that and then she lowered the bomb
on lower the boom and said, uh, this
whole american great books thing. This
is very american is very compensatory at
Oxbridge. You try floating these lists
around oxford Cambridge would be laughed
out of the room. Makes us all feel terribly
belated and poor american cousin again.
But it turns out that the most serious
objections to these uh courses at Columbia
and kill feathers. Person had to do with
reading things quickly and in translation
and to that all I can say is beats not
random at all. Um, the last version of
the four times over the Republic, the
fourth time through was Allan bloom's and
this is right before Allan bloom became
rock star. This is actually 1985 86.
Uh, and, and bloom insisted that that's
trusting away of his, his was the only
real and literal interpretation of plato
and has this long interpretive essay at
the end of the book. It's actually completely
brilliant. And so even reading something
into different translations, if you can't,
if you don't have as I don't the greek
as um saying to kevin around here that
I don't know why I never qualified for
the virtual ap class in junior year of
high school, but I didn't, so I just
have snippets of the immediate here and
there. Um, but if you can't do it in
the original better, better in translation
than not at all. I know it's it's it's
it's it's my wishy washing answer. So
that's what this person here. Yeah. Yeah.
I wanted to comment on one distinction
that might help the debate that I think
sometimes gets kind of overlooked and that
is not the debate on what we should read,
but the debate on how we should read it.
You mentioned the the end of the Western
civilization course at the University of
Chicago in 2002 and I was in that last
course and it inflamed the whole city of
Chicago and I guess everywhere else worse
than the o leary in the act and the people,
the people who were talking about it.
I was taking the class at the time and
the people who were talking about, I had
no idea what was going on in the class.
Um, it's what people missed is that it's
a history class. Um, you know, people
talked about nobody's reading Aristotle
seriously in this class anymore and or
people won't be doing it anymore. And
and I said, well, I'm in the Western
Civ class and we're not reading Aristotle
except to try to figure out something about
the Athenian constitution. And there were
classes before that where you did read
things like Aristotle and lock and stuff
like that and took them seriously. But
those are the ones that nobody was talking
about. Yeah. Um because they weren't
they weren't nobody was trying to change
them, but it was really a history class.
And that brings me to a second and kind
of related point that I think what some
people and I think alan bloom might be
one of them, although I don't know a lot
about him. But um, they have a problem
more with reading these things as works
of civilization in that civilization context
rather than taking them seriously, you
know, in some kind of isolation. Like
you mentioned an essay, I'm gonna try
to be clear about this. You mentioned
an essay in which somebody wanted to uh,
somebody was complaining about taking Dante
out of the western. So it's actually Wall
Street Journal op, Yeah, I'm getting
some of the things you could have confused,
but um, the very idea of reading Dante
as Western civilization puts a kind of
distance between you and that means that
you're taking it as an artifact of civilization
rather than a serious work in its own right.
And I think I'm not coming down on one
side or the other of that, but I think
that's something that needs to be considered.
Yeah, that's also a great question. Um,
the short answer, the last second part
is to some extent that's inevitable. Um,
unless you design a thing, one of the,
one of the benefits you get from doing
the western Civ, even a very fast tour
bus is you get a sense of what the epic
tradition is and what its aspirations were
and why very few people except those of
extraordinary hubris these days go around
trying to justify the ways of God demand.
Um, but, and so it makes sense actually,
I think in that, in that in translation,
1500 up to 1500 class, we actually read
the la vita nova before trying to approach
the Inferno. Whereas in the Western Civ
class, it is, it's an artifact of civilization.
And then we got this and we got this.
Um, but yeah, something like I said,
I think that's that's inevitable. Um,
I will go. There's one other thing, though,
that reminds me two things that remind
me of other passages in Denver's book.
One has to do when the other thing that
killed father raised uh for which he had
no answer at all is that when you teach
these things as artifacts of Western civilization,
you inevitably take them out of historical
context. And if you want one dividing
line, you would not think the cultural
left and right divide over context. But
over the last 23 decades and sometimes
that's been the case. And in fact, Denver's
book does a great job of showing how the
most dedicated teachers of C. C. And
let home actually provide these background
lectures for understanding what was going
on around the leviathan the time of its
publication, Then he gets to kill a feather
and kill feather talks about context.
He has this really petulant little passage
about all this. Talk of context was an
infuriating academic tick. But you're
in college the ring an academic ticket.
You can take that to the new yorker if
you wanna complain about the academic.
I mean, it's part of our job to put these
things in various kinds of pedagogical
context. And then right back to the way
things are taught, first of all, yeah,
enormous disciplinary differences with
regard to this, which I will deal with
briefly and in lampoon form, the historians,
historians are always after us for this.
They say, you know, we don't even set
pen to paper until we have 100 and 50 examples
of industrialism in the early 18th 19th
century. And uh, in England, you literary
critics, you find a dependent clause in
a minor novel of dickens. And you think
you've found a new motive, subjectivity.
Uh, and, you know, there's enough of
grain of truth to that to make it stick
at the same time. We like, yeah, these
grad grins or path facts, facts, facts.
They have 150 examples, That's one. So
it actually does matter whether you're
reading the text as an artifact of history
as an artifact, reading it anthropologically
for God's sake, or as a literary work.
And it's very, very difficult to slow
down in Western Civ courses long enough
to actually read something close as a literary
work. There is that last thing, uh,
not disciplinary differences, but when,
uh, maybe one of the cool things he does
in the course of this because he goes and
visits other courses other than the one
he's in. And he comes across Aristotle's
politics being taught by tigris Atkinson,
um, who is basically teaching it as he
got to know your enemy. You know, Aristotle.
He's the evil guy who divided public from
private, look what he did to women and
so forth. And I sort of missed this and
when I read the book and I missed it in
my review that that's just a lousy way
to be teaching Aristotle. It's just as
if as if he's responsible for the condition
of the subways. Um, because the public
is an experimental space and so forth.
And so I know that attacks, that's actually
part of the argument. Uh, look and uh,
you know, simply teaching against the
grain and that sort of coarse grained mode,
I think does a disservice to, to the complexity
of the tradition as well. So there too,
I would have my whole series of caveats
right to midnight about how things are
taught as well as what they, what they
are this person here. maybe the last question
to you, you were when you were talking
about how to convince or the science,
you know, the scientists and the information
technology people in the landscape architecture
and hospitality folks that it's very important
that they studied, that there should be
a core, that there should be, um, of,
of some sort of substance. And you know,
I'm a graduate student here, but I did
undergraduate university of Maryland and
it's, you know, it's a cafeteria very
badly structured and you know, not all
the food is good. Yeah, no, the food
is terrible. Um, but I mean not to say
all the food is terrible, but it's it's
something you put off and it's something
you wait till your senior. And that's
that's the end of that. But you also made
the argument that, um, it's not the case
that the typical argument for getting someone
in the sciences or in one of that, it's
a preparation for life in the world, for
life in our country, for life in as a
civilized human being. And if it's the
case that it's better to study the Cannon
just so that you can understand other,
um, or or certain pieces of work, so
you understand Shakespeare before you read
later authors and it's helpful for your
colleagues in the english department or
it's helpful to understand ancient Greece
before you get to, you know, modern german
military history, that it's that it's
better for that. I wonder how much progress
you think can be made in curricular reform
because if it's the case that it isn't
an end, if it isn't an end in itself,
that, I mean, excuse this is sellable
in some way, I mean, and bear in mind
that I'm a political philosophy graduate
student, so I'm not really into selling
these things, but um, that I do wonder
how you, how you can put those two aims
together and create sort of a unified,
um, a unified bloc. Because, I mean,
you mentioned the Red Book of Harvard and
the first talk of the Western Civ lectures
was um, by a man who was involved in that.
And he didn't really even he wasn't entirely
sure what to say, and and I mean, it
was it was a great talk, but he wasn't
entirely sure how it could fit together.
And I wonder what you would have to say
about that, given how it all fit together.
Okay, no, one of the difficulties of
doing this, it's not just that people
are parochial about their own disciplines.
They want to grab majors and stick them
in for 24 courses. Never let them leave.
Is that what you could go around the room
to all these various disciplines and say,
um but the art is really central for understanding
what is to be human. They'll say the same
thing to, they will say that whether they're
in psychology or physics or what have you.
And I actually exempted the scientists,
I think I mentioned all these other, you
know, it's not so much the scientist,
The worst I can say about the sciences
in my history is that there are the other
humanities, so idiosyncratic. You know,
it's not against us, they're just sort
of, you know, it's your Proust. I like
I mean really the and in translation to
the the seriously the one thing there was
this enormous initiative in Illinois,
its real purpose was to give people NSF
give funding after the lost NSF funding,
since we're not eligible for NSF funding,
we did, it was called interdisciplinary
anyway. And after six or seven years,
if they were finally embarrassed the fact
that every single thing they funded was
basically the life sciences or we're in
physics and chemistry. And so they gave
one thing to Proust 2000. You just never
know what they're gonna do, what they're
gonna like, why? Post 2000 and again,
it's just this sort of blindfolded and
dark. That's the worst thing I can say
that the science is the best thing to say
about them is that you actually do need
a working knowledge of physics, Chemistry
and life sciences to be an informed human
uh knowing a few things about math wouldn't
hurt either. Um And in fact, sorry?
No, I don't know, I'm going to go that
far, you know, certainly knowing um uh
just basically, do you need to know calculus
well, yeah, I'm gonna shoot a cannon
ball and do leave this all over again.
Um, certainly, certainly basics of every
single field. That's what the idea behind
it was, how to put it together. Well,
I don't think really, despite the fact
that there was the glory that was Greece
first, then the grandeur that was Rome.
I really don't think that much of the humanities
need be cumulative in that way. I do think
you can go to the scientists and say,
look, some of your greatest scientists,
um, you know, arranging oh, from board
steven pinker. I just pick people at random.
It's not as if they're not in dialogue
with the humanity, sort of fabulous Stephen
jay Gould also comes to mind and being
able to just a maintain some working knowledge
of what where sciences came from. I'm
sorry, I'm going to hold times about this,
but I'm sort of astrophysics geek who goes
up to about 1930 after that. It gets much,
much too complicated for me to understand.
I just tell I just repeat whatever they
tell me. And last time I ran this is a
astrophysicist, cosmologist friend who
taught in Chicago. And I said, can you
please please explain to me the part I
never get about brian Greene's elegant
universe is why there's an 11th dimension
in the string theory. And he says the
short answer is that there's 11th dimension,
because Edward witten says there is and
he's really smart. Um so at least I have
a glib line for that. But I do think that
it's imperative to at least stay informed
even about fairly useless things like astrophysics
when we are working, when we think of
the science as we think these people,
they're patenting things, they're discovering
things, they're curing stuff. Some of
them are uh some of them are just looking
at the sky, trying to figure out what
all that dark energy is. We have no idea
what use of that information is going to
be, but it's every bit of speculative
and weird as anything we do in english,
that's why I love it. Um but at the same
time that one of the guys who's, who's
under attack for not attending to undergraduate
instruction in Illinois, one of the Chicago
tribune's attacks on us was paul lauterbur
who actually invented MRI you know, he
has a sort of lifetime pass when it comes
to utility. Yeah. And when I think the
other, the other john Bardeen was a faculty
member of Illinois. He invented the transistor,
you know, and Illinois has been coasting
on those nobel prizes ever since. So when
you ask them, you know. Well what is
this stuff about dark energy? They say
go on kid, we invent the transistor.
But the truth is a lot of what the sciences
do is not directly useful in that way.
And the same kind of case has to be made
for the same kind of kind of appeal to
a well rounded person that you would make
for someone being at least acquainted.
A little bit of what Hagel wrote. Um mm
Okay. Is you're supposed Mark sometimes
we sure it was mainly, yeah. Okay because
I only have an answer for you really on
the sciences, but but let me go back.
Uh I forgot to answer. Uh but the the
one thing I left out of the things we have
to require of all students of course is
yeah, I forgot about a two course foreign
language requirement. Uh Imagine people
speaking in foreign languages. Um And
the M. L. A. We are fond of saying foreign
language study is up what that really means.
That spanish is doing well. And there
has been like a 900% increase in people
wanted to study Arabic. And boy is this
provoking means about the L. A. Because
of course uh the study of Arabic is of
intense interest to the State Department
and two other governmental agencies. I
myself not that ambivalent about this.
I think more people in the Foreign Service
can speak Arabic. More people actually
know about the region is a better thing
than people completely ignorant of it.
Um But there is the the the ambivalence
is summed up in the fact that the U. S.
Government actually now calls these things
strategic languages which are joke is enemy
languages. Um but meanwhile while Arabic
is big in spanish always is a german french
italian Slavic languages. Some places
are just dying on the vine and no number,
no amount of statistical flim flummery
can hi that. And so we have made this
deal with, you know, may not be the devil.
It takes many forms um french for finance,
german for engineering of pegging the language
study to something more directly into national
and useful. And whether or not that's
an instrumental izing of in other words,
people not gonna be reading baudelaire.
Uh they're doing fringe to open the branch
office or whatever it remains to be seen.
And sometimes it's the only way you can
make your peace with the professional programs.
They're just not going to be persuaded
that the sort of well rounded person is
in their best interest. The only time
I've seen an exception to that, unfortunately
is one of Penn State is when uh someone
gets the sense that a sense of business
ethics might be a good thing to get the
philosophy department involved in. And
so one of the things we got going to Penn
State is this thing called the Rock Ethics
Institute. I actually gave a presentation
on postmodernism and income instability
about belief systems that don't match up
anywhere at all. The guy who came up just
jumped out of the season, I really want
to hear more about this, was the founder
of the Rock Institute. Why? Because he's
an oilman and he says we deal with in compensable
cultural beliefs all the time in my business.
And that's why I found the Rock Ethics
Institute so occasionally sort of applied
philosophy, you know, under the heading
of ethics gets in there the way that french
for finance, those are german for engineering.
And I'll say the same wishy washy thing
I said about reading foreign works in translation.
It's nothing at all. I'm gonna have to
cut it off now and dr robert, I want to
thank you so much for what we're very rich
talk. I'm so glad, I hope it's on the
web so I can go back and look at it again
later. I definitely wanna be thinking
and especially as the director of the series,
I'm so grateful that that your talk was
so on point and and you obviously prepared
hard to give this for us. So thank you
very much for Yeah.