In case you didn't know

Glenn Greenwald is terrific.

Marxist Reading

In "Going Boom" at bookforum, Walter Benn Michaels has, I believe, some strong insights.  My main problem with the essay is the assumption that it is the duty of literature (or literary criticism, or literary study, or simply reading) to explore and expose the problems of the free market.  First, aren't there better areas of inquiry more suited to this project?  Economics, Journalism, Political Science--it seems there are fields that would do a much better job with that project than writers of literature.  Second, I'm skeptical that more novels like American Psycho or more television shows like The Wire are really going to foster anything like a revolution or reform of the free market system.

But it seems Michaels also views the primary concern of human beings as our material conditions, and thus what we read should reflect that concern.  I think, given that much of our lives is devoted to those material conditions, that when we read we perhaps should devote our attention to "something else," whether that be pleasure, or spiritual fulfillment, or self-knowledge, or personal growth, or intellectual curiosity, or any of many, many human concerns that are not about the economic system. I might agree with Harold Bloom when he writes, "Do not attempt to improve your neighbor or your neighborhood by what or how you read. Self-improvement is a large enough project for your mind and spirit." 

(via Dissent)

On the Commodification of Peace

At We Have Mixed Feelings About Sven Sundgaard, a mostly silly blog where I sometimes examine consumer life, I discuss the consumer fashion appeal of the Peace Symbol.

Gratuitous Link

Matt Richtel's "If Only Literature Could Be a Cellphone-Free Zone" in The New York Times.

I've thought the same thing while watching Seinfeld (just a decade later, some of their plots and situations would be wrapped up with a cell phone) and horror movies (since the essence of many horror scenes is isolation, writers may need to find a way to get rid of a character's cell phone: dying batteries, broken phones, locations without connection, etc.).

Gratuitous Link

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food reviewed at The New York Times.

And you should see how I hold a fork

In The New York Times, Calvin Trillin speculates on whether he is "an uncultured oaf."

I don't want to be a sprig on a barrel organ

At Salon, Gordy Slack talks to Alva Noe about "why you are not your brain."

"And, everyone keeps calling me 'S'"

It's the little details that make this a masterpiece.  From The Onion:


Prague's Franz Kafka International Named World's Most Alienating Airport

Torrential Downpour

Animal Rights and “Righteousness:” further exploration on reason and faith in the secular
Another bit not intended as a developed argument, but an attempted articulation of swirling thoughts. This is why I write (even for a little read blog): working out ideas in writing helps me feel more grounded.

In an earlier exploration of Animal Rights, I suggested that even in this secular argument, it is irrational leaps of faith that guide thought and action (I don’t see a good rational argument that animals should be regarded as equal to humans, though I’m also not sure there’s a rational argument that humans are superior and can thus use animals in any way we see fit). I think the residue of religious sensibilities in this secular argument run deeper than that. From reading the writing of some vegans, vegetarians, and animal rights activists, I get the sense there is a belief in and desire for a secular version of “Righteousness,” an inner purity that separates one from the impure.

For Gary Francione, the demarcation for purity runs between vegans and everybody else; to be vegan is to be “pure,” and to consume any animal products at all puts you on the other side of the purity line (Francione: "There is no morally significant difference between meat and dairy [...] There is as much (if not more) suffering in a glass of milk as in a pound of steak "). I obviously think there is a morally significant difference, and I would put that line between meat eaters and vegetarians: I see a fundamental difference between consuming the flesh of killed animals, and not consuming the flesh of killed animals. On the issue of animal treatment in this society, I think vegetarians and vegans share more in common than vegetarians and meat eaters. But maybe that sentence itself betrays the fallacy of such a "line" of fundamental separation; the better graphic symbol is probably a set of intersecting circles.

I recognize a religious desire for Righteousness in my own vegetarianism; it is more about avoiding complicity than bringing about change (and thus if I ever do go completely vegan, it will be because my own conscience demands it, not a desire to fulfill somebody else's standard of moral purity), though I doubt other vegans and vegetarians have the same view. But the desire for inner Righteousness, an inner purity, is not exclusively religious and drives many secular conflicts. Republicans and Democrats sometimes seem to demand "ideological purity" from their members on particular issues (notably abortion). Whenever we ask a question like "Is So-And-So racist/sexist/anythingist?" we're assuming a line of demarcation between the pure and the impure (and perhaps implicitly overshadowing unconscious assumptions of racism/sexism/anythingism, and of institutional racism/sexism/anythingism). Again, I see the residues of religious issues in secular arguments.

Links
Review of The Face on Your Plate: The Truth About Food, by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (LA Times).

Christopher Hitchens on Karl Marx today (The Atlantic).

Eric Margolis on war in Afghanistan (Common Dreams).

I generally don't like audience interaction/participation in theater; I've got the weird feeling the actors are treating me like a rube and they think they're better than me (The Onion).

Barack Obama

Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s "In Our Lifetime"

Michael Eric Dyson's "Race, post race"

Dostoevsky's religion

A.N. Wilson reviews Rowan William's book on Dostoevsky in the Times Literary Supplement.

The third paragraph contains some interesting insights on The Idiot, how knowledge of Russian Orthodox icons affects the understanding of Holbein's painting. I say interesting, but not essential: you don't need to know Orthodox iconography to grasp the emptiness of Holbein's painting or its use in the novel. It is, as Dostoevsky and Myshkin have said, enough to make one abandon faith.

Dostoevsky's novels are filled with characters driven by ideas, and many of these ideas are religious in nature. What endures for many readers are those stormy, passionate, conflicted characters, many of them wrestling with nihilism and religion. I know that being a Christian prone to intense doubts is one reason Dostoevsky's novels appeal to me, touching my psyche on a deep level.

Casualties of War

Robert Koehler's "The War to Promote Terror"

Milton at 400

The Williamsburg Art and Historical Center celebrates (New York Times).

Rabbits and Makeup

"Lab Rabbit Strongly Recommends Cover Girl Waterproof Mascara for Sensitive Eyes"

Torrential Downpour: Hawthorne

Random Paragraphs on Hawthorne
I've always thought Hawthorne one of the great masters of the short story form. Some of his stories read like episodes of The Twilight Zone ("My Kinsman, Major Monineux," "Wakefield," for example), which I consider a compliment, anyway. There's something like a Rod Serling structure (with the critical beginning and ending of the story) and Rod Serling narration.

Tomorrow in lit class I'm planning something a little different. With the exception of poetry, we rarely read more than one work by the same author; for the purposes of a general education lit course titled "The Human Experience in Literature," it is best to cover a lot of different writers. But I do think students may be able to see trends across a single writer's works, so we're reading "The May-Pole of Merry Mount," "The Minister's Black Veil," and "Young Goodman Brown" for the same class period. They are rather similar in subject matter and theme, and they feature Hawthorne's characteristic tone and narration. To provide students with a broad experience with literature, it is also useful to show how we can read multiple works by one author.

Re-reading "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" is providing me a different experience than in the past. Yes, "Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire," and the gloomy Puritans cannot have any of the reader's sympathy. And yet it seems the revelers of Merry Mount maintain a joy that cannot possibly be sustained. And perhaps Hawthorne, despite the obvious hatred of the Puritans, recognizes this: "Once, it is said, they were seen following a flower-decked corpse, with merriment and festive music, to his grave. But did the dead man laugh?" Merry Mount is joyful, and yet the life of Merry Mount is somehow inauthentic, incomplete. There is both joy and sadness to human existence; as Chief Bromden describes McMurphy's laughter in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, "but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain." But of course the Puritans are also incomplete, and so unappealing for their lack of joy and their insistence on forcing their joylessness on others.

In the past year, a great deal of my thought has been given to the contrast of Javert and Valjean in Les Miserables. Javert distances himself from humanity by his harsh stances: he cannot believe in redemption, and he cannot believe in forgiveness. It strikes me that in stories like "Young Goodman Brown" (where Brown's recognition of the common sin of humanity makes him bitter and distances himself from his faith and human connections) and "The Minister's Black Veil" (an even more obvious story of a man separating himself from humanity because of his view of sin) we again see Javert's view. But we must recall in Valjean's example forgiveness, redemption, selflessness, and humanity.

Literature offers us imagination: it gives a chance to escape ourselves, to imagine we were someone or something or somewhere or somewhen else. It allows us understanding of humanity by showing us humanity. Still, I read as myself: whenever I encounter animals being killed in fiction, I become consciously aware. In "The May-Pole of Merry Mount," I become conscious of myself when it is said that the revelers hunted animals to wear their skins, and I become conscious of myself when Endicott orders a bear shot.

Though I find Hawthorne a short story master, I've never read any of his novels. Perhaps I'll but The Scarlet Letter on my summer reading pile.

Oh, well
I bought Derrida's Writing and Difference today. There goes the summer.

And here summer comes
At most, I have 25 exams and 89 papers to grade in the next two weeks, and it will be summer.

Links
At Reginald Shepherd's Blog: "A dichotomy is commonly made between aesthetic expression and aesthetic construction, in which the two terms are set in opposition as ways of proceeding in art. One is either exploring the possibilities of one’s medium or one is expressing one’s emotional and psychological state. One is either following formal necessities or emotional necessities. I find this dichotomy to be false."

Reassigned Time addresses some of the common complaints professors make about their students. Which do college professors complain about with more vigor: university students or university administration? I'd say it's a toss-up.

Torrential Downpour

Why I read: "for here there is no place that does not see you"
On Friday, I wrote about the very real impact literature has had on my life. And perhaps I should also recall my reading of Rilke's "The Archaic Torso of Apollo." I have rarely been able to separate my reading from a religious quest. I believe reading can be a deep, spiritual experience, a journey into the soul. Perhaps I should be embarrassed to speak of reading this way, but I am not. I read to know myself, to push myself into a deep and sometimes difficult journey into humanity.

Treat for class
In the past when teaching Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter," I've been tempted to bring in some contemporary comic versions of Absurdism to show the class. I think I may finally do it: it's a good lit class, engaging and thoughtful. They deserve some laughs. I'll show at least one sketch of The Kids in the Hall (there are some nice vaudeville riffs), and one sketch from Saturday Night Live (my favorite: Tim Meadows as the straight man census taker and Christopher Walken as a completely wacky fellow). I ought to borrow a DVD of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

I sometimes feel a low-brow guilt in my teaching: I'm perhaps too willing to incorporate popular culture into class. In my lit class, I've compared works we've read to things like The Simpsons, Office Space, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Nip/Tuck, The Sopranos, Big Love, and a whole host of other movies and TV shows that would probably make the professors I admired throughout college throw up. In comp class, it's somewhat more justifiable to focus units on pop culture: as students work hard to improve their writing, it can be useful to allow them to write about something they are familiar with.

Summer Reading
Between here and summer are still roughly 25 moderately sized papers, 25 lengthy final exams, 75 research papers, and a few other things thrown in. That makes it seem rather far away, which makes it difficult to process the fact that indeed it will be full-throttle summer in less than three weeks.

gave myself a rather arbitrary rule for summer novel reading. As most of my novel reading in the past year had been devoted to Dostoevsky (who writes rather long books), I plan to read novels 200-350 pages in length by several different authors. That may be tough: it will mean resisting my constant temptation to give up and just re-read The Brothers Karamozov. Of course I hope to read a fair amount of poetry, drama, and non-fiction as well.

Links
At The Philosopher's Magazine, James Garvey considers the difficulty of utilitarian arguments for vegetarianism. Worthwhile and interesting stuff, though I admit I don't think of my vegetarianism in utilitarian terms.

Martin E. Marty in "Imagine There's No Islam" (Religion Dispatches):

"Rather than seek to “'destroy' Islam and the Muslims, one infers, it might be better for all peoples of faith to look more in the mirror and less out the window, to promote peace."

Center of Gravitas on attempts to limit what professors talk about and assign for reading:

"Republicans give faculty way too much credit while giving university students none at all. If, as a professor, I had the power to 'indoctrinate' my students, do you think that Bush would still be sitting in the White House? I have no special power to brainwash my students into being radicals. Heck, I can’t even convince my students to use the spell checker on their wordprocessor before submitting a paper. Just imagine how little power I have to foment revolution."

Rohan Maitzen in The Valve:

"In The Practice of Reading (1998), Denis Donoghue also calls for renewed aestheticism--but in the interests of an enhanced ethical engagement: 'the purpose of reading literature is to exercise or incite one’s imagination; specifically, one’s ability to imagine being different' (56). My own impression of what the broader public is interested in--and also of where they might both need and appreciate ‘expert’ guidance--would be ethical as much as aesthetic criticism, at least of fiction. Amateur book bloggers, Amazon reviewers, Oprah’s viewers, even many newspaper book reviewers are preoccupied with plot and character, with what happens to and to whom and why, and with judging the people, their decisions, and the results."

Torrential Downpour

Politics and Literature
Jacob Russell writes: "Not that I believe for a second that literature and the arts are not in themselves, consequential--even primary to politics. But they cannot be so as Mandarin pursuits apart from the messy realities of power and its relations to everyday life."

This reminds me of something that I've tried to argue in the past: it's not that literature becomes politicized, but that politics underlies so much of how we approach literature.

In grad school, I took a course on Asian-American literature, and we very much took for granted that literature is political. During this time, I was reading William Wordsworth's "Nutting," describing an excursion tramping through the woods looking for nuts. How on earth is this a political poem?, I thought. Then I considered some questions one could ask about this poem. What political realities granted the poet access to the woods, and the leisure time to walk about in the woods? More pressing: what political realities lead professors to determine this poem belongs in any canon (in other words, that students should read it)? Why this poem instead of another? Suddenly there are political ramifications underlying my approach to Wordsworth's poem: politics in why I was reading it in the first place.

I don't suggest that one must ask these questions to read that or any other poem (though Wordsworth did occasionally touch on politics in his poetry--"The Prelude" includes his musings on the French Revolution and its aftermath). In fact, I think one would have a more authentic, meaningful experience reading the poem without those political questions. But it is good if somebody asks these questions. Whether you would like to ask these questions or not is up to you as a reader. But politics underlies the canon, and it is a good thing that people are asking the serious political questions about what the canon includes and excludes, and why.

Grammar, Clarity, and They/Their
English teachers should not teach and enforce grammar rules to be conservative sticklers of traditional usage; rather, English teachers should teach and enforce grammar rules to facilitate clarity.

The top priority of most writing (and all academic writing) should be clarity: one wishes to convey one's meaning as clearly as possible. Grammar is a (very small) part of clear writing: poor grammar can distort or confuse one's meaning.

I'm ready to accept the use of "they" or "their as a singular genderless pronoun on philosophical grounds. I don't like it, and I won't use it myself, but I'll tolerate it. Language evolves, and it's silly to resist change on one little grammar rule. However, in some contexts, the use of they/their as a singular pronoun can confuse the point. If a sentence has two separate nouns, and then later in the sentence they/their is used as a pronoun, it can be unclear whether the pronoun refers to both nouns or to only one (or which one).

On the grounds of clarity, I think I ought to encourage my students to maintain subject-pronoun agreement. It is not about nit-picking a clearly evolving grammar usage; it is about encouraging students to be as clear in their meaning as they can be.

Mostly Vegan
I'm in the early stages of working out precisely how I'm living for the next year (or more). While most days I am a fairly strict vegan, I am now also a "special occasions cheese eater." Those special occasions are rare: I ate pizza for my birthday, and in the summer, I foresee three special occasions: an important wedding, a trip to Boston (first real vacation in three years--I want to eat some cheese), and the Hazelweird Fantasy Football Draft.

Links (a few which will show how unabashedly low-brow I can be)
I thought Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was an outstanding movie in its way; it was a silly comedy, but it was actually exploring something meaningful, too. I hope the next one is just as good: in The New York Times, Dennis Lim calls it a "stoner protest film."

Ona Bonfiglio in Common Dreams: "Peace activists are often accused of being naïve dreamers when it comes to dealing with conflict or dangerous enemies. So what is the alternative? Usually it’s to fight fire with fire (i.e., revenge and retaliation)."

An article in The Onion for fans of Back to the Future.

At New Scientist, read "24 myths and misconceptions" about Evolution.

Sometimes we need to think about the things we take for granted to recognize the absurdity.

Like justices of the highest court in the land discussing the probability for pain and the degree of suffering necessary to make the institutional killing of a human being illegal.

See NPR here and here.

Downpour: mostly links and excerpts

Teaching the text
In my general education literature class, I tell students virtually nothing about the author, and virtually nothing about the time and culture the book was written in. There are some very reasonable exceptions, of course. For the most part, though, I figure we've got enough to deal with in the text itself, and for the objectives of the course, I really think the text is sufficient.

Mostly vegan: private vegan, social vegetarian
When I'm eating alone and planning my meals alone, I'm a fairly strict vegan (though sometimes honey is an ingredient in what I eat). When I'm with people, socializing and going to a restaurant, I don't really want to bother checking whether the veggie burger on a bun that I order contains animal products.

Recently a woman asked and I described myself as "mostly vegan." That clearly implies total vegetarianism, doesn't it? She said she was "basically vegan," and I of course understood that to mean a person that never eats meat. That's reasonable, right?

Is blogging in your office "unethical"?
Apparently it is "improper" to use university resources, including "work-place internet access," for "outside activities."

So is blogging in one's office, but on one's own time, unethical?

It's silly how superior NPR is to everything else on the radio
"Rising Demand for Meat Takes Toll on Environment"

I almost thought Renee Montagne was getting a little defensive: she seemed to be trying to get Naylor to say meat production wasn't that much worse for the environment than other types of mass food production.

"Justices Weigh Death Penalty for Child Rape"

Nina Totenberg:

"'This case is a throwback,' says Washington and Lee University professor David Bruck. 'The death penalty for rape was one of the most disturbing and troubling aspects of this nation's entire experience until the Supreme Court called a halt, we thought, in 1977.'

"Disturbing and troubling, he says, because it was almost exclusively imposed on African Americans.

"Indeed, from 1930 to 1972, basically the last years when the death penalty was imposed for rape, nine out of 10 men executed for rape were black. Moreover, it appears that no white man has ever been executed in the U.S. for the non-homicide rape of a black woman or child."

Reading as Individuals
Harold Bloom in "Why Read?":

"It matters, if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments and opinions, that they continue to read for themselves. How they read, well or badly, and what they read, cannot depend wholly upon themselves, but why they read must be for and in their own interest. You can read merely to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock. Bible readers, those who search the Bible for themselves, perhaps exemplify the urgency more plainly than readers of Shakespeare, yet the quest is the same. One of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change, and the final change alas is universal."

The Pope
Mary E. Hunt in "In the Papal Pocket: Benedict XVI and the Press":

"Press coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States—his first as Pope—acts like a mirror reflecting the media’s complicated role in reporting religious news as a whole. [...] If the kind of coverage in 2005 that accompanied the death of Pope John Paul II, and the election of his successor, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) is any indication, we can expect a great deal of air time and print space, very little if any critical analysis, and a lot of free press for the Roman Catholic Church."

See also
In The Guardian, Fred d'Agular writes about poetry and the Virginia Tech murders of a year ago: "the elegiac art of poetry, when faced with grief, makes marvellous things happen."

In Times Online, Margaret Reynolds discusses editions of classics.

Peter Singer on human rights, words, and moral progress (Common Dreams).

Living and Ideas

Elizabeth Day reviewing Carole Seymour-Jones's A Dangerous Liason (a biography of Sartre and de Beauvoir) in The Guardian:

"As a dual biography of two of the 20th century's most towering philosophical minds, it elucidates the interplay between their intellectual thought and their personal interactions. Much of Seymour-Jones's work centres on the poisonous frictions between the two."