In the New York Times piece about the University of Michigan’s efforts to diversify their campus with a heavy investment in DEI initiatives, Nicholas Confessore includes an anecdote about a literature class.
When I am truly enjoying art, the feeling is multilayered. I am both locked into its textures and patterns, and being invited further into the its hidden intentions. I watched Irma Vep for the first time time a few nights ago, and the scene where Maggie Cheung’s personas collide as Sonic Youth’s “Tunic” kicks in gave me goosebumps. It’s a sensation that is impossible to codify, and I cannot believe that a director could have created it for didactic or financial reasons. Watching the movie did make me look at a lot of film blogs to try to understand what I was feeling.
Great art teaches you to think as a byproduct, but never as an intention. The best quote I’ve ever read related to justifying the pursuit of aesthetic enjoyment for its own ends, is by Guy Davenport. He wrote an essay, “Finding”, about collecting arrowheads with his family as a child:
“I was with grown-ups, so it wasn’t play. There was no lecture, so it wasn’t school. All effort was willing, so it wasn’t work. No ideal compelled us, so it wasn’t idealism or worship or philosophy. . . . Yet it was the seeding of all sorts of things, of scholarship, of a stoic sense of pleasure. . . . I know that my sense of place, of occasion, even of doing anything at all, was shaped by those afternoons. It took a while for me to realize that people can grow up without being taught to see, to search surfaces for all the details, to check out a whole landscape for what it has to offer.”
“Because if reading just makes you a better person by creating empathy, reading is an inherently good act, then why Faulkner and not Harry Potter?”
This exact thing already caused a dustup a few years back in the book community. An undergrad student opposed the inclusion of a YA novel in her college’s reading recommendation list. She suggested that it be swapped out in favor of a legal memoir. All of YA Twitter and half of our contemporary writers assembled to call her a bitch. Even though the memoir in question was written by a Black attorney and would also teach the reader about racism - so, still firmly in the confines of most liberal author’s politics.
Even if you are a student who wants to push yourself, none of the intellectual industries seem to want that. They’ll hide it behind some cultural talking point or another but the end result is the same - they need a horde of uncritical consumers to keep themselves afloat. Endless growth is the death of all things, I guess.
And as much as everyone complains about kids these days being so sensitive over language — whenever kids move beyond the realm of language and start agitating for things in the material world, the pitchforks come out from all sides. Complaining about the racial slur in a short story is ultimately more palatable a thing for the University to deal with than ousting whichever faculty member is actually a racist terror.
And, let’s be honest, do most parents think being able to dissect and understand Faulkner is a worthwhile use of anyone’s time? Or should their kid use those dozens of hours to earn a LinkedIn digital marketing certificate so that they can do graphic design for the latest startup unicorn?
I remember the YA incident because it was shocking how long it took everyone to realize that they were bullying a teenager. Professional writers, academics, grown fucking adults were shaming and harassing a teenager. It was a bizarre experience, and mostly everyone involved just deleted tweets instead of apologizing.
That incident made me think of that movie with Charlize Theron, Young Adult? One of the better movies with Diablo Cody's name attached, I think. When one of the grown-up authors said "fuck that RAGGEDY ASS bitch!" about a teenage girl, I had so many thoughts? Not only about the world of YA publishing itself (its own topic, frankly one that's probably deserving of an entire sociological study at this point) but about the utility of social media - social media is a place where a lot of adults sort of behave badly and in an immature way and reinforce the conventions and rules of their online or professional "clique". The cognitive dissonance between being an adult who writes about these common teenage struggles in the context of an American high school, and then resorting to the kind of mean girl behavior one is ostensibly trying to dissect, was interesting. It was also interesting to see Roxane Gay, who is not only one of the most prominent authors in the publishing world but ostensibly an educator herself, involve herself in that too!
And I was reminded, more than a little bit, of that pile-on when the "Bad Art Friend" story came out a year or so later even though that was entirely about adults writing books for adults. I believe Celeste Ng featured prominently in both?
“Because if reading just makes you a better person by creating empathy, reading is an inherently good act, then why Faulkner and not Harry Potter?” And college literature departments would be staffed by people who had been transformed into angels through all of their reading. Which is not my experience.
I teach in higher ed and I think this is spot on, especially re: failure of academics to effectively teach students. The student's job is not to come to us already understanding. It's our job to create that space within them to be curious and to learn. Their resistance is natural, especially when sharing work, like the Modernists, that is designed to create resistance and fuck around with the reader !
Also I HATE the argument that reading is productive because you become more empathetic/"a better person." Novels aren't FOR anything. It's just another cool thing people make to express, and it's a gift we get to enjoy when someone like Faulkner or Joyce says "Come watch me try to communicate the human experience in a new way." Operatic, big ego artistic risks are moving, fun, inspiring ("good" or "bad" feelings). Learning to experience art this way, and all of the beauty it brings to your own creative practice and how you move through the world, is not related to making money, and higher ed is prohibitively, evil-ly expensive--so we have to hide that this is what we have the ability to teach students. Anyway, school should be free, art should be free, everybody giving gifts to each other--end rant :)
I blame Pandora for running an ad that was reminiscent of WW I Uncle Sam (America Needs YOU to Get an MFA). OK, not really. I f'ing love Pandora. I was in my basement, sewing when I heard it and ran to the metal filing cabinet I inherited to check my undergrad GPA. (Did I qualify? Would I even get in?) In five minutes I jumped from mild melancholy to DEFCON 1. Over the next couple years, I struggled to subtract the business of selling art from the feeling I got from making it. It seems like what is happening with our higher ed is a refusal to acknowledge this. Or maybe they never really gave a shit.
When I am truly enjoying art, the feeling is multilayered. I am both locked into its textures and patterns, and being invited further into the its hidden intentions. I watched Irma Vep for the first time time a few nights ago, and the scene where Maggie Cheung’s personas collide as Sonic Youth’s “Tunic” kicks in gave me goosebumps. It’s a sensation that is impossible to codify, and I cannot believe that a director could have created it for didactic or financial reasons. Watching the movie did make me look at a lot of film blogs to try to understand what I was feeling.
Great art teaches you to think as a byproduct, but never as an intention. The best quote I’ve ever read related to justifying the pursuit of aesthetic enjoyment for its own ends, is by Guy Davenport. He wrote an essay, “Finding”, about collecting arrowheads with his family as a child:
“I was with grown-ups, so it wasn’t play. There was no lecture, so it wasn’t school. All effort was willing, so it wasn’t work. No ideal compelled us, so it wasn’t idealism or worship or philosophy. . . . Yet it was the seeding of all sorts of things, of scholarship, of a stoic sense of pleasure. . . . I know that my sense of place, of occasion, even of doing anything at all, was shaped by those afternoons. It took a while for me to realize that people can grow up without being taught to see, to search surfaces for all the details, to check out a whole landscape for what it has to offer.”
“Because if reading just makes you a better person by creating empathy, reading is an inherently good act, then why Faulkner and not Harry Potter?”
This exact thing already caused a dustup a few years back in the book community. An undergrad student opposed the inclusion of a YA novel in her college’s reading recommendation list. She suggested that it be swapped out in favor of a legal memoir. All of YA Twitter and half of our contemporary writers assembled to call her a bitch. Even though the memoir in question was written by a Black attorney and would also teach the reader about racism - so, still firmly in the confines of most liberal author’s politics.
Even if you are a student who wants to push yourself, none of the intellectual industries seem to want that. They’ll hide it behind some cultural talking point or another but the end result is the same - they need a horde of uncritical consumers to keep themselves afloat. Endless growth is the death of all things, I guess.
And as much as everyone complains about kids these days being so sensitive over language — whenever kids move beyond the realm of language and start agitating for things in the material world, the pitchforks come out from all sides. Complaining about the racial slur in a short story is ultimately more palatable a thing for the University to deal with than ousting whichever faculty member is actually a racist terror.
And, let’s be honest, do most parents think being able to dissect and understand Faulkner is a worthwhile use of anyone’s time? Or should their kid use those dozens of hours to earn a LinkedIn digital marketing certificate so that they can do graphic design for the latest startup unicorn?
I remember the YA incident because it was shocking how long it took everyone to realize that they were bullying a teenager. Professional writers, academics, grown fucking adults were shaming and harassing a teenager. It was a bizarre experience, and mostly everyone involved just deleted tweets instead of apologizing.
I'm a YA librarian in my day-to-day job.
That incident made me think of that movie with Charlize Theron, Young Adult? One of the better movies with Diablo Cody's name attached, I think. When one of the grown-up authors said "fuck that RAGGEDY ASS bitch!" about a teenage girl, I had so many thoughts? Not only about the world of YA publishing itself (its own topic, frankly one that's probably deserving of an entire sociological study at this point) but about the utility of social media - social media is a place where a lot of adults sort of behave badly and in an immature way and reinforce the conventions and rules of their online or professional "clique". The cognitive dissonance between being an adult who writes about these common teenage struggles in the context of an American high school, and then resorting to the kind of mean girl behavior one is ostensibly trying to dissect, was interesting. It was also interesting to see Roxane Gay, who is not only one of the most prominent authors in the publishing world but ostensibly an educator herself, involve herself in that too!
And I was reminded, more than a little bit, of that pile-on when the "Bad Art Friend" story came out a year or so later even though that was entirely about adults writing books for adults. I believe Celeste Ng featured prominently in both?
“Because if reading just makes you a better person by creating empathy, reading is an inherently good act, then why Faulkner and not Harry Potter?” And college literature departments would be staffed by people who had been transformed into angels through all of their reading. Which is not my experience.
The lack of humanity in your typical humanities dept should be enough to put this cliche to rest, but it is too useful to some people.
I teach in higher ed and I think this is spot on, especially re: failure of academics to effectively teach students. The student's job is not to come to us already understanding. It's our job to create that space within them to be curious and to learn. Their resistance is natural, especially when sharing work, like the Modernists, that is designed to create resistance and fuck around with the reader !
Also I HATE the argument that reading is productive because you become more empathetic/"a better person." Novels aren't FOR anything. It's just another cool thing people make to express, and it's a gift we get to enjoy when someone like Faulkner or Joyce says "Come watch me try to communicate the human experience in a new way." Operatic, big ego artistic risks are moving, fun, inspiring ("good" or "bad" feelings). Learning to experience art this way, and all of the beauty it brings to your own creative practice and how you move through the world, is not related to making money, and higher ed is prohibitively, evil-ly expensive--so we have to hide that this is what we have the ability to teach students. Anyway, school should be free, art should be free, everybody giving gifts to each other--end rant :)
I blame Pandora for running an ad that was reminiscent of WW I Uncle Sam (America Needs YOU to Get an MFA). OK, not really. I f'ing love Pandora. I was in my basement, sewing when I heard it and ran to the metal filing cabinet I inherited to check my undergrad GPA. (Did I qualify? Would I even get in?) In five minutes I jumped from mild melancholy to DEFCON 1. Over the next couple years, I struggled to subtract the business of selling art from the feeling I got from making it. It seems like what is happening with our higher ed is a refusal to acknowledge this. Or maybe they never really gave a shit.