“Looking at Appalachia Anew,” says the New York Times, before immediately posting pictures of kids swimming in a river and herding goats. Unbelievable. That’s like saying “The new face of black America!” then posting pictures of Neon and Butch McRae.
Thoughtful and honest journalism from America’s most stalwart news source, folks.
No wonder kids don’t like it — it becomes another way to bully them into feeling “compassion” or “tolerance,” part of a curriculum that makes them good citizens but bad readers of poetry.
…from the good ol’ Sunday Review in the Times of New York, an article by the poet, William Logan, about why you don’t read poetry.
I disagree about Shakespeare. No one, save those earning graduate degrees in English Literature, should be made to read Shakespeare. No one.
When, in America, I wonder, will we finally declare a moratorium on media attention given to the perpetrators of mass murder?
Malcom Gladwell taught us why our uniquely American brand of public violence occurs. Not for retribution or gain, but for self-actualization, declaration of existence, perpetuation of legend, as if all these sad young men seek only to say, I was, through the mighty voice of mass media, with a gun as the pen which gleans their “teeming brain[s].” Society has taught us this: kill, spectacularly, and be remembered. Kill, and have your manifesto read. By all.
When will we withdraw this opportunity? When will we, as a media-driven society, say kill and be forgotten forever? We can do this. We have. To protect journalists and princes in war. For the noble likes of Donald Trump and Paris Hilton. When will our principled editors say kill, and have your name stricken from all records, your manifesto burned, and the memory of your victims honored with powerful silence?
John Keats feared death because of what he might never have accomplished in life. He wrote to be remembered. Yet if he knew that his poems would be burned, would he have written at all?
Remember Columbine, they say. Remember Sandy Hook and Santa Barbara. Yes, let’s. In silence.
WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
…”When I have fears that I may cease to be,” by John Keats
What many undergraduates do not know — and what so many of their professors have been unable to tell them — is how valuable the most fundamental gift of the humanities will turn out to be. That gift is clear thinking, clear writing and a lifelong engagement with literature.
…from the New York Times, “The Decline and Fall of the English Major”
When I was guest lecturing for UVA’s MS Commerce Program last week, a number of students seemed mildly offended when I described how few Ivy-caliber university graduates I’ve met in my life that I didn’t think of as complete morons. Real sneers, one or two of them. The looks on their faces made sense, though. That’s a lot of money to spend on a piece of paper to have someone tell you that you might be a dumbass. But as my older brother always said: “if the truth hurts, say ouch.”
So why did I say this?
Because I read what people write. And I’ve met very few people who can write. And the only thing that bad writing connotes is “I don’t think.” And if my first impression of someone is “he doesn’t think,” well then…
It’s that simple. If you don’t know how to write, you don’t know how to think.
Even worse. If you don’t know how to write, you’ll never be able to perceive how others react to your thoughts, and that makes you the guy at the party everybody hates.
So what’s the solution? Study literature. Acquire that fundamental gift of the humanities that no one can put a price on. After all, nobody wants to go through life as an idiot. Or an accountant. Ugh.