The Pleasure Principle

This is a response to a conversation about the profession, about why we teach literature.

The standard liberal humanist point about empathy—that art has the power to transform us into better people—is unsatisfying, not least because it doesn’t hold up: many of those who have read plenty of literature remain unable to “consider life and its dilemmas from perspectives other than one's own.” More importantly, art very often reinforces rather than undermines the set of political and social relations that lead to prejudice, extremism, and blind individualism. Does Book V of The Faerie Queene, for example, teach religious tolerance?

Something similar could be said about preserving culture and history: how much should we really want to preserve, if our own culture and history includes so much ignorance and inequality, so much oppression of other peoples, so much mistreatment of nonhuman species? What "preservation of culture and history" suggests is a continuation of patriarchal, capitalist ideology. Is that what we should be teaching?

Critical thinking has always been our fallback, but what does this mean? Do we need literature as an object in order to exercise such critical thought?

What we really do is teach students to talk and write in a certain language. I'll just go ahead and quote Terry Eagleton, whose ideas I have been paraphrasing anyway: "Literary theorists, critics and teachers are not so much purveyors of doctrine as custodians of discourse. Their task is to preserve this discourse, extend and elaborate it as necessary, defend it from other forms of discourse, initiate newcomers into it and determine whether or not they have successfully mastered it. The discourse itself has no definite signified, which is not to say that it embodies no assumptions: it is rather a network of signifiers able to envelop a whole field of meanings, objects and practices." The "embarrassment" of literary criticism, he continues, is that "it defines for itself a special object, literature, while existing as a set of discursive techniques which have no reason to stop short of that object at all" (Introduction to Literary Theory 177ff).

What we really do, then, is teach something like "discourse analysis," and if we're good at it we might be able to demonstrate the ways that discourse is both a component and a product of power. Andy's suggestion about teaching writing is the flip side of rhetoric: if we can teach our students to recognize discursive techniques, we may also be able to teach them to apply these techniques for themselves.

None of this really explains why we still think Shakespeare is valuable, or why we ask students to memorize the plot and principal characters of Frankenstein. The latter is probably because we feel like we need to test them on something; the former is probably because we like Shakespeare. (There's more to it than that: we are told that we should like Shakespeare, because those who have come before us have decided that Shakespeare is somehow valuable. Still, if we were to trace that determination back far enough, I imagine it would have much more to do with pleasure than most of us are willing to admit.)

Like a turd just dropt on snow

What I like about Wyatt is his fascination with turning away. Most of the time he's obsessing over a woman who has turned away from him - "But all is turned, thorough my gentleness, / Into a strange fashion of forsaking" - but sometimes we can catch glimpses of that moment when he too wants to let something go: "I leave off therefore, / Since in a net I seek to hold the wind."

Still, he never really leaves off. He has too much Petrarch in him; his pain is too potent. His dismissals are always incomplete, as he holds on to the injury done to him in order to write about it (and here he has an excuse built in, which, even if we would call it misogynist, makes "her" somehow less culpable):

I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad,
Nor call her false that falsely did me feed,
But let it pass, and think it is of kind
That often change doth please a woman's mind.

We see the same thing in those poets who lash out rather than turn away. Jonson purges his characters of their humours and sends them offstage, never to be seen again, but they're never really gone: he has had to hang on to them for most of the play in order to excoriate them at the end, and so they return, again and again, every time the play is performed. Swift's poetry might sting, but he still needs to hold on to Richard Tighe in order to say that Tighe's face is "Like a turd just dropt on snow."

A complete turn (or a total dismissal) would have to be a poem about something else entirely, a poem that contains no trace of the subject that is not being discussed. And what's more - here's the tricky part - is that every subsequent poem would need to be free from that trace. These would be the poems that do not acknowledge the possibility of recovering what has been forgotten; these would be the poems that come after forgetting.

This isn't 'Nam. This is [karaoke]. There are rules.

1) No fucking Billy Joel.

2) "Atrocious," when said with the right tone of voice, should be interpreted as a compliment.

3) Arrive sweet, but not already hammered. Hammered should come later.

4) Do not make eyes at Undergraduate Wisconsin Grandma Headband Guy.

5) Talk through all instrumental breaks.

Rather Cocksure of Facile Conjectures

I found the title of this post in the margins of a mid-twentieth-century tome entitled Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature, in cramped-but-confident old-man script. The commentator was right: the author's suppositions about John Marston - an author he hated so much that he needed to devote over a hundred pages to an explanation of Marston's poetic, dramatic, satirical, and personal shortcomings - were ridiculous enough in several places to make me laugh out loud.

I hope someone will write that in the margins of my book someday.

Why Lucian is Awesome

This is from Dialogues of the Dead:

Diogenes: “But, my handsome Mausolus, of your beauty and strength nothing more is to be seen, and if I should call in question your advantageous figure, you would not be able to give the judge a reason why your skull is more beautiful than mine. Both are peeled and bare, our teeth grin on both sides in like manner, and instead of eyes we have both empty holes and flat, apish noses. As to your monument, and the costly marble of which it is built, the inhabitants of Halicarnassus may certainly have reason to shew it to strangers, and to think much of themselves for possessing so great a work of art within their walls: but, my comely gentleman, what sort of enjoyment you should have of it, I see not; you should then only say, that you bear a heavier load than the rest of us, since you have an enormous heap of stones lying upon you.”

The Insidious Effrontery of Ontology

Norman Young wanted
To say something new.
I matter! he cried,
But none could hear him
Over the clamor,
Clatter, bustle, and
Discord of the world.
He sat and thought, but
Grew impatient when
Thinking was painful.
He resolved to yell
As loud as he could.
I matter! he screamed.
His voice unsettled
Buildings and houses,
Cracked windows, unmoored
Ships, but returned to
Norman unheeded.
I know, he thought, I’ll
Go somewhere higher:
Surely they’ll listen
When I’m above them.
He found a soapbox,
Stood upon it, and
Addressed the masses.
Brothers! he shouted,
Hear me—I matter!
And finally, finally,
He caught the notice
Of a passerby.
That is nothing new,
The man said curtly,
And he tipped his hat
And kept on walking.
Norman stood silent
Alone on his box,
Musing for hours.
Of course, he realized,
How stupid I’ve been!
How can I think I’ll
Say something different
When I don’t know what’s
Already been said?
He strained to listen,
But could not make out
A single voice in
The roar of the world.
Disappointed, he
turned to books. All things
Worth saying, he thought,
Are set down in print.
When I have read all
There is to read, then
I’ll know what’s been said.
Norman sat for days,
Weeks, months, years, decades
In the library.
His hair grew, his skin
Stretched, his face wrinkled.
He lost himself in
Homer, Persius,
Aristophanes,
Horace, Juvenal,
And witty Lucian.
Certainly, he thought,
They’ve covered a lot.
He picked up Chaucer,
More and Erasmus.
His teeth turned yellow,
His eyes strained to see.
He skimmed through Wyatt,
Nashe, Middleton next;
He was awed by both
Shakespeare and Jonson.
Dryden bored him, but
He found Rochester,
Pope, Gay and Fielding
Simply delightful.
He laughed a filthy
Laugh, and lost his teeth.
The flesh rubbed from his
Fingers and peeled from
His face; he smelled of
Mildew and decay.
Pus oozed from his pores.
Surely now, he thought,
I can stop reading.
There’s nothing more that
Can be said. But then
He came across Swift.
One more, he thought, can’t
Possibly hurt me—
But he was poisoned
By the harsh whip of
Anger, invective,
And hatred he
Found in those pages.
He stood, dead already,
And stumbled outside,
Knowing at last how
Little he mattered.
So what? What matter?
He thought, and mounted
The soapbox again.
His arm came out of
Its socket. His legs
Crumpled. His head sagged.
He fell to his knees.
I can say nothing,
He mouthed, but nothing
Came out.

The Bills Shit on My Life

Now that the Phillies have won the World Series - quietly, when everyone's back was turned, because we were all watching campaign commentary - maybe someone, somewhere will start paying attention to the fact that Buffalo fans are the most shat upon fans in the country.

We have teams in two major sports, neither of which have ever won a championship. (The Bills did win two AFL championships, in 1964 and 1965. But they haven't won since the merger in 1970.) The Bills made it to the Super Bowl four straight years and lost all four years. They haven't been to the playoffs since the 1999-2000 season, which ties the Detroit Lions for the second longest running playoff draught (the longest is held by the Cardinals, who last went to the playoffs in 1998, but they are a sure-in this year).

The Sabres made it to the Stanley Cup in 1974 - but lost - and again in 1999 - and lost again. That year, Buffalo lost on Brett Hull's no-goal in double overtime. They have made it to the Conference Finals twice in the past three years, but they don't seemed destined for greatness this year.

It is true that our minor sports teams have fared somewhat better. The Bisons (who, I just discovered, are no longer affiliated with the Indians, but with the Mets) have won their AAA league crown 3 times since 1979, the most recent of which was in 2004. The Bandits, our professional lacrosse team, has won championships 4 times since 1992. But the Blizzard (indoor soccer) never won anything before their league collapsed, and the Destroyers (arena football) were pathetic before they moved to Columbus.

The early '90s were our glory days, when the Bills would win (and then lose). Since then, we've suffered through a Homerun throwback ('99 Titans) and a handful of solid Sabres teams (especially the '06-'07 team that won the Presidents' Cup), but we've gotten more or less complacent with our mediocrity. We know we're going to lose. We expect to lose. We're great fans: we love our teams even though we are horribly and depressingly resigned to failure.

Then why, why did I start to believe that the Bills were really coming together when they started out 4-0? Why couldn't I have just kept my hopes and my expectations to a minimum?

The worst part is that I can't say, "Fuck you, Buffalo," and move on. I just can't.