And Turn Away Thy Face

Now this is what you call "dramatic irony." 

Brief Update

Hard as it is to believe, the NSG Doc has finally caught up with the times.  Well, kinda.  I'm writing this entry from my long-wanted but only recently-acquired laptop.  It's a neat little system, with a great display and a nifty design.  It is, however, causing me to install all the programmes I use on a regular basis, and I'm having to deal with the various frustrations caused by Microsoft Vista.  I can certainly see why people aren't enamored with it.  It's slow, bloated and irksome, especially when it nags you about every single task you attempt.  I'd remove it, but something tells me that'd be more hassle than it'd be worth.  Otherwise, though, I love the new system and I can only imagine how much commuting time won't be going to waste anymore. 

BTW, thanks to those of you who sent kind wishes regarding yesterday.  They were much appreciated.  Perhaps more later.  Cheers.

At Long Last

And it's about effing time .... 

Logical Positivism

Wow, it has been a long time since I updated here:  have been crazy-busy lately with various things (writing, editing, reviewing medical briefs slightly larger than Montana) and desperately pretending that it isn't really August.  I am in the slow process of setting up at New Institution which, it turns out, is much more complicated than it used to be: contractual stuff, net access, voice mail, the whole drill.  (I shudder to think how exasperating it'll be checking voice mail on even a semi-regular basis; email alone has become a chore.)  I'm also trying to figure out the eventual purchase of a laptop, which is an odd thing since I've been using the same desktop since Clinton left office.  As I'm planning to continue my freelance work, I'm going to need one with all the work I'll have to do.  Turns out I'll also have to use a laptop in my teaching, which I've never had to do before.  It feels like I'm being dragged into contemporaneity, and in my experience that usually means more work rather than less.  C'est la vie. 

I've also learned that one of the things I'm going to have to teach is the tired chestnut of the five-paragraph essay.  Surely you all know the structure.  It's also one I used to rail against in class, as many of you also know (probably too well).  That structure, in the hands of some genuinely awful teachers, has probably been responsible for some of the most turgid and thoughtless essay-writing I've had to endure because so many people think in rubrics rather than argumentative or analytical logic.  No religious man I, suddenly I'm praying I can impart the fundamentals without accidentally becoming part of the problem-- specifically, contributing to the breeding or enabling of Baaaaaad Writing.  The structure works as a teaching device because it's simple and memorable; but as an organizing principle, it's often woefully misleading and functionally impractical.  When I taught first-year courses at Place Of Which I Do Not Speak, one of the first things I used to do was demolish that model.  Now I have to promote it.   I'm sure several of you are laughing your butts off as a result.

So, yeah, there's a lot cooking these days with only more to come.  I can't promise, alas, a return to form in re blogging any time soon.  It's that time of year when I normally become most elusive (and, if caught, surly).  It came to my attention, however, that this year-- for the first time-- I will officially be twice as old as most of my students.  Twice.  As they say, if I were a horse, they'd have shot me by now.  How's that for logical positivism?

Delays and Dissonances

Sheesh: lately it seems every time I go to update this blasted blog, I feel I should apologize; same, in fact, for finally answering any of the emails that have gathered like moss recently. With things being the way they have been, combined with a general distaste for writing, I must have seemed at best erratic and at worst rude. My apologies. And, I should add, my thanks to those who've expressed congratulations and such, even if I haven't gotten around to thanking everyone individually.

Just some random bits and pieces for your consideration:

• Watching The Simpsons Movie, I was struck by one sight gag that has to be one of the most insightful observations I've seen in a long, long while. At one point, as a giant dome is falling upon Springfield and the direness of the town's predicament becomes apparent, the movie cuts to a shot of the town church and Moe's Tavern. The denizens of each stare up into the sky, panic, and run into the opposite building: the drunks to church, the religious to darkened stools. Ah, truth in satire. When the shit hits the fan, the familiar crutch just won't do. Bloody brilliant.
• Ironic moment pending: Occurred to me the other day what a joy it would be to fly-on-the-wall when Nelly Furtado's daughter becomes an out-of-control teenager. The precocious But Mom!s would be priceless. *snicker*
• Ever like ships in the night, it seems that just as I'm about start working in the same city as Zelda, she's off to another city. The story of our lives: always in the same area, never in the same place at the same time....
• Since being sheared like a New Zealand lamb, I've been inundated with "Oh-my-God-you-look" [insert number here between 19 and 22, with or without a colourful expletive]. Sure, it's all supposed to be complimentary & all that, and I'm equally sure most of the remarking is exaggerated. It reminds me, though, why I started growing in beards all those years ago; one tires of the "do you have ID" and effusive darlingism. There's something desperately wrong with the world when people start calling me "cute." *Shiver* Especially when I know it's meant in the Gary Coleman sort of way. Ugh. Talk about your cognitive dissonances; it's like describing Burgess Meredith as "cuddly." Or Trouble, pictured at right doing his best impression of a possum, as "ambitious." (Old Cat's Book of Practical Possums, anyone?)

Oh well. It's August, that most dread-inducing month. It's enough to drive a man to drink--- even more than usual. Then again, I like my crutches tried and true.

Kinda Sorta

Yes, yes, yes:  I have been delinquent in updating this blog, so my apologies to those of you who keep checking it so inexplicably dutifully.  Have been asea in issues and paperwork, and generally exhausted, but I have finally (and surely temporarily) alighted from the waves long enough to catch my breath.  And yes, as Zozo tweaked in one of her comments, there is a bit of a change for the Ole Doc, as he will be assuming a new position shortly at a local institution.  (As opposed to my last institution, the position for which I was constantly forced to assume zoologically constituted "presenting.")  But good news in my own regard has been so rare, that every little bit counts. 

So, there you have it.  Kinda sorta.  Discretion, better part, you know the drill.  But now you know.  Kinda sorta. ;-)

Scum and Villainy

You must be cautious.



And yes, he does do a better job than Ewan.

From There To Where?

Something to remember from Alan Watts, with a little help from Stone & Parker. Key words: "And it was a hoax...." Yup.


One of the ironies, of course, is that if you study (say) Tom Eliot or Wallace Stevens, you need to know this sort of thinking intimately. Then they tell you to-- what?-- go do this and then this and then that. Oh, and that too. No wonder so many of us, to steal Mr. Yeats' image, cannot tell the dancer from the dance.

Tuesday Meld

Just a few notes on recent items & events:

• The much, much, much too-hyped CNN-YouTube debate for the Democratic presidential nominees wasn't the failure some predicted it would be, but it wasn't the political watershed moment CNN would have you think it was either. The big winner from last night? Democrats generally. With the Republican version not happening until September, the Dems will get almost two months of credit for engaging "the public" directly. The Republicans, however, are going to get crucified when their questions get sent in; by September, the schisms within the party will be plain and the calls for blood will be positively choral.
• You Jane Austen fans out there might appreciate this. In the Google age, this is inexcusable and should send more than a few heads rolling.
• The Guardian put together its list of the fifty greatest film comedies. Note some of the really bottom-of-the-barrel inclusions. We'll see if The Simpsons Movie makes a future version, but if the Guardian review is any indication, it will be; the review falls somewhere between supplication and fellatio.
• I will not link to any item about the LiLo fiasco. Period. I will only add this: given the paranoiac effects of alcohol and cocaine, and her constant realization that yes, she is being hounded everywhere, one should hardly wonder why she keeps going on and off the, ahem, rails. Remember the old adage: Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that no one's following you.
• Recent online discovery: this wonderful reflection by the great lyric critic Helen Vendler. Pious Labours, especially: as RK would say, RLAID; read, learn and inwardly digest.
• After being reminded recently of Northrop Frye's The Well-Tempered Critic, I decided the other day to reread it in its entirety--- and which I did, in one sitting over pints at one of my locals. The first essay I'd still encourage everyone, of literary bent or not, to read & re-read & re-read yet again: it's brilliant, central and more valuable now than when it was written those forty-plus years ago. It also reminded me why I loathe the current critical trend to discuss literature as "discourse." Discourse, in its current usage, is really just an attempt to conflate the various areas of critical distinction which Aristotle rightly separated: the ethical, the rhetorical, the poetical. It also conveniently allows lit-critters to say and to write whatever the hell they want, regardless of disciplinary considerations, while guising it as scholarship. In short, it's a license to bullshit and has been used, egregiously, as one. No wonder I wince when I see the word in any scholarship in the past forty years; it has become meaningless, save to say that it indicates and enables pretentious prognostication of the broadest order. We'd do well, I think, to re-read our Aristotle--- without the commonplace sniggering about the convenient compartmentalization of elements.

Hair shorn and beard gone, believe it or not, I have been shocking the hell out of people lately. Further to the Ripley's file, from a young woman the other day: So how old are you? 22, 23?

If only, dear lass, if only....

It's, Like (You Know), Unmitigated Bullshit (updated)

Here's the biggest, steaming, corn-infested lot I've seen in some time.  Key quote:

Parents may gnash their teeth, but language scholars like like.

"It's a shame this poor little usage gets such a bum rap," says Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain, an associate professor at the University of Alberta in Canada.  Dailey-O'Cain, who has published an often-cited study on the use of like, says, "It's innovative, it serves a particular function and it does specific things that you can't duplicate with other quotatives."

Someone needs to revoke that woman's tenure-- even if it is at U of A.

FOLLOWUP:  I mentioned Frye in the comments.  Here's a good example of the sort of thing I'm talking about, and for which the common usage of "like" is cognate:

The other day a student came to consult me about a failure in English, and what he said, as I recorded immediately he left, was this:

Y'know, I couldn't figure what happened, cause, jeez, well, I figured, y'know, I had that stuff cold-- I mean, like I say, I'd gone over the stuff 'an figured I knew it, and-- well, jeez, I do' know.

I submit that this is not prose, and I suspect he had failed because he had not understood the difficulties of translating his speech into prose.  He was, of course, "taking" English.  But English was not taking him: fifteen years of schooling had failed to make any impression on his speech habits.

(Northrop Frye, The Well-Tempered Critic)

(That speech, by the way, I heard, in one form or another, countless times in my day.)  With Dailey-O'Cain and those who concur with her, we have academics acting as apologists for filler "language," for the babble of syllabic fumbling and stumbling.  In short, it's the evidence of inchoate thinking-- and a result of untimely and ill-considered expression.  So, yes, if you will:  like is, quite literally, a premature ejaculation.  Something to consider, non?

You have to love the (Groucho) Marxist turn by Frye there: "But English was not taking him."  Alas, English isn't taking a great number of its students these days.... 

The Loneliness of Muggles

As you ought to have expected, the pending release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has finally started to elicit the "Harry Potter's killing literature" laments.  Here's one example.  I think, as usual, such rueful assessments diagnose the symptoms rather than the disease.  So what is this disease?  Glibly put, autophobia.  Western culture has become profoundly terrified of solitude; people have become so deeply afraid of being alone with themselves that they do everything they can to salve that loneliness, as MySpace, Facebook and other such systems attest all too well.  Reading, however, is a solitary activity (at least most of the time).  It demands concentration, patience and the willingness to be alone with just a book and oneself.  That's why reading and literature have suffered so much in this age in which technology means we never have to be totally alone. 

So why is the Harry Potter series such an exception?  Because it has become a kind of cultural juggernaut that familiarity with it enjoys one into a huge company of others with conversational currency.  It is, after all, the same thing we've seen time and time again over the years-- with Star Wars, E.T., The Lord of the Rings and even specious phenomena like Survivor and The Apprentice.  The Rowling books really offer very little insight about literature or about reading and encouraging people to do so; they're symptomatic of a different cultural loneliness that I'm beginning to believe may now be beyond treatment.  (Just think of the books' overarching premise: the maturation of a lonely, unappreciated boy into a powerful, destined wizard.)  To read the Potter novels at this point is to participate in a collective activity rather than an individual one, and that I think makes all the difference.  To read them means to remain current, to engage in a cultural process with others, and, in a curiously utilitarian way, to keep from being on the outside of something deemed to be culturally significant.  I'm sure many out there are genuinely interested in what will happen in the last book, but the "must-read" status it has acquired seems to confirm the autophobic anxiety.  And yes, it's ironic that the Global Village of networks, connections and "friends" has exacerbated this endemic loneliness, but-- as Henry James, that great defender of loneliness, would say-- There we are.   

We'd do well, however, to remember James' caveat in this regard:  "Deep experience is never peaceful."  There's precious little more genuinely turbulent than solitude, and until we embrace solitude-- to cherish it, to appreciate it-- literature will continue to suffer.  And it'll have nothing to do with Harry Potter whatsoever.

Terry, Terry, Quite Contrary

After what had seemed to be some indications of cranial-glutimal extraction, Terry Eagleton has firmly burrowed his head right back between his buttocks.  One presumes he saw his shadow, so prepare for six more years of academic winter.

For a good response to Eagleton's whingeing piffle, see here, especially for this lovely little question: 

The very greatest writers among all these seem to be on the “bad” list. Is it possible that Professor Eagleton’s political views are simply not that attractive or intelligent?

Also, savour this older consideration of Eagleton's profligate vapidity.  This blog can't help but delight to this assessment:

Yet no one acquainted with the intellectual habits of academic Marxists will be surprised to discover that they are as unfazed by contemporary world events as they always have been by their own tartuffian buffonery.

Marxist literary critics of the world, Unite!  You have nothing to lose but your perpetually-victimized brains. 

Shiver Down The Backbone

Consider this proof-positive that bravery and outright lunacy are usually the same damned thing:

But yesterday, protected by nothing more than a pair of Speedo trunks and his extraordinary central heating, Lewis Pugh took the plunge and became the first man to swim at the North Pole.

The 36-year-old Londoner spent almost 19 minutes at minus 1.8C as he front crawled for a full kilometre - more than half a mile in the coldest water a human has ever swum.

With video and squirm-inducing picture (er...) "goodness." Frankly, I'm not sure what's more chilling: the feat, or the sight of this dude in a speedo.

Key quote: "I will never give up in front of a Norwegian!" Oh, those damned Norwegians!

A Brock and a Hard Place

Consider it a timely reminder that American shouldn't invade places they know nothing about.  Or aboot.

(And yes, only Canuckis will get the title of this entry.  But, boy, will they get it.)

Honesty Shmonesty

Graduates around the world are utilizing the skills they gained from their Bachelor of Arts Degree from ****'s Faculty of Arts. We want to know how your degree helped you get to where you are today.

Simply answer the following question for your chance to win:
How did your Bachelor of Arts degree from ****'s Faculty of Arts prepare you for your future?

I will not laugh hysterically, I will not laugh hysterically, I will not laugh hysterically. Discretion is indeed the better part of valour....

Bastards and Disasters

Not often I find myself agreeing with Camille Paglia, but with her response to this letter, I do, at least in part:

The teaching profession in the humanities has lost an entire generation of smart, imaginative young people who were driven away from graduate school because of its infestation by pointless, pretentious, Continental "theory." What a disaster for American intellectual life!

Not much will change until the oppressors (my baby boom generation of trend-chasing p.c. faculty) retire over the next 10 to 15 years. Then perhaps young people can begin to breathe free and reclaim their own originality.

It's hardly worth restating my issues with the farcical nature of most areas of academia, but it's worth clarifying that the theory is less the problem than the professional marginalists who have built their own hectoring intellectual hegemony upon railing against hegemonies. (Yes, it's an awful sentence, but trudge it through. I think it scans-- eventually.) Academia lost its sense of humour, particularly as it invested itself so heavily in the turgid promises of professionalization. It became joyless, self-justifying, and spectacularly onanistic. I am repeatedly told by more optimistic people that Things Are Changing, but I remain unconvinced. In fact, I suspect things are only going to get worse, particularly as the current power-holders realize there's dissent in the ranks. (It's the lesson of Robespierre.) But I do agree that, probably within the next 20 years, things will change and a great sigh of relief will emanate from the once-hallowed halls. How many fine minds, however, will we have lost in the meantime? That, I think, is the quiet cost, the collateral damage, of which no one speaks. Except, of course, for recalcitrant bastards like YT. Now gods stand up for....

Mediaeval On Your Ass, or Rag Mama Rag

Just when you thought crappy writing was a bad thing....

The Asset-Minded Professor

Something says I should direct your attention to this.  Why?  Because, er, um, well.... *rolls eyes impishly and steps gingerly away* 

Key, unbearably putrid quote:  "Love is a flame, and the good teacher raises in students a burning desire for his or her approval and attention, his or her voice and presence, that is erotic in its urgency and intensity."   Someone clearly wants PILF added to your vocabularies.

Not Malice, But Pause

Sometimes, I think it'd be a worthwhile project to compile a list-- a volume perhaps?-- of lamentable, and eventually disproven, assessments in history. It's an idea some of us have casually, as when we first come across Neville ("Peace In Our Time") Chamberlain or first read Tolstoy's implausibly inane assaults upon King Lear. Sometimes, though, it's curious how some people, people normally known for astute and prescient observation, could ever get things so wrong. Thought first came to mind some time ago, when reading through Philip Larkin's All What Jazz and realizing how badly he'd judged the then-young talent named Aretha Franklin; and then again when rereading Kenneth Tynan, when he said that Alec Guinness would "illumine many a blind alley of subtlety, but blaze no trails." Tynan hadn't seen the Peter Sellers effect yet, much less the Jerry Lewis or Dustin Hoffman ones, and Larkin would probably shrink to see the influence of Ms Franklin (aka, "The Queen of Soul"). One then remembers how many publishers rejected A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and how the Hearsties so savagely railed against Citizen Kane. Not all such idiocies occur contemporaneously and can be corrected with the sleight of "20/20 hindsight." Think of Elvis Costello's-- probably drunken-- dismissal of James Brown as "a jive-ass nigger" and Ray Charles as "a jive-ass, ignorant nigger." (Costello apologized shortly later, but he still regrets it, deeply, and not just because of the vileness of the language.) One could go on and on, so-- mercifully for you-- I won't. But it's a tempting prospect: Greatest Boners By Our Ostensibly Greatest Figures. It's an idea I entertain not with malice, but with pause. We need always to remember that even the smartest, sharpest and most profoundly encyclopedic among us can drop the ball; and while to some that might seem disillusioning, to me it's reassuring. After all, no one truly grasped Blake's genius in his lifetime, or van Gogh's. Sometimes our greatest minds can be the wrongest, something both Einstein and Newton acknowledged. It's not always the clamouring fools, or the rancorous or unprescient. It's all of us-- or, in most cases, most of us. Now pause on that for a while.

Res Ipsa Loquitur