SOMETHING FISHY

In his online site, Think Again, Stanley Fish has posted several columns on the humanities -- 'Will the Humanities Save Us?,' 'The Uses of the Humanities, Part Two,' 'The Last Professor' -- asserting, a) the humanities, as academic disciplines, serve no purpose beyond themselves, b) the funding of the humanities in the university becomes harder and harder to justify, c) the existence of humanities departments will continue to decline. All of which is obviously true. But why bring this up now as though it were controversial?

Perhaps to make it controversial, so that talk might inspire more appreciation of the humanities? Unlikely, since Fish himself prefers to shoot down efforts to justify the humanities (albeit, only when the justification invokes a reference to some "good" achieved or aimed at outside the humanities themselves).

Perhaps to take some final potshots at the discipline that has served him well (and which he has served) but which he believes has gone astray? Maybe so, but Fish is no Bloom with his 'school of resentment' fulminations, standing as hoary prophet unappreciated in his field. Fish is a pragmatist, essentially, and what he's describing he isn't necessarily decrying. In other words, he sees the writing on the wall, and has merely the glib good fortune to be ahead of the deluge. As plugs get pulled on more and more tenure track appointments, he can, from happy retirement, write his intellectual memoirs of the glory days, should he choose.

Perhaps to maintain his 'cred' as a tenured nihilist, quite willing to 'deconstruct' (I use the term loosely) the claims of humanistic self-importance, i.e., 'critical thinking,' 'moral value,' and so on? There is something there, perhaps, since Fish finally, as justification for his own work, comes down in favor only of 'pleasure,' the 'isn't that great?' of the admiring reader, though he is willing to expand the concept of pleasure with requisite references to 'cognitive awareness' -- because, you see, the literature professor not only experiences the pleasure but is clever enough to be able explain it as well.

Ah, but there's the rub. That explanation of the pleasure immediately brings into play 'values' -- a line of poetry is good because it gives pleasure, this pleasure is good because I can explain its complexity or its sonority or its succinctness, and, eventually, this pleasure is good because it partakes of certain aesthetic or intellectual values which, in the history of the humanities (and, by extension, humanity) have been deemed worthy of attention, discussion, explication. And, ultimately, right appreciation of this pleasure requires mastery of a body of knowledge, of explication and critique, that exists by virtue of the pleasure of discussing a pre-existent pleasure.

In other words, Fish is adamant that he does not, by 'humanities,' mean to indicate works of poetry or fiction, or paintings or plays and their creation. He means the discussion and investigation of such works. But ultimately the only reason any culture would take such a discipline seriously, and support it, is because it considers the 'primary texts' important enough to merit the attention and investigation. 'As a culture,' we want there to be a body of knowledge about the great works of the past.

Indeed, that attitude did underwrite the classics as a body of knowledge (no one wrote 'the classics' any longer, one simply studied them). But as the study of the humanities has become more up to date, including, first, 'the moderns,' then contemporary literary works and visual works, then film and TV and the internet, that justification fades away, and you have, simply, people educating themselves to talk a certain kind of educated jargon about common (or more arcane) features of our intellectual environment. Is this a waste of time or money? Yes, if we want there to be some 'outcome.' No, if we simply want the discussion to continue.

What Fish is pointing out is that the discussion may not be continued, much, for the next generation of would-be humanists. This has often happened, in the sense that what has been the 'justification' for the practice has often had to shift its ground. In fact, it's rather amusing to look at the history of literary criticism and the history of intellectual fashion, as the 'lip service' the discipline itself pays to whatever is 'critical' or 'crucial' in an era inevitably comes to the fore. In other words, there's always a bit of that corporate 'run it up the flagpole and see who salutes' ideology at work, even in the 'objective' and 'non-utilitarian' reaches of academic study. But what Fish sees as different is that now all the 'lip service' is on the side of those who at least want to pretend they value the humanities, though they -- regretfully or not -- have to cut the funds. And Fish is right in seeing such people as a dying breed, since literary 'cultural capital' has disappeared faster than the capital in all those retirement funds.

So, I'm all for Fish's testy 'last stand': 'love me as I am or leave me.' Either value 'debate' for debate's sake, or be done with it. Don't try to swell the ranks of believers by selling a false bill of goods. The humanities, as disciplines supporting a doctorate of philosophy, are about nothing but training the mind to take part in the discipline, much as is true of any academic discipline. To assert a 'pay-off' for trustees or parents or investors or general humanity is to pretend that the work the mind does to attain such lucidity is supposed to support some other effort, an effort 'anyone,' (i.e., those not schooled in the discipline) can appreciate and see the benefit of. And that's simply false.

In terms of the relation between the scholars and theorists in the field and the undergraduates they teach and the university they serve, well, at that point there is some grounds for a discussion of whether there is any practical gain from taking a course in the humanities, whether it adds anything tangible to the mind or to the capabilities of the students thus exposed. And it's that side of the question that I feel Fish willfully skirts because, I assume, he's been long removed from 'the trenches,' where his TAs and other hapless adjuncts toil, trying to justify how they assign grades to the writing of the students who sit through Fish's clever, brilliant and insightful lectures -- who pay, in other words, for the privilege of listening to the professoriat exercise its mind.

Heiße Magister, heiße Doktor gar,
Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr
Herauf, herab und quer und krumm
Meine Schüler an der Nase herum --
Und sehe, daß wir nichts wissen können!
--Goethe, Faust


(To Be Continued)

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE

So, the past week. It began with an impending sense of the Inauguration as the main event for a necessary transition of power, but also as a collective expression of the current Zeitgeist in the U.S. And that's what I heard Obama strive to give words to in his address: how to ring in the changes he will bring, but also how to attest to the change that his election already manifests.

It was a tall order, and it's easy to believe that, if the State of the Union at present were not so dire, then the speech could've been more uplifting. But the fact of the matter is that being president at this moment has to be one of the worst jobs imaginable, so the speech was in-keeping with that state of things, but what was moving about it, to me, was how carefully worded and emphatic it was. Obama didn't over-reach with rhetorical flourishes or empty, windy phrases. And there's a point there, I think, about the kind of president we can expect him to be: think back to JFK's inaugural speech with its claim for a new generation -- the urgency of the speech had in fact little enough to do with the situation. The drama came from Kennedy himself as the new, young ideologue with his hands on power, ready to take the Cold War up a notch. Or think of Reagan's paternal-sounding intention to remove paternalistic government from our lives. In both cases, the new leader had to distance himself significantly from his predecessor. Obama had that task as well, and he met it with a confident urgency closer to Reagan than to Kennedy, though like Kennedy he emphasized service to the country. But Reagan's "we can't live beyond our means" rhetoric and his "these problems will go away" riposte to the economic problems the U.S. faced in 1981 had nothing like the rhetorical force of Obama's "time to put away childish things." There was at least a glimmer for a moment -- amidst all the back-patting for how great America is, which every politician has to indulge to stroke our collective egos -- of a vision of Americans as essentially frivolous people. A bit of diagnostic self-recognition that would be welcome at this time.

But just as strong was the statement that "we will not apologize for our way of life," and, what was for me the finest line: "the price and the promise of citizenship" which packed the idea of "ask what you can do for your country" into the promise of a government still trying to do things for its citizenry, as opposed to the "government is not the solution" write-off of Reagan's take on things. But the "new generation" rhetoric has remained in play from JFK to Clinton to Obama -- and for Clinton, the first new president after the fall of the USSR, it perhaps should have rang strongest, and yet not so. For Obama speaks more tellingly to the hopes and fears of the generation born and coming of age since the Reagan/Bush years, in the post-Cold War, internet-boom and bust, increased terrorist threat, 9-11 aftermath, credit obliteration, and W.'s rogue executive branch. Clinton marked the moment when the liberal-based Baby Boomers, with their hopes for government-led change, came to power; W. marked the moment when the business-based Baby Boomers, with their 'every man for himself' profit margins, took it back. Obama marks the moment when both a dread of what government can do to us, if it acts wrongly, and a hope of what government can do for us, if it pursues enlightened ideas, hover over the question of the U.S.'s place in the world at the close of the first decade of the new century.

Finally, the most emotional moment for me in the speech was, oddly, the evocation of George Washington at war in winter, on the banks of a frozen river. While I'm not much on invoking "our forefathers," since every President, regardless of his policies or effectiveness, seems able to invoke them at will, Obama did make me glimpse for a moment how perilous and tenuous the birth of the country was, and with that went the reflection that nothing the U.S. has faced since has ever been as dire, that in almost anything the country has undertaken it has had a significant upper hand. So that brief vision of courage in the face of a major threat was timely in putting current fears into perspective -- a vision that could reach back through the nuclear war fears of JFK's speech to FDR's "nothing to fear but fear itself" speech on the dire economic crisis in 1933.

"The practices of unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and the minds of men. True, they have tried; but, faced by the failure of credit, they have proposed only lending more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow them they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They only know the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and where there is no vision the people perish."
--Franklin Roosevelt, inaugural address, 6 March 1933

ODE TO JOY

This past week I watched two films about the fortunes of the band that began life as Warsaw, changed to Joy Division, then, after the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis, became New Order. Anton Corbijn's Control (2007), based on a memoir by Curtis' wife, Deborah, hews to the biopic vein of "early life" (in this case, when Curtis and Debbie first meet) to struggling early years, to rise to fame, and, in this case, to untimely demise. What's different in Curtis' case is that the time from first meeting to death is about seven years. People take longer to get through high school and college. Joy Division (2007), the documentary by Grant Gee, covers a bit of the same ground but in round robin reminiscences by some of the principle figures in the Joy Division story: the three remaining band members, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris, Manchester pop authority Tony Wilson, Terry Mason, an early manager, Annik Honore, the Belgian girlfriend, that, according to Control, created the main tension in the Curtis marriage, and numerous others. There are some amusing overlaps -- as when Terry admits he didn't have a phone, which made it difficult to arrange gigs for the band, while Rob Gretton, the fast-talking man with a plan who takes over the job from Terry, "had access to a phone." Sure enough, in Control, Rob dismisses Terry as someone who probably doesn't have a phone, and we get to see Rob answering the pay phone in the hall of the building he lives in. Such are the humble beginnings.

Both films are fairly short on pretension, which is a strength. For whatever Joy Division is or was, they aren't exactly a household name, nor have they yet proven themselves to be the kind of durable reference point for everyone coming of nihilistic age at a certain moment -- as for instance The Velvet Underground, or The Sex Pistols, or Nirvana were in their respective days. Joy Division did concoct a novel sound that rides the 'new wave' that combines a certain love for glam -- Bowie, Roxy Music get soundtrack time in Control -- with a Sex Pistols-inspired punk ethos. It's a heady sound and, as New Order, becomes brighter, crisper and more dance-friendly. But there's no denying there's an aura about Joy Division that both these films are in the business of perpetuating, fixing upon Curtis as the fallen figurehead. Kinda the Syd Barrett in the mix.

But the case that sticks best is that Joy Division was the quintessential Manchester band, and when their fortunes were taking them far afield -- first to Europe, then to America -- the pressure was too much for the fragile psyche of Ian Curtis. As lead singer/front man, he felt the strain of trying to market worldwide the DIY ethos of a crowd of Manchester mates. One of the surprising admissions in the documentary is that Curtis' erstwhile band mates never paid much attention to what the guy was singing about. The fact that Curtis' "vision" is unremittingly bleak and terminally depressed never seems to have dawned on these savants. Or at least that's the way they see it now, well-fêted as they are in middle-age. One of the statements I liked best came from one of the band's entourage who says they "never talked to each other" -- and it's not an indictment of these guys in particular, it's a simple statement of fact: as twentysomething new wave rockers trying to foster their own idiosyncratic grasp of cool, the last thing anyone would do, post-punk, is get all emo about things.

Temperament is one thing that separates the suicide of Curtis from the suicide of Kurt Cobain: Cobain was always way more ironic, humorous, and -- at a concert such as Unplugged in New York (1994) -- laidback than Curtis ever seemed to be. Curtis -- in the footage in the documentary, and as recreated to great effect by Sam Riley in Control -- seems driven by a daemon or maybe even a demon. Rather than the old chestnut "he died for rock'n'roll,' Control seems to suggest he died to escape rock'n'roll -- or maybe it was to escape his wife and girlfriend. Both, as depicted in the film, are kinda downers each in her own way, in the sense that both have emotional claims on Curtis that he seems not able to divest himself of. Sure, we can all relate: when he's with one, he'd rather be done with the other one; or, when he's with one, he'd rather be back with the other one. What's a fledgling rock star to do? Whatever was riding the real Curtis, his fictional version just seems intensely ineffectual.

Control is beautifully photographed, and the chemistry of the band and its entourage is made entertaining stuff, with Curtis's epileptic seizures and medications filling the dramatic role of the inevitable drug addiction period in the typical music biopic. Since Control is based on Deborah Curtis' book, it's surprising that, as played with winsome, girl-next-door good intentions by Samantha Morton, her character in the movie comes across as the inevitable ball-and-chain. Certainly we don't see much evidence of her really digging the band's sound and Curtis' put-me-out-of-my-misery lyrics. Annik, in Control, seems nothing more than the starry-eyed believer who finds the interplay of the man and his persona irresistible. In the documentary, Annik speaks intensely about Curtis, but with what seems an outsider's view. In other words, the feeling at the end of Control and Joy Division, is that the people who knew Curtis best didn't know him much at all.

That leaves the music, of course. As someone not that much younger than the principles of these stories, I can attest to the fact that Joy Division, more than the Sex Pistols, for me, caught something of the bleakness of the late '70s to early '80s malaise. And that, with an anthemic song like "Love Will Tear Us Apart," they said -- in a very catchy way -- what a losing battle that whole "committed relationship" number is. But I didn't hear JD till after New Order was up and running and so sought out the songs by JD that were closest to the songs I liked on Power, Corruption, and Lies (1983). Curtis, vocally, is too much of a one trick pony, and their handful of great songs makes laughable Peter Hook's assertion that, if Curtis hadn't died, JD would've gone on to do what U2 did. Yeah, right. The idea of the Curtis-led band becoming as popular as New Order is enough of a stretch -- to become U2-like there would have to have been some major remake-remodeling going on via the U.S. tour that Curtis hung himself literally on the eve of. But, again, since the band never listened much to what Curtis was singing, maybe they actually believe that the masses who rallied to "Sunday Bloody Sunday" or swayed to "With or Without You" would jump for joy to songs like "Decades":

Weary inside, now our heart's lost forever,
Can't replace the fear, or the thrill of the chase,
Each ritual showed up the door for our wanderings,
Open then shut, then slammed in our face.
--Joy Division, "Decades" (1980)

'AND IN THE END...'

A book I read over break was Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, and America (2007) by Jonathan Gould, a very good read on the four lads from Liverpool and the major sensation they caused. What Gould does well is set the Beatles' music -- from formation to first singles, touring, and album to album -- in the context with which it interacts. Familiar as stories of the period are, featuring the usual cast of notables, Gould gives very succinct summations that hit the main cultural markers, but also provides useful historical background of pop music and recording. Such material, it kept occurring to me as I read, is important for any readership whose interest in The Beatles might postdate the band itself -- which is now a large percentage of the music-buying population. A kid listening to a Beatles song today might find it, as music, fun or fascinating or even corny, but should know something of how that music was perceived in its time really to evaluate it.

That statement probably defines my own vexed relation to pop culture, and thus one reason I was interested in reading this book in the first place. For, having lived through the reign of The Beatles while I was in grade school, and having come to terms with what their music "meant" in my teens, I can't help feeling that anything I think about rock-pop music comes filtered through The Fab Four and their sense of what a song could be, no matter how much I willingly dropped interest in John, Paul, George, and Ringo subsequent to The Beatles' breakup. Gould's story of the band helped me to remember why: by the end of the story, The Beatles are pretty tedious company -- especially to each other, but to the reader as well.

Gould is also good at doing something that lots of bios don't do: describing in nuanced detail the work the band did. So often, the story of a creative artist tells us lots about how said artist interacted with others, and how success affected the person, but what gets left out of account is what the artist was trying to do, as an artist. Gould puts the music first because, after all, that's the only reason we care about these four guys, and because, as he paints them, The Beatles themselves put the music first. As long as they were united in that drive to make the best music they could, they were a first-rate band. Once the burden of being the creators of the most popular music ever started to take precedence, to say nothing of trying to have lives that were not relentlessly "Beatled," the music started to become something four celebrities had to find time to do -- and, worse, do with each other: the same four guys who were no longer the same four guys.

Gould's description of the songs is usually informative at least. Generally he also goes beyond mere description of what a song does musically to talk about the implications of the song. At times, in that dimension of interpretive evaluation, he's not all he could be, but he's at least always a discerning listener and quite capable at getting down on paper what he's hearing. For that alone, the book is worthwhile. But it's for his engaging sense of what it was like to be alive when The Beatles were rising and peaking and disassembling, that I strongly recommend this book's clear and concise account.

If you really like it you can have the rights
It could make a million for you overnight--Lennon/McCartney, "Paperback Writer" (1966)

THE YEAR THAT WAS

Beginning the new year, blogwise, starts with a recap of the previous year. Here are the first sentences of the first blogs of each month of 2008. It starts with a statement about resolutions, fittingly. And of course I didn't live up to those resolutions. But, perhaps interestingly, some example of the kinds of topics I "resolved" to write about does appear in this sample. What's not so surprising is that, with the summer, comes my fixation on Musil's The Man Without Qualities; and, with the fall, fixation on topical stories dealing with the election biz. Topical this blog was never intended to be, so the prevalence of such entries says something about the media blitz of Election 2008.

To mark the new year, I thought I'd make some resolutions for blogging. ("New Year, Old Year" 1/1/08)

From a literary work that can be read in about four hours, let's turn to a film that takes about four hours to view: Jacques Rivette's L'amour fou (1969) which the WHC screened a week ago. ("Riveting Rivette" 2/3/08)

I suppose my recent foray into male-centered Western sagas of bonding, agon and identity must have propelled me to the other end of the pendulum-swing: to female-centered urban sagas of bonding, agon and identity -- in this case Alison Lurie’s novel The Truth about Lorin Jones (1988). ("Some Chicklits...?" 3/3/08)

The first of April has acquired some significance for me, in part because it's the date dedicated to my favorite Tarot card, The Fool -- which is also the name of the rock group on whose album cover Pynchon's Tyrone Slothrop is supposedly visible in the background -- and the date has meaning in Gravity's Rainbow because of the fact that in 1945 Easter and April Fool's Day were the same day. ("April Fools" 4/13/08)

World War II has been the setting of so many films, it seems dangerous terrain for a filmmaker attempting anything new. ("World War II Revisited" 5/5/08)

There was a fairly amusing piece in The New York Times Book Review today, about the rigors of reading “jumbo lit” and the toll it takes on one’s day to day life. ("Caveat Lector" 6/1/08)

One could do worse on Independence Day than read Robert Pinsky’s long poem, “An Explanation of America” (1979). ("And It's Almost Independence Day" 7/4/08)

I've made it to the end of the portion of Der Mann that Musil published in 1930 (725 pages). ("Thou Wouldst Be Great" 8/5/08)

After hearing more about Gov. Palin, I realize that her choice is not quite the bad faith move that I originally claimed; it initially struck me as aimed primarily at the disgruntled Hilaryites who might decide to jump to the Republican side. ("Addendum" 9/1/08)

In the best tradition of Nero -- "he fiddled while Rome burned" -- I'm going to talk about music while debate about the debate rages, while the presidential candidates compare bracelets, while the Dow Jones drops and rallies and drops and whatever, while the bailout efforts continue and my own bank gets the kiss of life from a bigger bank. ("The CDs: BabyShambles" 10/1/08)

David Brooks has some sobering thoughts in the New York Times today, even assuming "our guy" wins. ("End of an Era?" 11/4/08)

At long last, I've made it through the 1,130 pages of The Man Without Qualities that Musil published in his lifetime. ("Of Ulrich and Agathe" 12/11/08)