Category Archives: Other Critics

Saturday Links

Posted on by under Authors, guides and nudges, Other Critics

The college football schedule is finally starting to get interesting, so I understand if you ignore my advice and just post up on your couch eating Funyuns. If you are looking for a slightly more refined weekend experience though, may I suggest the following:

  • Check out these amazing illustrations Salvador Dali drew for Don Quixote. The man’s work was so much more than melting clocks. [h/t to the Prufrock Newsletter]
  • Over at Slate, read Joseph Thomas’ account of trying to get the estate of Shel Silverstein to allow him to quote from the author’s works. This is something Ryan and I both know a bit about, as I published a piece on the lengths J.D. Salinger went to guard his personal letters from Ian Hamilton, and Ryan had the misfortune of trying to convince Sylvia Plath’s gatekeepers that a dissertation did not represent a market threat. Godspeed, Prof. Thomas.
  • Jordan Conn wrote a great piece at Grantland about how Oakland looks poised to lose all of its professional sports teams within the next decade. The article ends up being a profile of one of the more unique (for better and for worse) American cities in a time of simultaneous crisis and rebirth.
  • The always insightful Alan Jacobs has a great (and longish) review essay up at Books & Culture about Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Bleeding Edge. Jacobs is a serious and generous critic, and while I don’t share his religious beliefs or politics, I appreciate that he spends so much of his time writing for non-academic audiences. More professors need to look outside the tower every now and then.
  • This is (another) shameless plug, but you should check out the Book Review section over at The Los Angeles Review, where I serve as Assistant Book Reviews Editor.
  • And, this [h/t Adam Ted Jacobson, via Gawker]:

Cultural Literacy Redux

Posted on by under Authors, education, guides and nudges, Other Critics

I know I bash on the late-1960s morality play that is the “XX” blog over at Slate a lot, but outside of this little pocket of cliched topic sentences in search of evidence, Slate really is a great site. Troy Patterson is a big reason why this is so. Aside from being Slate‘s resident man of taste and class, he also has real chops. He’s the only person at that site (maybe save David Weigel) who I trust to use a term like “Tory” in an intellectually honest way. So I can’t say I was surprised to see that Patterson’s a man who takes E.D. Hirsch’s work seriously.

For those unfamiliar with Hirsch, he’s the kind of academic who would never get a tenure-track job today, even though, as Patterson points out (with an assist from one of this blog’s patron saints, Christopher Hitchens), many states are coming around to the idea that kids actually need to learn content in order to acquire skills. The fact that Hirsch’s concept of “cultural literacy” was ever controversial is evidence of the sad decadence and arrogance of some influential English and “Education” departments since the 1970s, when “theory” came into fashion and substituted Orwellian jargon for intelligence. Now, let me be clear (thanks for that phrase, Obama), most English departments are filled with people who really don’t care about what Derrida wrote (or said, or uttered, or whatever stupid word he mandated that we use). But even many of these people have to pretend like Derrida (or Foucault, or Butler, and…) is responsible for more than like 3 useful pages of ideas. One day this will change, but by then English departments may have specialized and de-literatured themselves out of existence.

In any case, Hirsch was and is a real weirdo: a tenured English professor who cares about teaching more than anything else. And not only teaching, as most profs will defend to the death their right to teach graduate seminars, but teaching K-12. What kind of suicidal English professor cares about kids he’s not actually teaching at the moment? One who understands that he will have to teach them at some point. More importantly, Hirsch is the kind of guy who actually thinks about the world beyond the classroom. While his love of testing and data makes me uncomfortable, if I had to pick a side in the education debate, it wouldn’t take me long to choose his over Dewey’s disciples preaching confidence over competence. Competence breeds confidence in the long run, and Hirsch understood that the best way to help the poor is to give them an education that will allow them to converse with and challenge those in positions of power. This is something David Foster Wallace also understood, and if you haven’t read “Tense Present” recently, go do that right now.

Back to Patterson though. I would have loved to see him extend his discussion of how the internet has changed what should be on Hirsch’s famous list of 10,000 terms/ideas/people/events that all Americans should know to consider how it has changed attitudes toward the value of knowing anything at all. Patterson writes:

Is it too bold to suppose that one must now know 10,000 basic things? Obviously, a lot has happened to general knowledge since the book’s publication, not a little of it connected to what now appears to be a lacuna on Hirsch’s list—a gap that developed between International Monetary Fund and interrogative sentence. The Internet is a force of information inflation, and much of the stuff on the list remains relevant, give or take a few relics and some slang terms (pop the question, bite the dust) now fully embedded in mainstream vocabulary.

He’s gazing down on what’s important here, but perhaps it’s too mixed up and awful for him to really get into. I know that feeling. For the last few years I’ve had students sincerely question why they should have to remember (let alone memorize) anything, as the internet will always be there for them as a handy outboard brain. Thankfully, some of my students look horrified when they hear a classmate say this, but the fact that this scene keeps playing itself out is worrisome. I tell them that the internet is not going to be there for them when they’re having a conversation with some smart guy/gal who might be able to give them a job. If they don’t know (or have to look up cultural references on their iPhones) mid-conversation, s/he ain’t going to be impressed. This obviously isn’t the only reason why remembering stuff is important, but if the fact that a job in an increasingly awful and bifurcated economy might hinge on it won’t sway people, I don’t know what will.

And people accuse us humanists of being romantics…

Good Reviews: “Common Ground: Brenda Stevenson’s ‘The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins'”

Posted on by under Good Reviews, Other Critics

As a blog person, I do my best to profit secondarily from brilliant friends. Rachel Monroe is one of these, and, lucky for you, she just wrote a cool piece about a cool book about American violence (et cetera) for the Los Angeles Review of Books. Stop looking out the windows! Stop checking Instagram! Go read!

Nodding Along

Posted on by under education, Other Critics, The Moronic Inferno, the polis

If you are having a great weekend and would rather not think about something completely depressing, something like, say, America’s fundamentally broken K-12 education system, then please do not click on this. If your weekend’s already all shot to hell though (hungover; alone again, naturally; hunting for a job; etc.), I’d like to encourage you to read Jerald Isseks’ honest and disturbing essay about the lies most of us tell and are told about public education. He makes a point that others have made before but can’t be made often enough:

Americans want to talk about how much our kids are failing these days. Those outside the educational system all have their fierce, personal criticisms. And on the front lines, in those faculty meetings, data sessions, and behind the closed doors of ruinous classrooms, teachers and administrators are telling the same stories. There’s the one about the unfocused kids who need to be taught discipline and compliance so they can get a job; the one about the parents who are setting a bad example and creating a negative home environment; the one about the teachers who aren’t a good fit because they aren’t holding their students accountable for doing work that renders them comatose. We tell these stories as we busy ourselves, trying to reassemble the parts of a machine we refuse to admit is fundamentally, and fatally, flawed. Just like we are. Meanwhile, our students are losing interest, losing hope, and vanishing from our records altogether, and for all the productive work we do, we aren’t doing much to bring them back.

Just like Bush before him, Obama has been a complete disaster on education. But Ryan and I have both said this before, and there’s honestly only so much a president can do about a byzantine system of interlocking federal and state policies designed to line the pockets of textbook publishers, tech companies, test companies, test prep companies, union bosses, accrediting agencies, and [insert just about anyone other than students and teachers here]. So yeah, I don’t expect the president (or a senator, or a governor) to come up with some plan to fix K-12 all at once. But I do expect them to be as honest about the state of things as Isseks is. Instead, we get conservatives bleating that collective bargaining is the source of all of our problems, liberals screaming that dumping more money into horribly managed schools is the only obvious solution, technocrats acting like giving every kid an iPad is something other than a giveaway to Silicon Valley, and parents, teachers, and students absolving themselves of any responsibility.

The truth is that we’re all to blame for what’s happening. I teach college in part because the idea of teaching high school kids how to write is terrifying and depressing for all of the reasons Isseks outlines in his article. That’s lame on my part, and I should own that. Still, if Isseks and I are willing to admit our own complicity, shouldn’t everyone else? Shouldn’t our elected officials and technocrat class admit that they totally didn’t see how their fulsome embrace of neoliberal globalization would lead to the hollowing out of the middle class, effectively making a high school diploma worthless to anyone trying to earn anything other than minimum wage? Shouldn’t teachers unions acknowledge that granting K-12 teachers tenure so quickly and placing so much emphasis on seniority at the expense of quality can lead to some pretty perverse consequences? And shouldn’t the president take a step back and think about how his “college for everyone” rhetoric might be hurting more than it’s helping?

Obviously, none of this will happen. We live in a country where a not insignificant portion of the population would rather see us go back into an economic depression than live under the other party’s health care system (which was originally their party’s health care plan, but whatever, nothing to see here). People seem to care more about being right even if that means being completely wrong. Liberals can be just as bad. And so we’ll keep doing the same things we’ve always done, just worse and with apps that make us think we are smarter and more advanced than we are. Happy f’ing Sunday, folks.

Good Reviews: More like “Back to DERP”

Posted on by under Authors, Good Reviews, Other Critics, Reviews

Esquire is gross. We’ve covered that. Not many texts are more ephemeral than book reviews in Esquire, except maybe reviews in Esquire of recent books by Tom Wolfe; the neo-Social Realist ones. And yet although nothing Tom Wolfe, Esquire, or the General Reader does matters, Benjamin Alsup’s compact but weirdly patient, vicious disposal of Wolfe’s Back to Blood (yeesh, the title) is worth your bytes and clicks. A fundamental thrust:

[. . .] There are no characters in Back to Blood, only caricatures, cartoonish stereotypes that are little more than reflections of their sociocultural contexts. The Cuban cop who loves his pastelitos. The preppy reporter with all the right credentials. The Hialeah honey with a heart of gold and a pussy like a papaya. In Back to Blood, Wolfe comes across as a white guy explaining brown people to a room full of white guys. Sure, he burns pages giving his readers access to these characters’ interiors, but once he’s given you the sociological stats (age, gender, race, occupation) there’s really no need for it. Anything Wolfe tells you about what his characters are thinking are things you could’ve guessed from the jump.

We want your weekend to prosper. We don’t want you wasting time with shitty art. So believe us when we say this, y’all: If it ever comes down to white urban writers, you are better off (you are fantastically well-off) with David Simon or Richard Price (or Tom Wolfe from before 1980).

Sporting Chances

Posted on by under Other Critics, sports

In light of Dan’s perspicacious post about the societal burdens of big-time sports, here is some reading to help you intellectualize your version of the general human love of watching young men chase rounded objects and/or injure one another. This afternoon mine entailed watching the Miami Dolphins on the ole flatscreen, as my beloved rotating cast of gladiators, employed by a billionaire from Detroit (postindustrial-dystopia Detroit), did televised battle with the Cleveland (postindustrial-dystopia Cleveland) Browns, who are also owned by a billionaire (one facing federal charges because his company stole money from its customers). Like Dan said: FOOTBALL!

  • “The Legend of Jadeveon Clowney,” from the New York Times. Jadeveon Clowney is going to make a Scrooge-McDuck pile of money playing pro football because he is almost unfathomably talented at aspects of that sport. That’s awesome for him and his family; it’s the opposite of what happens when Meghan McCain or Chelsea Clinton or some other potentate’s child graduates from Stanford then takes a job at the UN. I’m happy that his grandchildren are set for life, provided he obtains sound financial advice. His game is beautiful, an otherworldly blend of spatial intuition, bison strength, ballet-dancer grace, and vicious concentration. Kid is a football genius who makes football aesthetes’ eyes pop out of their heads. But still you wonder what would have happened to Clowney if he weren’t an athletic marvel, if he had a gift for math or writing or painting; or if he were “merely” a reasonably intelligent, average human being; or if he wasn’t all that talented or ambitious and just wanted to manage a hardware store or something. He grew up poor and black in North Carolina. What happens if he isn’t a brilliant entertainment provider? What happens to that kid? The US (especially the South) has developed a superb system for producing football and basketball players.  Imagine if they (we) put that much effort into the academic side of the schools that students like Clowney have to attend whether or not they’re rare athletes.
  • “Roger Federer as Religious Experience,” also from the NY Times. Somewhere in his published Letters, Kingsley Amis remarks that anyone who denies that Shakespeare is the greatest of all English poets can be ignored because they have a second-rate mind. I feel the same way about anybody who claims that David Foster Wallace, who wrote this essay, wasn’t all that good, especially if they dredge up the stupid gripe about how it’s a corny stereotype for young people, especially young (or not-so-young) males, to love his work. DFW isn’t Shakespeare, but nonetheless, fuck you if you aren’t amazed by his nonfiction. You probably don’t like Dr. Johnson, Hazlitt, Didion, Sontag, Edmund Wilson, Lester Bangs, or James Baldwin either. Yeah, I said it: amazed.
  • Baseball Card Vandals is a website you shouldn’t look at if you dislike laughing for extended periods of time.
  • I rode hard for Wright Thompson’s “When the Beautiful Game Turns Ugly” earlier this summer. I ride for it again here. Fantastic pop-ethnography for sports dorks who appreciate history, politics, and the utility of long clauses.

So stop watching sports!

Just kidding. Don’t ever do that.

Weekend Beats: Tournament Style

Posted on by under mainly rap music, Other Critics, Weekend Beats

It’s way too hot here in Los Angeles this weekend. We live on the second floor, so our apartment is just gross today. Still, we have a marginally functional air conditioner, which makes staying in better than going out, giving me a lot of time to pore over Grantland‘s “Battle for the Best Song of the Millennium” feature. It’s an utterly pointless exercise, but they admit as much. Songs are given seeds and pitted against one another in an NCAA-style bracket, and readers vote to determine the “winner.” Some of the results have been disheartening. That “Stay Fly” by Three 6 Mafia was given a 15 seed, and that people with ears think “Drop It Like It’s Hot” is a better song by almost a 3 to 1 margin really shake my faith in humanity. But M83 and Phoenix upsetting Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, respectively, are reasons for hope. In any event, you should follow the action.

In a follow-up feature discussing the bubble songs that just missed the cut, the NIT songs, if you will, the always insightful Steven Hyden diagnoses what is wrong with the bracket’s composition: very few mid-major songs made the field. He writes:

Let’s acknowledge a few of the biases inherent in the creation of this bracket. There is no metal. There is only a smattering of country. Rock music is consistently relegated to the lowest seeds. Pretty much anything played on an acoustic stringed instrument is apparently verboten. Bands you might like — Spoon, the National, the Hold Steady, Queens of the Stone Age, the Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, Drive-By Truckers, Bon Iver, Mastodon, Fucked Up, TV on the Radio, Muse — are nowhere to be found. This is a list where “great song” is synonymous with “rap and pop bangers that were popular on the radio once.” That doesn’t mean the bracket is terrible, necessarily — just that if you happen to be among the troglodytes for whom “rap and pop bangers that were popular on the radio once” does not constitute quality listening, sorry, you are left out.

He says this before recommending the Shins’ “New Slang,” a song that most of the folks who read this blog probably listened to on repeat in their college bedrooms while pining away after people who weren’t in fact as cool, smart, or attractive as they seemed. It’s the perfect song for that sort of thing, and as such deserved to be included in the field over something like Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” which is just another serviceable, and frankly boring, pop song. It’s like when a 19-12 Illinois team with a .500 record in Big Ten play gets invited to the tournament over a 26-6 Long Beach State squad from the Big West. Both teams are likely to lose in the first round, but I’d rather see how the team from the small conference and that runs an unorthodox system fares against a tough opponent. We’ve all watched enough middling Big Ten basketball and heard enough middling pop music.

So here’s a mid-major gem some of you might know, and some of you might not. It’s from 2011 and merits a Parental Advisory sticker for its adult content: lyrics acknowledging that there are some things in life you can’t come back from. Not kids’s stuff. Then again, Gillian Welch was no Mouseketeer.

 

Make That Paper… Or Two

Posted on by under education, Life of the Mind, Other Critics

I recommend you read this little post by Adam Kotsko, an assistant professor at Shimer College (which sounds like an awesome place, by the way). The following paragraph sums up Kotsko’s point, and it’s something Ryan and I have been saying to each other for years: most grad students have some skills that could be useful in the private sector, but few actually figure out a way to make use of them there. Kotsko writes:

In terms of making this work, you first need to think about the skills you have as a grad student. You have research skills. You have writing skills. You are basically an information processing machine. You hopefully have some language skills. Depending on your discipline, you might also have some advanced math or stats skills — in any case, you probably know how to use standard office software better than the average office worker does. You’re almost certainly anal-retentive when it comes to grammar and usage. These are things that don’t take any pre-existing special skills, and there are plenty of companies that need help with all of that. (And if you do have pre-existing special skills like programming or web design, then that’s just another advantage.)

Kotsko goes on to suggest that grad students make two resumes, one of their private sector work, and one of their academic work, as both spheres are irrationally hostile to what they think happens in the other, thus somehow tainting the mind of the person who has strayed beyond the borders of either. A lot of grad students I knew did something like this, but most still touted their academic credentials and work on their non-academic CV. They shouldn’t have, at least not in the language of academia.

One of the changes that needs to occur in humanities and social science graduate programs (the sciences are better at this for pretty obvious reasons) is advisors coming to grips with the fact that most of their students won’t become tenure-track professors. This has always been the case, but people still act like all of their young (and old) charges are going to work as “academics.” This fantasy leads advisors to almost never mention that grad students pursue work other than adjunct teaching, save maybe for volunteering at politically correct non-profits. Folks who work in the digital humanities are better about this, but even they don’t often tell their students how important it is to cultivate non-academic professional relationships, build marketable skills, and MAKE MONEY. This has to change soon, or else many grad programs and the people they churn out will insulate themselves out of existence.