tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7983372.post6126768184067323442..comments2023-11-05T04:04:12.442-05:00Comments on Short Schrift: Misserved By PrivilegeTimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13026955797817424956noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7983372.post-47520915515777731332008-08-12T12:07:00.000-04:002008-08-12T12:07:00.000-04:00I just posted this at Snarkmarket, but I figure yo...I just posted this at Snarkmarket, but I figure you're the most likely person to care, so I'm cross-commenting here as well:<BR/><BR/>Deresiewicz's piece bugged me from the start, and not just because the plumber story reflects more on the author's inanity than anything else. (Tim and I discussed this over at Short Schrift awhile back) But I couldn't place my dislike precisely until just now, after having read an essay by Lionel Trilling from 1961, "On the Teaching of Modern Literature." Sadly, I can't find a version online to point to, but it's published in Trilling's <I>Beyond Culture</I> and also in Hollinger and Capper, eds., <I>The American Intellectual Tradition</I>--a copy of which I know Robin to own, and he'll be happy to lend it to all of you reading this.<BR/><BR/>Trilling's essay has two lives. In broad arc it tells the story of a teacher's problem: how to teach a modern literature that feels too intensely personal and too dangerous to the compromises necessary for social life, and then how to overcome the disappointment of having students prove their skill in making even the most distressing literature domestic. Its second life is an argument, not a story. It claims modern literature to have its origins in the attraction to the spiritual, the sexual, the primal, the animalisitic part of the self that emerged out of the most rationalist and modern of late nineteenth century thought. The point of the essay, as I see it, is to play out the tension of the modern condition: the see-saw between yearning to let the self run wild and submitting to the constraints of social order. Trilling hopes to see his students shaken by this modern literature, thrown from their everyday lives. When they write essays laced with interest, but not madness, he feels let down. Yet one presumes he would have been more distressed to have seen decorum fly out the classroom window.<BR/><BR/>Moreover, Trilling doesn't blame his students too harshly. In fact, he holds open the possibility that some of his students were shaken to the core by their encounter with <I>The Magic Mountain</I> or <I>The Wasteland.</I> He believes it possible and even likely that his students choose not to share their most personal thoughts with him, and that his encounter with them misses their fullness of being.<BR/><BR/>Trilling, a perceptive critic as ever, admits that he cannot know his students completely, and gives them the benefit of the doubt. Deresiewicz lacks this intellectual humility. He judges his students too harshly, and in haste to criticize culture does them violence. That is what pissed me off about the essay. And Lionel Trilling helped me see it.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7983372.post-50224804951265715572008-07-24T11:17:00.000-04:002008-07-24T11:17:00.000-04:00The plumber thing is six kinds of messed up. Are w...The plumber thing is six kinds of messed up. Are we supposed to lament that a noble education no longer trains elites how to treat their inferiors? You can exchange "plumber" for "nanny," "gardener," etc. If there's a crisis in upper-class relationships with the people who serve them, it's half class (and/or race) guilt and half fear of awkwardness.<BR/><BR/>The author never mentions that the plumber actually knows a lot more than he does, which puts him at a disadvantage. Treat the man like a professional; talk about your pipes. That's what he's there to do. If you have to make small talk, Jesus, talk about baseball.Timhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13026955797817424956noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7983372.post-42159044322386994402008-07-23T19:25:00.000-04:002008-07-23T19:25:00.000-04:00I read this essay in its entirety a few weeks ago....I read this essay in its entirety a few weeks ago. Some parts are compelling, but on the whole its a mess. Most of the essay does nothing to clear up how the author might better have been prepared to talk with plumbers, making the opening vignette feel disconnected at best and misleading at worst.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.com