March isn't just for Madness

Folks,

We're roaring into the spring and asking you take a moment to put down your bracket for ten minutes...okay, more like thirty minutes but it's in the name of something important to all of us, the neophyte and the initiated: the humanities.

There has been much discussion among many of you, I'm sure, about William Chace's article, "The Death of the English Department" in The American Scholar last year. It seems to me that most of the people I've asked have found the article a bit simplistic in its thinking as well as nostalgic and ill-prescriptive. I have different views but I'm saving them for the end as Dave and I try to host, electronically, a round table discussion on this article and the conversations it has spawned.

To lead off our discussion we've invited Bobby Baird. Bobby's an old friend and an intellectual of the first-rate. He's way smarter than I could ever hope to be, in part, because he spent last night studying about Che Guevara’s "disastrous final guerrilla campaign in Bolivia in 1967" in a story he's working on for Narrative and I spent most of last evening trying to understand how Kentucky was going to navigate its way through the East Regional of this year's NCAA Tournament.

Anyway, here's Bobby's post. Read. Respond. Re-respond. We want to know what you think. We're going viral. Which is a hell of lot different than going feral, or so I'm told.

All best,

Mike

Dave, Mike,

Thanks for having me on the show. The topic of the week, I’ve been told, is William Chace’s essay in The American Scholar, “The Decline of the English Department.”

The meter’s running on my 500 words, and since my colleague at digital emunction, Michael Robbins, has already quoted some relevant passages, I won’t waste time recapitulating. In his rebuttal, Michael cites a sentence from John Guillory that’s key to my own argument with Chace: “Needless to say, the emergence of theory is the symptom of a problem which theory itself could not solve.”

This is my problem with the essay as a whole: Chace regularly confuses cause and effect, disease and symptom. That confusion keeps him from seeing that the sterling heyday of the humanities he remembers from his youth was a wild anomaly that was made possible by two conditions. The first was the post-WWII economic boom, which gave students (especially those at elite universities) the freedom "not" to make their curricular choices based on economic demand. In the '50s and '60s a college degree was still special enough that it would find you a well-paying job even if you graduated in something as practically useless as classics. The glut of college diplomas in today's job market means that kids need to major in disciplines like business and economics to get a jump on their post-collegiate competition.

The second and more crucial (because rarer) condition was a situation in which a liberal-arts education was considered a marker of social class. You learned Shakespeare not only because you thought it was good for your soul but because it would help you get the jokes at a business lunch. It helped you fit in. That's simply not the case anymore, and hasn't been for a while. Exhibit A: another essay from The American Scholar, this one from 1985, in which Peter Baida wrote:

A couple of years ago...my wife and I gave what might be called a Yuppie dinner party. All six of our guests were young professionals with degrees in law or business from top-ranked schools. At one point I mentioned that my wife recently had finished reading Proust and that now I had begun. "Who is Proust?" one of our guests asked. I thought someone else would answer, but all eyes turned toward me. Suddenly I realized that not one of our guests knew who Proust was.

Commenting on this, Guillory cites Barbara Ehrenreich—"No doubt they knew what Brie was, or pesto or Chardonnay"—and goes on to say, "Consumer culture provides myriad opportunity for producing effects of status differentiation." Proust doesn't signify because other markers of elitism (real estate prices, travel experience, obscure Brooklyn bands) do the job so much better.

Chace simply doesn't get how unusual (and, frankly, un-American) that brief blaze of the humanities was. (Guillory again: “The undermining of high culture is as old as the formation of the American bourgeoisie, but it has especially characterized the history of the professional-managerial class, at least since the later nineteenth century.”) We’ve had booms come and go since the ‘50s, but in the end, I suspect that the liberal arts were simply too democratic to serve reliably as a social indicator: what good is Shakespeare as a class boundary marker if people are teaching him at state schools?

As a corollary I’d say that if your real concern is to improve access to literature—teaching people to read well, to appreciate complex works of literature, to develop an ear for language and an eye for irony— then the English department as currently constructed is probably not the best place to focus your activism. I agree with Chace about the importance of teaching; for a while now I’ve thought that there should be something like a teaching Ph.D in the humanities, a post-Master's degree for people who want to teach literature but don't want to do research. But college is just four years of a person’s life; if it’s readers you want to encourage, why not find ways that work for 15-, 40-, and 60-year-olds?

What concerns me much more than English department woes is the absence (I won’t call it a decline) of any durable non-academic intellectual culture in this country. But that’s maybe a topic for another episode, so I’ll end here, awaiting your responses with breathed bait, or something like that...

bb

More Best Ofs.

Some welcome and much-appreciated addenda to the list of lists. Thanks to the following friends/poets/listmakers who have contributed. Their lists follow below:


Megan Levad

Lorine Niedecker, Collected Works (edited by Jenny Penberthy) (2002)
Joyelle McSweeney, The Commandrine and Other Poems (2004)
Spencer Reece, The Clerk's Tale (2004)
Anne Carson, Decreation (2005)
Susan Stewart, Columbarium (2005)
Erin Belieu, Black Box (2006)
Kate Greenstreet, case sensitive (2006)
Amy Gerstler, Ghost Girl (2007)
Maggie Nelson, Something Bright, then Holes (2007)
Alice Notley, In the Pines (2007)



Erika Meitner

Total: 20 Books of the last decade for teaching and reading

Books from the last decade (12 of them) that I love to teach or find myself compulsively handing off to students from my own shelves, which means they must be doing something amazing and unique and interesting (in no particular order):

Some Ether - Nick Flynn (2000)
Modern Life - Matthea Harvey (2007)
Controvertibles - Quan Barry (2004)
One Big Self: An Investigation - C.D. Wright (2007)
Broken Hallelujahs - Sean Thomas Dougherty (2007)
Insomnia Diary - Bob Hicok (2004)
Letters to Wendy's - Joe Wenderoth (2000)
American Linden - Matthew Zapruder (2002)
Two and Two - Denise Duhamel (2005)
Cocktails - D.A. Powell (2004)
My American Kundiman - Patrick Rosal (2006)
Fire Wheel - Sharmila Voorakkara (2005)


Books I keep going back to myself, for my own work, that I refuse to lend out to my students (8 of them, in no particular order):


Steal Away: Selected and New Poems - C.D. Wright (2003)
Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities - Olena Kalytiak Davis (2003)
Selected Levis - Larry Levis (2003)
The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems - Denis Johnson (reissued in 2007 by CMU Press, which counts, right?) [Editor's note: Anything you want to count can count.]
Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 - Lucille Clifton (2000)
Museum of Accidents - Rachel Zucker (2009)
Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric - Claudia Rankine (2004)
Wind in a Box - Terrance Hayes (2006)


Ross White

My top ten is in no particular order; it's probably not as much a top ten as it is a "ten books that had a profound impact on me." I did exclude selected/collected volumes, which would have seemed like cheating, and didn't include friends and teachers, which robbed me of a couple of terrific books of poems.

1. Beth Ann Fennelly, Tender Hooks (2005)
2. Carl Dennis, Practical Gods (2001)
3. Brigit Pegeen Kelly, The Orchard (2004)
4. Ross Gay, Against Which (2006)
5. Mark Jarman, Epistles (2007)
6. Sarah Manguso, Siste Viator (2006)
7. Carl Phillips, From the Devotions (2002)
8. Matthea Harvey, Sad Little Breathing Machine (2004)
9. Olena Kalytiak Davis, shattered sonnets, love cards, and other off and back handed importunities (2003)
10. Ander Monson, Vacationland (2005)

A Very Special Episode: The Best Poetry Books of the 2000s

Mike,

I hope you'll forgive me for a little poetry detour, but the people are clamoring for poetry, and who are we to deny them?

Here's the story: in December 2009 I asked a group of friends and poets (mostly poet-friends) to list their ten "best" books of poetry of the 2000s, with "best" defined as liberally as they'd like--"great," "favorite," "passable," whatever. The lists that follow below represent the replies I received/coerced, some of which came--understandably--grudgingly. I'm ashamed to say that, just as in high school, no women responded to my request. Then again, all this list-making has always seemed a very male interest--but that's another post.

I recognize quite well that "best of" lists are worth only slightly more than a Democratic supermajority in the Senate, but like the Senate, they are meant to be an arena for debate. Debate is fine with me, but I'm just as interested in publishing these lists as a way for people like us to discover books we may have missed in the past ten years. In my grander moments I fancy myself a well-read poet, but many of these were new and exciting for me to learn of. I'm grateful to all those who participated for providing me with a new reading list, and just as grateful that they took the time to think about the question I put to them.

These lists proceed alphabetically, with a short biographical note for each contributor, and they end with a list by Paul Muldoon, soon to read at our very own John Carroll University. Muldoon's list was published in the Times (London) at the end of 2009, but I thought it was well worth presenting it here.

One last note before the lists -- if any of our several readers want to contribute their own list, I'll be glad to update this post to include it. Now then:



James Arthur

I don't feel qualified to list the 10 *best* books—or even to list 10 books—because I haven't read all that widely; I tend to latch on to a few poets here & there and obsess over them. I do want to put in a good word, though, for some writers I love, and who I think don't get talked about as often as they deserve, in some cases, maybe, because they're not American.

Simon Armitage (England). The Shout: Selected Poems (2005)
Christian Bok (Canada). Eunoia (2001)
Joseph Brodsky. Collected Poems in English (2002)
Richard Kenney. One-Strand River (2008)
Les Murray (Australia). New Collected Poems (2002)
Derek Walcott. Selected Poems (2007)


James Arthur's poetry has appeared in the New Yorker, New Republic, Southern Review, and Shenandoah. He has received a “Discovery”/The Nation Award, the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, and a Stegner Fellowship, as well as fellowships to Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. He lives in St. Louis with his wife, fiction writer Shannon Robinson.




Michael Dumanis

I made two separate categories, one for debuts and one for non-debuts because I think comparing a new book to, say, a book by Gluck or Ashbery or Merwin is an apples-to-oranges kind of comparison. Listed in alphabetical order by author. It's hard enough to think of my ten favorite books of a particular year, so this is no way a ten best list, but rather a list of the first ten books I thought of that definitely stand out for me (though others could have found their way in on a different day). Also, I excluded any New or Selected Poems. I did not include one book in English translation by a non-American author, though I was very tempted to include Do Not Awaken Them With Hammers by Lidija Dimkovska.


Ten Remarkable Debut Poetry Books, 2000-2009

Jericho Brown. Please (2008)
Oni Buchanan. What Animal (2003)
Arda Collins. It Is Daylight (2009)
Monica Ferrell. Beasts for the Chase (2008)
James Allen Hall. Now You’re the Enemy (2008)
Sabrina Orah Mark. The Babies (2004)
Jennifer Millitello. Flinch of Song (2009)
Robyn Schiff. Worth (2002)
Zachary Schomburg. The Man Suit (2007)
Richard Siken. Crush (2005)


Ten Remarkable Poetry Books by More Established Authors (1 Prior Book or More), 2000-2009

Olena Kalytiak Davis. Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities (2003)
Terrance Hayes. Wind in a Box (2006)
Cate Marvin. Fragment of the Head of a Queen (2007)
Chelsey Minnis. Bad Bad (2007)
Harryette Mullen. Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002)
Michael Palmer. The Promises of Glass (2000)
D.A. Powell. Cocktails (2004)
Claudia Rankine. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004)
Frederick Seidel. Ooga-Booga (2006)
Juliana Spahr. This Connection of Everyone with Lungs (2005)


Michael Dumanis teaches literature and creative writing at Cleveland State University, where he serves as Director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center and edits the books in their poetry and novella series. His first collection of poems, My Soviet Union won the Juniper Prize for Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Press and appeared in Spring 2007. He is also the coeditor, with poet Cate Marvin, of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century.



James Allen Hall

In no order

Richard Siken. Crush (2005)
Jericho Brown. Please (2008)
Lucie Brock-Broido. Trouble in Mind (2004)
Terrance Hayes. Wind in a Box (2006)
Claudia Rankine. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004)
Louise Glück. Averno (2006)
Olena Kalytiak Davis. Shattered Sonnets, Love Cards, and Other Off and Back Handed Importunities (2003)
Michael Dumanis. My Soviet Union (2007)
Tracy K. Smith. The Body’s Question (2003)
Brian Teare. The Room Where I Was Born (2003)

James Allen Hall is the author of Now You're The Enemy, selected for the 2008 Arkansas Poetry Prize, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award and the Helen C. Smith Memorial Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters. A graduate of the PhD program at the University of Houston, Hall currently teaches creative writing and literature at the State University of New York, Potsdam.



Dave Lucas

Kay Ryan. Say Uncle (2000)
Mxolisi Nyezwa. song trials (2001)
Spencer Short. Tremolo (2001)
Maurice Manning. Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (2001)
Harryette Mullen. Sleeping with the Dictionary (2002)
Mary Szybist. Granted (2003)
Alice Oswald. Woods, etc. (2005)
Robin Robertson. Swithering (2006)
Seamus Heaney. District and Circle (2006)
Todd Boss. yellowrocket (2008)


I’ve arranged my list sequentially. I’m deliberately leaving off close friends and teachers, though in doing so I’ve lost one of my favorite favorites of the whole decade, Alan Shapiro’s Song and Dance (2002), so I mention it anyway. Also, I disqualified translations and Selected / Collecteds. Finally, since it comes out next year and I’m not technically including it, I’ll at least mention Sarah Barber’s The Kissing Party (forthcoming in 2010), which I read this past year in manuscript.



Philip Metres

I hate lists, but here it is. 10 Poetry Books Published in the 2000s

Michael Palmer. That I Have Not Forgotten the Promises of Glass. New Directions. 2000.
Jen Bervin. Nets. Ugly Duckling Presse. 2003.
K. Silem Mohammad. Deer Head Nation. Tougher Disguises. 2003.
William Stafford. Every War Has Two Losers: William Stafford on Peace and War. Milkweed, 2003.
Lev Rubinstein. Catalogue of Comedic Novelties. Ugly Duckling Presse. 2004.
Mark Nowak. Shut Up Shut Down. Coffee House Press. 2004.
Mahmoud Darwish. The Butterfly’s Burden. Copper Canyon. 2006.
C.D. Wright. One Big Self. Copper Canyon. 2007.
Today I Wrote Nothing: Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms. Overlook. 2007.
Rachel Loden. Dick of the Dead. Ahsahta. 2009.

Philip Metres is the author of To See the Earth and Behind the Lines: War Resistance Poetry on the American Homefront since 1941. He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland.



Tomás Q. Morín

1. Robert Hass. Time and Materials (2007)
2. Zbigniew Herbert. Collected Poems (2007)
3. Gerald Stern. American Sonnets (2002)
4. Seamus Heaney. Beowulf (2000)
5. Adam Zagajewski. Without End: New and Selected Poems (2002)
6. Elizabeth Bishop. Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke-Box (2006)
7. Henri Cole. Middle Earth (2003)
8. Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The Orchard (2004)
9. Jack Gilbert. Refusing Heaven (2005)
10. Edward Hirsch. Lay Back the Darkness (2003)

Tomás Q. Morín is a Texas native whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slate, Blackbird, Ploughshares, Boulevard, Poetry Northwest, Best New Poets 2007, and Studies in the Literary Imagination. He has been awarded scholarships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the Idyllwild Arts Academy. He holds an MA in Hispanic and Italian Studies from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from Texas State Univeristy, where he is a senior lecturer in English.



Paul Otremba

Elizabeth Arnold Civilization (2006)
Rick Barot The Darker Fall (2002)
Anne Carson Men in the Off Hours (2000)
Andrew Feld Citizen (2004)
Nick Flynn Some Ether (2000)
Louise Glück Averno (2006)
Stanley Plumly Now That My Father Lies Down Beside Me (2000)
Claudia Rankine Don’t Let Me Be Lonely (2004)
Alan Shapiro Song and Dance (2002)
Richard Siken Crush (2005)

Paul Otremba is the author of the poetry collection The Currency. His poems and criticism have appeared in Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, Washington Post, Poetry Daily, Tikkun, and American Poets in the 21st Century: The New Poetics. He has won scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Barthelme Memorial Fellowship, a Krakow Poetry Seminar Fellowship, and an Academy of American Poets prize. He lives in Houston, Texas.



Eric Smith

1. Maurice Manning. Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions (2001)
2. Donald Justice. Collected Poems (2004)
3. Brigit Pegeen Kelly. The Orchard (2004)
4. Frederick Seidel. Poems 1959—2009 (2009)
5. Ilya Kaminsky. Dancing in Odessa (2004)
6. Michael Hofmann. Selected Poems (2009)
7. Randall Mann. Breakfast with Thom Gunn (2009)
8. Bob Hicok. Animal Soul (2001)
9. Terrance Hayes. Wind in a Box (2006)
10. Jack Gilbert. Refusing Heaven (2005)

Eric Smith recently graduated from MFA@FLA. He co-edits cellpoems, and has new work appearing or forthcoming in Green Mountains Review and Tampa Review.


Paul Muldoon (published in The Times)

Among the most significant books of poetry of this past decade was The Beauty of the Husband by Anne Carson (2001), a tale of marital haps and mishaps for those who continue to like their poetry appropriately dense and difficult. District and Circle by Seamus Heaney (2006) and The Weather in Japan by Michael Longley (2000) show two leading Irish poets tending their plots and reaping the benefits. The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin (2009) is a book in which deep image and deep ecology are happily combined. Weeds and Wildflowers by Alice Oswald (2009) includes wonderful snapshots of the physical world while Rain by Don Paterson (2009) is a splendidly intense and intelligent collection from the great Scottish poet. A Scattering by Christopher Reid (2009) includes some of the best elegiac writing of recent years while Failure by Philip Schultz (2007) includes the observation "failures are unforgettable." Rounding out this top 10 list are the unforgettably successful My Noiseless Entourage by Charles Simic (2005) and Collected Poems by C.K. Williams (2007).

All Things Come to an End

Dave,

I read your post with interest and eagerness. It's been so long since we've talked to each for all 11 readers of this blog. But I think 2010, and this new decade, is where we go past the 20 reader mark. I anticipate this blog going viral just like all those cute cats on YouTube.

I recorded Conan' O'Brien's final show the other night, Dave and he said that all things come to an end a decade too soon. The show was sad to watch, in some ways, because, well, you saw that his heart was broken by not being able to continue on in his dream job and one of the coolest things he said was that he wanted young people, especially young people, to not be cynical. That it was "his least favorite quality" in a person that rarely do things work out the way we thought they would.

Since I was a boy I've always been prone to nostalgia. And your post has me thinking about these last ten years (and the books I've read aren't what come to mind for me.) I certainly didn't believe ten years ago, as a college senior, I'd be a university professor, much less a version of a writer. Like most college graduates who don't have a penchant for numbers or science (or a business degree the B school keeps telling us) I really had no idea what I wanted to be or could do. I had this notion of being a writer, but that seemed like a pipe dream (and still does some days). Conan has asked young people to not be cynical and I don't know if I quality as young, but I've found that coming of age as an adult the last ten years has made it awfully hard to not be cynical. I'm sure that we can find somebody's journal entry from 1972 saying the same thing about coming of age in the '60s, and yet for all the advances in technology, our ability to communicate and disseminate information, I find our country as nearly polarized now as it was then and I see no real coming together, aside from natural disaster, except for the passion of keeping Conan O'Brien's television show on the air at 11:35 and for the vitriol directed at Tiger Woods for being, among other things, a jock.

These last ten years have taught us both about both egregious corporate greed (Enron, do we remember them?) and egregious imbalance of power in government (Rove, Cheney, and W.). And yet, we stand here at the beginning of a new decade, I would argue, nearly as dumb and ignorant as we were ten years ago. We are certainly a more fearful country. 9/11 and two financial collapses have aided in that, but we are not smarter. I might argue (if I were smarter, myself) that Americans' short attention-span has grown even shorter. Or I could say that given the terrorist attacks and attempts on our country, the destroyed 401ks and lost homes, Americans have turned to diversion rather than dealing with their problems.

After all, isn't easier to argue that Conan got screwed? That Tiger is a terrible husband by anybody's standards? Those are easy answers for nearly all of us, much less murky than what to do about the state of health insurance in this country or whether or not waterboarding will reveal information to save the life of someone you love? TMZ.com can show me beautiful people behaving badly and suddenly I don't feel like the schlep I did five minutes ago. Given all that I understand why the black and white results of the playoffs are on your mind (I too am a Colts-Vikings, man). But here's the thing, Dave. Scott Brown won in Massachusetts on Tuesday. I still don't know who lost.

I'm with CoCo (or trying to be),

Mike

Leno Agonistes

Mike,

I had almost given up on our blog, but then I heard some good news that renewed my faith in everything: he is risen.

Everything seems different now. I hear birds singing, I feel the sunshine on my skin. I laugh just thinking of all those headlines. Oh, Leno be praised; Leno is back.

Anyway, It's the end of January 2010, which means two things: It's almost time for my Halloween 2009 post, and just in time for a very special Best of the Decade list to go along with all the others you've been reading almost two months ago now--I mean--recently. I'm talking about poetry, Mike, and while you may be surprised that as many as ten books of poems have been published in the last ten years, it's true. And next week, right here, on our beloved blog, I will be publishing various poets' lists of the best books of the Oughts. But maybe while we're at it, you could tell me your top ten works of fiction of the last decade. Let me guess: Eragon?

But in the meantime I have the chance to complain about some of the other lists that I spent so very much time reading as the odometer ticked over from 2009 to 2010. Let me ask then, Mike, if I should be shocked or resigned to the fact that Newsweek's "Cultural Predictions for 2010" are all about either TV or movies? I like TV more than the average self-satisfied ivory-tower type, but nothing from this country's museums, bookstores, concert halls? Even video game consoles? Nothing? Take a look:

Nonsense

Oh wait, Twilight is a book. Disregard everything above. Or ever in my life.

Speaking of culture, there are a few other things I've been meaning to ask you:

Mike, did you know that Brittany Murphy died of a broken heart?

Exactly who is prosecuted for murder when all of Hollywood is responsible? Harvey Weinstein?

Mike, did you know that Conan O'Brien is actually the one who screwed NBC?

It's true, all Conan cares about is PR. I think that's probably why he's left his hair like this:

Now, usually I'd be more interested in talking about an asinine list of upcoming cultural non-events. But these other news stories made me mad, and I don't know what to do with anger but indulge it.

So: I am reminded of what you've said about political campaigns: you shouldn't be allowed to lie. I don't care if that sounds naive. Someone should call you on it, and--to whatever extent is possible--should punish you for it. Even if that punishment is only a footnote in a blog that is read by literally several insomniacs between ordering Slap-Chops and Snuggies (neither of which, by the way, did this blogger receive for Christmas). I'm reminded of the email I received from the Ohio Democratic Party, requesting money to fight the Republican machine that "lied, cheated, and stole" the special Senate election in Massachusetts. Now perhaps you've noticed that I'm a liberal, and maybe that's why I find it so doubly disgusting that the Democratic party shit the bed in this election only to--in Ohio, at least--claim that the Republican party cheated to win it. Because only Republicans cheat, apparently. God knows the Kennedys never resorted to anything underhanded to win an election.

There's so much to talk about this year, Mike--I mean at least until we get bored with being bloggers again. We need to talk about the fate of the university English department. More on that soon. We need to talk about the playoffs, no matter what Jim Mora says. I'm picking the Colts and Vikings, which means you can look forward to Jets vs. Saints. We'll have two whole weeks to hype the Super Bowl, and I'll have at least one week to complain about the logo for next year's Super Bowl. I'm going to count how many people say, "I just like the commercials." It's true; they're so funny.

You know, in 2010, I'm not going to take our blog for granted anymore. Because--well, do you remember that night when you were blogging on your Macbook and I was blogging on my Macbook, and we saw that shooting star go across our screensavers? Well, this is what I wished for.

In Leno,
Dave

P.S.: Thank Christ for this, too.

I've Got Your Punditry Right Here

Dave,

I took an additional week away from our blog because I had some catching up to do on the job that actually pays me money but is a distant to second to where my heart and allegiance lies--the devoted ten readers of Imagined Audience. But while stuck in my Ivory Tower I did manage to follow the news and I have some things I'd like to say in response to your post and about the big events of this past week.

First off, let me say your post was entertaining and full of what you and I both hope to achieve on this blog, a mix of high and low cultures threaded seamlessly together like the NFL's campaign for raising breast cancer awareness with the inclusion of pink into football cleats and team baseball caps. PTI is my favorite show on ESPN and the only one that I really watch with any interest and it's sad to see ESPN commit programming cannibalism by ripping off the format to parade out a slew of other shows that have faux arguments in them among men trying to outdo each other on the wittiness scale. But thank God for Sunday NFL Countdown, which is pretty much The View for men and about football, except when Elisabeth Hasselbeck is talking about her husband and the War in Iraq, then The View is The View for men, I guess.

I woke up on Friday and saw that President Obama had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Talk about pundits hitting the throttle, Dave. Look at this article from the New York Times and see if you can count on all your digits the number of people weighing in on this. My first reaction to the news was probably much like Obama's. "You're fucking kidding me, right?" I mean, can you imagine getting called in your room at 6:00 a.m. and on the other end is a senior staffer (in your case, Winston the dog) and having him say, "Dave, Stockholm just called. You've won the Prize." At first, in this scenario, you're thinking that the Prize is a talking dog but once you are corrected you find out you now share the same lofty space as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. But really, imagine that moment. The shock. The names that run through your head (probably not Kissinger). And then the amazement and disbelief that he must have had at hearing the news. And then in the next three hours how none of that matters because the professional pundits in this country are going to shape the narrative of how this plays out not just this week, but for the next three years. Perhaps, this will go on for the rest of his life.

To comment on this is the nature of news and the nature of pundits. Hell, it's the nature of a blog like ours. But one of the problems with blogs as my friend, Elisabeth Chaves, points out in her assessment of the political economy of litblogs, is that:

If it is the case that the Internet only changes the form of discourse (by moving away from print media) and not its content, then how much of a difference does a change in form make—enough of a difference to begin to change the substance? One of the primarily specified changes in form is speed and its effects...In simplified terms, the speed of the Internet allows for quick communication, and quick communication is inherently unthoughtful [with the] writing [often displaying]...some sort of compulsory reflex rather than deliberative act.

In our news media today speed much more than content is what seems to matter. Nearly every columnist I enjoy reading has his or her own blog now so that they can often delve deeper into their own previous columns, providing hyperlinks to the data they are using to cite their information and/or facts and the major newspapers in the country have all taken to posting multiple blogs on multiple subjects on their websites. So when are we actually slowing down to consider what's happening in the world around us? Is that the job of the news media or the ordinary citizen? Both?

I'm not crying for the good old days here. Weekly columnists have always had to meet deadlines but in this amped up news cycle we seem to anticipate the news, and the response it will generate, rather than consider what this news might actually mean to our lives. The argument against what I'm saying here is that is exactly what pundits are trying to do. They're trying to frame the arguments in the context of how they will affect you, Dear Reader/Viewer, through a lens of how I feel/think about the subject. But how much time do these pundits actually get to spend on any one topic before something new breaks and they're on to the next thing?

It's impossible to slow the world down. I know that. And you can't turn back time unless you're Superman and Lois Lane has just been crushed in a rock slide. Yet, I found myself on Friday longing for a little more thoughtfulness on the big news of the day. For the record, I think Obama was the right choice as a president but the wrong choice to be a Nobel Peace Prize winner. His victory says more about the committee than it does about him and that's fine. After all, it's their prize to give away (and in this case that's what they did, they didn't award anything). But in a time when the two political parties in our country are rushing to decry or defend, I would have liked just a moment for us to all shut up and consider what this might and could mean, in the larger scope of the world around us, for our country. I saw somewhere, the Times probably, that said this victory was a call from the International community that they wanted America to retake its perch and be the leader that it has always been, but I have a hard time buying that. I mean, do schoolchildren in France really dream of the day when America will lead them again? Indonesia? Actually, they might, since Obama holds citizenship or permanent legal resident status there, but you get my point.

As the son of a Korean mother I have to tell you that America is as revered overseas as it is vilified. Not that having a Korean mother makes me ideally suited to express that, but I didn't grow up in a house that was always rah-rah, Go USA. I was able, sometimes, to see the fault of our nationalism and at the same time its great strength. And I was also able to see that we make mistakes as a country in our foreign policy, domestic policy, and in the way we change our currency (have you seen the new ten-dollar bill?). What has been bothering me since the summer, since Obama has been elected really, is that there are large portions of this country that will never see anything he's doing as an act of honest and sincere belief on his part. I never thought George W. Bush was a great president but I never really doubted the sincerity of his convictions, which is to say I believed he thought he was acting in the best interests of the country and on a set of deeply held principles.

Now, I don't know how many people thought Bush was pure evil on the left (excluding, Kanye, of course). I'm sure some of them thought this, only MSNBC wasn't willing to put them on the air whereas Fox has a whole network dedicated to proving that our President isn't interested in anybody in this country. If he's not in it for anybody, then who is he in it for? What would Obama stand to gain in a socialist America? Everybody would get some of his royalties from his bestselling books. Is that what he wants?

The point is this, Dave. Rather than discussing how Obama can use this to strengthen our position in the world and advance the interests of American policy overseas we spent most of Friday, and for me part of my Saturday morning golf match, talking about what a sham(e) it was that he won this award. The complaints from the people that I was playing golf was that they gave it to Al Gore and Jimmy Carter too but never gave one to Ronald Regan instead choosing Gorbachev. As my friend said, "When a Democrat promises to do something he gets one and when a Republican does it he gets nothing." You can't argue this but not because it's a ridiculous statement that undermines the work of three great men and overstates the role of another. You can't argue it because so much of world only wants to see black and white. My guy lost so the other fuckers are just that, fuckers. We on the left aren't interested in hearing that the second Bush gave lots of aid to Africa for AIDS (while also espousing abstinence only, I know) and we seem to casually yawn when we think about the ravages in Rwanda during Clinton's presidency.

I think our pundits can do better by us. We live in a world where you can't make a name for yourself unless you go to extremes--see David Blaine--and that any matter of gray, any moving into the murk is considered somehow weak or untenable. Our pundits need to stop telling us what to think and they need to start telling us where to find our information and how to ask the right questions. Obama has and is going to make mistakes that will have consequences for us all but he's also going to have successes that we need to recognize in the moment. What is the sum end gain if only one party in our country wins power of everything? I mean, isn't democracy about deciding what kind of country we want while not simply overriding the minority but protecting their rights too? There are big, big questions out there that nobody seems interested in answering. I think there is, more often than not, a truth in the mystery of life here on planet earth.

If all this makes you as depressed as it makes me then read this. It made me feel better and made me believe that somebody was thinking rationally last week. And if one person is thinking rationally, then maybe we call can. And if we call can...well, you know where I'm going. Slow down, Dave. Think about your response. Speed kills, after all.

Keeping my hopes up,

Mike

Talking Heads

Mike,

I feel like we never talk anymore. But I hope you had fun on your vacation from our blog. I sure did.

I was so stoked. But Mike, we've got plenty of time to talk about surfing as November approaches here in Cleveland. Instead, I want to tell you about a book I came across the other day, the title of which sounds fascinating: Eric Alterman’s Sound and Fury: The Washington Punditocracy and the Collapse of American Politics. The title seemed to capture just the sense I’ve had recently as I’ve watched and read whatever media pass before me, and I was pretty sure I saw in a description a reference to its take on the Bush Administration and Iraq. I was interested enough to look up the publication date:

August 1992. My fault. Wrong Bush Administration.

Here’s the Publisher’s Weekly description:

An elite group of self-declared experts has seized power over the political life of the United States. Is it the Best and the Brightest? The CIA? No, argues Eric Alterman in his first book, a scathing, humor-filled expose: it is the "punditocracy"--the media commentators who intimidate politicians and mislead the public they ostensibly keep informed. After several background chapters focusing on Ur-pundit Walter Lippmann, Alterman beams his searchlight on "The Reagan Punditocacy." In particular he assails syndicated columnist and TV commentator George Will and TV roundtable host John McLaughlin for derelictions of journalistic duty and ethics. Alterman also scrutinizes the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic and the TV news shows, dishing up juicy tidbits of behind-the-scenes gossip spiced with indignation. The final third of the book analyzes pundits' relationships with the Bush administration, focusing on what Alterman contends was their propagandizing for the Gulf War. Successful both as political history and as media criticism, this work deserves a wider audience than the political news junkies it is sure to attract.

If there is a better-informed consumer of media among our nine readers, I hope s/he is laughing at me as we speak. I probably should have known about this book already, especially considering the fact that I’ve admired Alterman’s writing from time to time. Then I thought, "Wow, that book sure is due for a second edition."

Then I found the second edition, "with new material on the impact of the O.J. Simpson trial and the rise of MSNBC as well as on the Clinton scandals, the media's obsession with Monica Lewinsky, and the resulting conflation of investigative reporting with gossip."

Fine. Fine. But that's still a second edition from January 2000. There must still be plenty left to say about the continued dominance of cable news and the explosion of the blogosphere.



The point, I guess, is that the "Punditocracy" has been working toward media oligarchy for a long time. But I don’t really want to talk about politics. I want to talk instead about the way punditry has spread from the political media into every other variety, so that most of my own media consumption, at least, consists of reading, watching, and listening to other people's opinions.

For me -- a poet and literary critic, by training -- that's not necessarily a bad thing. If I didn't care about rhetoric and argument, and if I didn't enjoy a little showmanship from time to time, I'd be wasting all that effort and attention. But like so many things that I do and enjoy, I'm not sure I want the entire country doing them. (Like voting, for instance.) And since I'm a hypocrite, I don't mind praising PTI in one breath while condemning (the now-defunct) Crossfire in another.

There are, of course, important differences. Kornheiser and Wilbon are fascinating to listen to because, as you've said before, you can tell that they love disagreeing because they like each other. And if you've ever seen an episode when either Tony or Wilbon is away, you know the sinking feeling that comes from hearing the name "Dan Le Batard." Just like when you go to Cats and end up with the understudy performing the role of--um--that one cat. Whenever you watch cable news, you know what you're going to get, no matter who's playing the role of Liberal and who's playing Conservative. (There are exceptions, and these are elected to a separate canon of holy punditry.)

Perhaps it is a peculiarly American phenomenon that we watch shows where people sit around and talk about whether or not something someone else said was appropriate, and then we ourselves argue about whether or not what that person said about that person saying it was appropriate. Sometimes the people we are watching on TV are talking about the relative appropriateness of the actions of other people on TV. If that is a purely American thing, well, let freedom ring.

Full disclosure, Mike: I write for a blog. That means I’m a pundit too. Don't listen to any of us.

Your favorite talking head (besides David Byrne),
Dave

PS -- The Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded on Thursday. Who's your prediction? I've got either Adonis or Ko Un. We're due for a poet.