Breaking: People are terrible. “We experience Schadenfreude (pleasure at another person’s distress) by the age of four…We would rather electrocute ourselves than spend time in our own thoughts … We are moral hypocrites,” among other things!
What’s behind a recent rise in books coverage, Sam Eichner asks in the Columbia Journalism Review? “Since the beginning of 2017, the New York Times has continued to expand its already robust book coverage. More recently, New York announced that it would triple its book coverage. In October, the Atlantic launched a Books section and a newsletter, ‘The Books Briefing,’ with plans for ‘additional products.’ Even BuzzFeed is getting in on the action: in November, they launched an online book club, complete with an attendant Facebook group and newsletter.”
He doesn’t really answer the question, but the more interesting one, in any case, is what kind of book coverage has it been? After reading who knows how many thousands of essays and reviews over the past five and half years, I think I can say pretty confidently that American literary culture has become both excessively positive and positively obsessed with politics and “identity.” There are many wonderful exceptions, of course, but I am speaking in broad terms. More Sam Eichner: “Though book criticism has always provided a lens through which to filter the news of the day, there also appears to be a clamoring for stories whose primary function is to shed light on today’s sociopolitical landscape. It makes sense from a ‘clicks’ standpoint as well: you’re much more liable to read and share this pithy, much-debated reexamination of Joan Didion’s legacy in the Trump era than you would’ve a traditional review of one of her books.” Well, I am decidedly not more liable to read about Joan Didion in the “Trump era” than I am to read about Joan Didion tout court, and I am pretty sure most of you aren’t either, but it’s a shame that some people seem to be. If you’re interested in literature primarily for its politics, you’re not interested in literature. And book coverage that always keys reviews to political concerns is a very philistine sort of coverage.
Aaron Thier on God in Denis Johnson’s work: “Whatever ‘God’ meant to Johnson in his private life, ‘God’ in his fiction is a way of referring to those aspects of human experience that seem excessive or out of scale. It is the extra something—the charge that passes between a human being and the universe. At the same time, this ‘God’ is an aspect of reality.”
John Pistelli reviews Wesley Yang’s The Souls of Yellow Folk: “Liberal commentators on American foreign policy used to say that Islamist terrorism was motivated less by ideology than by gender. The thinking went that young men with no prospects will inevitably become violent and anti-social. Liberals may still believe that about Middle Eastern societies, but the consensus on the left in America today is that young men can be safely denied positions of undeserved authority and, moreover, given no meaningful alternative but to atone quietly for the sins of their fathers. Journalist and critic Wesley Yang’s first book, The Souls of Yellow Folk, is about the possibility that this consensus is mistaken.”
Tim Teeman complains about theatre etiquette: “The degradation of theater etiquette is an old bugbear of mine, because it keeps getting worse.” He could always pull a Kevin Williamson.
Conrad Black on Andrew Roberts’s “impressive” biography of Winston Churchill: “Like all of Andrew Roberts’s histories, Churchill is massively researched and exquisitely written. The author’s sharp sense of humor is often in evidence and warmly complements Churchill’s own. As a chronology of an exceptional life, this is a very fine book that bears comparison with the generally best-regarded single-volume lives of Churchill by Roy Jenkins and Geoffrey Best.”
Essay of the Day:
In Standpoint, David Butterfield takes a closer look at the surprising popularity of the Classics and what’s good (and not so good) about it:
“What is perhaps more surprising than the enduring appeal of studying the Classics through the ancient languages is a developing demographic trend: despite this being a discipline whose civilisation was primarily controlled by men, and almost exclusively created by men, Classics has seen in recent decades a predominance of female undergraduates. The average cohort of Cambridge Classicists, for instance, has comprised 61 per cent women over the last five years. Across the UK sector, UCAS reported in 2017 that the student body for ‘Linguistics, Classics and related’ subjects has 3.3 female undergraduates for every male. It is true that there is a general preponderance of female students in UK universities (58 per cent of the 2016-17 cohort), but it is increasingly marked in the Classics. Among younger (under 35) classical academics in the UK, women are also slightly in the majority. Such a trend seems to be replicated among British secondary schools: the proportion of women taking classical subjects at A Level has risen steadily over the last ten years, from 53 per cent (2009) to over 62 per cent (2018); for Classical Civilisation, two-thirds of candidates are female.
“What is driving this abiding interest? As strange as it sounds, the Classics may be profiting from a societal wariness, or weariness, of identity politics. For classical literature radiates a universal humanity, whose truths and troubles cannot be cordoned off for a particular group: there’s no community or characteristic — born or acquired — that can lay claim to these cultures ahead of any other. No group exists with the right to assert their privileged access or to debar others from the pleasures of profound immersion. Despite recurrent claims from political grandees around the Mediterranean basin, the complexity of cultures that thrived in the Greco-Roman world do not live on in any one nation state. Their vestiges lurk everywhere and nowhere, colouring all aspects of Western civilisation but transcending any specific identity. True, no European nation would be quite as it is without the Classics, whose spirit underpins the principles of Western democracy, political criticism, artistic taste and literary form. But that rich tradition has long since become impossibly implicated in the threads of lofty Christian morality, intertwined with an earthy pagan pragmatism.
“That citizens of western society are living and breathing embodiments of such cultural appropriation — willy-nilly — should be a source of collective pride, not feet-shuffling embarrassment. Perhaps, then, for curious and ambitious undergraduates, the unpoliced resources afforded by the Classics offer a thrilling liberation from some of the intractable impasses of 21st-century cultural politics.
“Contemporary promoters and defenders of the Classics should not be seen as a privileged and partisan party. They are simply those who have become interested, and thereby invested, in that astoundingly broad and diverse world. There should be little surprise at the recent growth in the study of the Classics in China and Japan: the subject is there for anyone’s taking, and can fascinate and inspire in myriad ways. But the question of to what degree the world, rather than a particular subset of global cultures, should formally engage with the Classics is complex. Since the intellectual energy and artistic prowess of classical antiquity transcend any particular national, ethnic or geographical category, it is natural to hope that the subject will garner interest from any community exposed to it. But if it fails to do so, is that per se a problem? Or is disparity of engagement with one particular set of cultures to be expected and accepted cross-culturally? If it does indeed reflect a problem, is such a situation to be resolved by projecting classical antiquity with greater zeal into such communities? If so, that is more easily said than done. It is a sad fact of 21st-century politics that one person’s globally-minded educational zeal is another critic’s ‘cultural imperialism’. Do Classicists have a responsibility to engender engagement with classical antiquity from those communities which have participated less in the past, culturally or educationally? Or is there a conflicting responsibility to respect the independence of such communities to prioritise certain cultures over others? These questions inevitably tie into debates about the diversity of academic staff in the subject throughout the world: when one talks about ensuring that Classical academia is “representative”, it is unclear who or what requires representation.
“These issues are becoming particularly fraught across the pond. Towards 250,000 pupils in American high schools study Latin each year, although only 10,000 or so take the final examinations annually (SAT and AP Latin). The subject thus has a firm base in its traditional form, but thrives at college level especially through translation. Among increasingly diverse student communities, the immense differences of the ancient world are becoming difficult to stomach.
“The world’s most widely read classical blog is the New-York based Eidolon, founded by Donna Zuckerberg, sister of Facebook’s Mark. Its ‘mission statement’ is to make the Classics ‘political and personal, feminist and fun’. Not only has the site attracted a broad array of talented writers, but it has become the primary vehicle for asking agonised questions about the discipline and its objects of study. Among its most read articles are ‘The Bad Wives’ (on ancient misogyny), ‘Avenging Lucretia’ (on barriers to women in politics), and ‘Being a Good Classicist under a Bad Emperor’ (on the need to protect the Classics from white-supremacist appropriation under a Trump presidency). The tone is urgent, and the battle cry earnest: the Classics are being weaponised to fight against perceived prejudice and injustice. But in the fray the dividing lines are becoming blurred: antiquity is being miscast as an enemy rather than an (admittedly complicated) ally.”
Photo: Shirakawago
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