Are english departments politicizing literature?

I’ve been reading Harold Bloom recently, partially because I’ve never read much of his work before and partially because I’m interested in his view of literature. He subscribes to an aesthetic theory of reading literature (if you can call it a theory), which means, I believe, that he reads literature looking for beauty and pleasure. He juxtaposes this to the other camps that exist within English departments in universities: the Marxists, the feminists, the New Historicists, the cultural materialists, etc.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have trouble grasping the differences between these groups. Richard Dutton, who I took a graduate course in Renaissance literature from at OSU, called my handle on these ill-formed, if I remember correctly. I asked him for some literature to help me correct this, which I dutifully read, but I don’t think it helped. Perhaps a reason for this is that I have always been flummoxed by why anyone would choose to read every piece of literature with a prescribed viewpoint.

I almost wrote “with a certain handicap.” Dare I compare reading say, Shakespeare, through a Freudian lens as playing tennis with one hand tied behind your back? Or maybe with a patch over one eye.

The next question, obviously, is whether Bloom’s aestheticism is another camp or, as he wants us to think, the natural position from which these other literary theories are aberrations. To use an image from Lewis: is Bloom’s theory the wood between the worlds, or is it just another pool within the wood?

My instinct is to agree with Bloom that reading aesthetically is the norm from which other readings wander. As a child, I didn’t choose books because I thought they advanced the cause of women, I read them because I liked them.

I had the curious feeling when I graduated from OSU that I was rediscovering how reading can be fun. For three years, I barely read anything because I wanted to; I was too inundated with class readings to have time for anything else. But once I graduated, that changed. I could enjoy reading again!

Bloom thinks that universities teach students not to enjoy reading. I’m somewhat inclined to agree. It’s no fun reading anything if you’re trying to politicize it, as Bloom charges that these camps of literary theory do. But then where would a person who wants to read for beauty and pleasure fit in? In a university? I don’t know.

This question, among others, has been troubling me recently as I try to decide whether I ought, in a couple years, to pursue a Ph.D. I doubt there is a simple answer.

No matter your job, it's still who you know

Jane Austen is my sixth cousin eight times removed. I’m also related to John Steinbeck, Hans Christian Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Agatha Christie, George Orwell, Robert Graves and Elizabeth Browning. My mother is into genealogy, you see. And one of the features of Ancestry.com is that if you enter in your family tree, they can tell you which famous people you’re related to. Our list has an impressive number of writers; Mom wondered if talent can be inherited. I’ll admit, I feeling almost like coming from this long line of writers must legitimate me somehow. Almost.

Last summer I read Old School by Tobias Wolff. The first chapter talks about his anticipation as a schoolboy of a visit by Robert Frost to his school. He said that, as an aspiring writer, he wanted to have a "great" take him under their wing. Lay their hands on him. Give them their blessing.

It’s who you know, right? A lot of times now it’s not where you studied, it’s who you studied with. As an undergraduate, I wrote a thesis and asked Lee K. Abbott to direct it. When asked by a fellow student who was directing my thesis, I sometimes got this response: “Oooh, Lee K. Impressive.”

That undergraduate thesis was a collection of short stories that attempted to mimic Shakespeare’s writing process by using the sources he used for his plays to create my own work. I explained: if trying to learn how to write by studying a specific writer, why not go to the best? But maybe, just maybe, I was also hoping that some of his—what shall I call it? mastery? magic? mojo?—would rub off on me.

Harold Bloom calls this the “anxiety of influence.” Strong poets, he says (although this applies to other writers), will creatively (and/or purposefully) misread a previous author. That’s exactly what I was doing, and I’ll be the first to admit that I did not get anywhere close to Shakespeare’s level of genius. But I did pick up a few tricks.

I don’t know if I have it in me to be a “strong” writer. And even though I’ve been reading a lot lately about the theory of writing and about canonical works and what the next major novel is going to look like, I still have no idea. What precisely, for example, does Bloom mean when he says that we’re about to usher in a new theological age of literature?

I am reminded of reading recently on the back cover of A Dash of Style by Noah Lukeman one of the marketing quotes, calling the book a “pageturner.” It’s a grammar manual. Normally, seeing a quote like this, I'd assume that at least one person was really enthralled, no matter how bad I thought the book was, this was not the kind of book you would read straight through, much less not be able to put down. I would hope that this is an extreme example, but my gut is telling me that it's not.

These quotes on book jackets seem to have dropped a long way from their original purpose: they’ve always been used as tools to help sell the book, but now no care is taken by those who are expected to give them. (I wish I could ask that these readers would take the time to think intelligently about the books they’re commenting on instead of churning out the clichés of the book reviewing industry, but this might be too much to ask.)

Isn’t this just an exercise in proving who you know? An extension of Bloom’s theory even into the vast body of writers whom he would not class as “strong.” But it seems to me that they also want this laying-hands-on.

And really, if I were the focal character in Old School, I’d want Robert Frost’s blessing too.

Shakespeare in the news

This morning, there was an article in the Houston Chronicle about the recovery of a 1623 First Folio (the first ever printed edition of Shakespeare's complete works) that was stolen a decade ago from Durham University in England.

I couldn't help laughing as I read the article; the whole story seems like it should be the synopsis of a novel, not a real news event. Ten years ago someone broke into a glass case with a crowbar, took the First Folio and seven other old and rare books, and to disguise the fact of the robbery, laid a painter's cloth over the case (which apparently worked, at least for a time).

Then, for ten years, no one heard anything about the missing books, of which the First Folio alone is now estimated to be worth $30 million. That was, until two weeks ago, when a mysterious man with a British accent showed up unannounced at the Folger LIbrary in Washington, D. C. He claimed to be an international businessman working for a family in Cuba who had a copy of what seemed to be the First Folio in their library. He wanted to know if it was authentic.

He left the volume with the Folger experts, who requested time to study it. Before long they discovered not only that it was authentic, but that it was the stolen Folio from Durham. The British police were alerted, and the man was arrested back at his home in England.

I won't comment on how ridiculous it is that the man thought he could get away with selling a stolen copy of the First Folio to a bunch of Shakespeare experts. It might be compared with stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre and then trying to sell it back to them a decade later. (I found this in a garage sale in NYC, really I did...)

Thinking about how entertaining this story is led me to reflect on the many other stories (and myths) surrounding Shakespeare. One of my favorites is that after the Third Folio was printed, Oxford got rid of its First Folio, considering it an extra. It took them a while to realize their enormous mistake, and after a couple hundred years had to purchase it back. I wondered, then, reading the story this morning, whether there existed any Shakespeare news blogs on the internet (and whether they were enough news to make such an idea viable).

I was glad to find that there is at least one that a short Google search led me to: Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet. A short look told me that yes, there is enough news out there to make a blog out of (though it occurs to me that there might be more than even this blogger is finding); however, I was almost put off from reading the blog by the second post, dated July 8.

Apparently the British government is introducing a new program to start sharing Shakespeare with students as young as five. This blogger's reaction was: "Is it appropriate to introduce so complex an author to such young children?"

In a word: yes!

This seems to betray a disgustingly snobbish and high-minded view of literature. Perhaps this blogger was envisioning a kindergarten teacher trying to explain the complexities of Hamlet's character or the structure of Pericles. If this were the case, I'd have to agree, that isn't appropriate. But the study of Shakespeare doesn't always have to be scholarly. As fun as it is for scholars and critics to pick apart the finer points of the plays and poems, these works were meant to be enjoyed, not studied.

If a teacher can get five year olds to read Shakespeare and enjoy it, then surely we should encourage it. The lives of those children will be enriched, I'm sure. Learning to enjoy literature is never a bad thing.