Posted on 11/01/2013 11:35:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
Three decades ago, Woody Allen made a movie called "Zelig," and Zelig is still among us -- popping up in Hollywood, politics, academia and anywhere where ambition is on the make. Zelig is a human chameleon, a liar and an imposter eager to fit in anywhere opportunity knocks. Under hypnosis, he tells his psychiatrist that he started lying when he was a boy. A clique of bright schoolmates asked him whether he had read "Moby Dick," and he said he had when he hadn't. In those distant days, the literary canon, with its great books, was important enough that few dared admit they hadn't read such an important literary work.
Even fewer suffer that problem today. English majors have fallen on hard times. The study of the humanities is in sharp decline, and "Moby Dick" has gone the way of Captain Ahab, into the drink. But literary appreciation is staging a comeback, starting with the ridiculous, leading to the serious and sometimes close to the sublime.
"The lives of successful people almost never involve continuing to do what they were prepared for," says Richard Brodhead, president of Duke University, of liberal arts education. "As their lives unfold, they find that by drawing on their preparation in unexpected ways, they're able to do things they hadn't intended or imagined." Even in the digital age, the spoken and written word remains the basic tool of communication, and the successful have to know how to make a cogent argument in more than 140 characters. A library of "cozy classics" has now been published for a teething set. Babies and toddlers, the New York Times tells us, are offered board books of "Moby Dick," "War and Peace," and "Wuthering Heights." Food for thinking. These infants get to chew on the written word.
"People are realizing that it's never too (soon) to start putting things in front of them that are a little more meaningful, that have more levels," says Suzanne Gibbs Taylor, a publisher whose BabyLit series has sold more than 300,000 books. She has re-created Jane Austen for the youngest among us.
These books are no doubt published more for the satisfaction of parents than for drooling infants, but the publishers heed the latest advice from the child-development specialists, who stress the importance of reading to infants early and often. They testify to a craving for a common core of literature that was foolishly dropped from high schools and universities. Feminists railed against Prince Charming mounting a white horse to ride to the rescue of Cinderella, but Elizabeth Bennet's Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice" remains a hero in both book and film. Other literary classics have followed as the focus for adults in book clubs, as new parents and older grandparents discover what they didn't read when they were younger and now wish they had.
"Has there ever been a moment in American life when the humanities were cherished less, and has there ever been a moment in American life when the humanities were needed more?" Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of the New Republic, asked the graduating class at Brandeis University. He, like a growing number of others, is concerned about the obsession with speed, utility and convenience that results in the neglect of substance and content.
When academics at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences released a report called "The Heart of the Matter," seeking more emphasis on the humanities and social sciences, the politicians greeted it with the usual breast beating, lamenting the lack of literacy in the schools, but with little result. That's because educational change must come from those closer to the problem: the parents and teachers who can demonstrate the importance of the humanities to an integrated life, and corporate and business leaders who can insist that college graduates know of the humanities and something besides spreadsheets.
Steve Jobs knew the importance of fusing metaphor with machine and sought innovators with a background in the liberal arts to work with engineers to create Apple designs. Norman Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin, has long argued the importance of both the arts and science in education. Employers, he says, want the skills the humanities teach -- critical thinking, weighing interpretations, and analytical clarity. Humanities majors scored 9 percent higher than business majors on the Graduate Management Admission Test when applying to business school.
Trends in childhood development come and go, and just as Baby Einstein toys that played Mozart and Beethoven did not composers make, teething on "Moby Dick" won't create another Herman Melville. But this trend encourages great books that teach great lessons. It's not even too late for Woody Allen to read "Moby Dick.
Wish to hell they'd read Jack London and Stephen Crane in those schools.
He'd have made a hell of an addition to New England letters.
Excellent! It’s never too early. She’ll love it. I read Animal Farm in 4th grade. It was in our school library. It set my political course, although I didn’t realize it at the time. I just knew that some governments could be very unfair and mean, and the people who ran those countries were called dictators. My dad probably told me what a dictator was. By the time I was in sixth grade, our teacher told us how evil and ruthless the Soviet Union was and what the hammer and sickle stood for. I remember asking her if Khrushchev was a dictator.
Oh, and his return to England eventually delivered his son to the meatgrinder of Flanders ..... something he never got over, ever.
Orwell's rock-bottom message to us was a warning about the intellectual and moral vacuity of totalitarian ideologues. They almost killed him in Spain. Before, he was a happy left-wing English fellow-traveler. After the Communists turned on the French syndicalists and everyone else in sight, Orwell had to flee for his life. That's when he smelled the coffee.
“He’d have made a hell of an addition to New England letters.”
Twain absolutely loved Kipling and late in his own career when one might expect an old hand to snipe at the rising talent. That right there backs your position (it also says a hell of a lot about Kipling’s power of expression).
“..... something he never got over, ever.”
Man do I get that. As the first time, 55 year old father of a 3 and a half year old boy, hearing such things as this affects me terribly. I had no idea during the previous 52 years of life how easily I just breezed along through the days. Whenever I read or hear of Kipling I’ll think of this. Sad and frightening what people must bear.
“Apparently, his study of the classics taught him nothing about courage.”
Thank you for pointing that out. Talking the talk, that is all.
These books sounds cute, maybe I’ll get some for my grandson. My daughter won’t read a lick, but his dad is a good reader, so there is some hope!
I’ll admit that I had never read Service before. I pulled a few selections off Amazon for my kindle, and it’s really good stuff. Kipling is, and always will be, the top of the heap for me, but thanks for turning me on to Service’s writings.
And then abandoned post haste for suggesting that the impacts of British colonialism were not universally bad.
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