[Mr Ramsbotham]

I thought Moby Dick was a social disease.

[goldi]

Well, there is a renewed interest in classical education today.

[Antihero101607]

Never read Melville, and didn’t get into anything heavy until lit classes in high school. I have a niece who’s 12. Atlas Shrugged might be a bit much for her, but next time I go home, she will be getting my copy of Animal Farm.

[DuncanWaring]

If they want to read the classics, they should start with this, by Rudyard Kipling, from a year after the end of The Great War:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

[Old North State]

Richard Brodhead is the guy who threw the Duke Lacrosse players to the mob of race baiters. He refused to take any action over the 88 faculty members who signed a petition condemning their own students before the facts in the case emerged. Apparently, his study of the classics taught him nothing about courage. He is the worst kind of coward.

[Alex Murphy]

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.

Ping for later

[lentulusgracchus]

Yeah, the kids are all supposed to get off on Jhumpa Lahiri now .... my half-Indian distaff junior relatives read her as de rigeur .... Lahiri and V.S. Naipaul.

Wish to hell they'd read Jack London and Stephen Crane in those schools.