Correct me if I'm wrong; but, isn't this one of those questions? You know: When did you stop kicking your dog or chomping on your lover's cheek or . . .
The author of the piece from SLATE that you cite fails to understand what I (in my humble opinion) think is a basic principle for sensible reading and literary study: To choose to read a text (of whatever genre), and to either praise or fault that text, when the underlying reason for the choice (and praise or criticism) is the author's gender (or race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, etc.) is simply foolish and irresponsible; the text must stand or fall on its own merits (literary, aesthetics, etc.). I've never been a fan of political-correctness in the Western canon (and I never warmed up to Elaine Showalter's political arguments), and I would never select a text for my students based upon the author's gender (or those other irrelevant variables). That position, by the way, makes me a bit of a dinosaur (and Harold Bloom disciple) in the academic environment where political-correctness, canon-breaking inclusiveness, and adherence to the latest literary -isms are all highly cherished.
Couldn't agree more, R.T. and, to my everlasting discredit, that belief in the value of the work over its creators has gotten yours truly into no end of trouble, right from the beginning when I was working on my doctorate at U of T, in fact, in the early eighties, the height of the whole push to level (and I do think that's exactly the word) the playing field to the years I was a professor before I left the Ivory Tower in disgust at the way students had become nothing more than units and we had quotas and it made the Bell Curve look almost benign by comparison . . .
I was twenty-nine and had aced a tenure-stream slot, too. Man, now I think . . . Well, a pension isn't everything :).
But, two things happened: One woman of colour sent me a letter I shall never forget which is now among my archives and manuscripts at the Rare-Book Room of the McLennan Library of Montreal's McGill University. It was written on yellow legal-pad paper in huge letters saying, "Why don't you stick it where the sun don't shine?" (Because I asked her a question about literary "voice" in an interview and she thought that was an insult!)
I never answered. It was my first step towards enlightenment, towards not taking the bait, towards a true understanding that by responding I was legitimising a struggle I never started nor believed existed.
Might've also had something to do with the fact that, although I had won several doctoral scholarships, it was still expensive, graduate work, because I could only do it by drinking beer; and, in order to get through it, I was driving taxi at night in Toronto to afford that box of beer I had to drink after driving nightly to study for comps, languages, coursework, textbooks, etc.. Ended up an alcoholic, in fact. Quit drinking in '82, though (when I could afford Scotch and had graduated to it; and, no, I never drank and drove) . . .
I drove taxi from 1977 to 1980 (when I had to quit taxi-driving after being robbed at gunpoint). I just left the taxi parked in the middle of the street and when I went to look at the perps they'd collected, they were all wrong.
I have a photographic memory and had perfectly described my attacker (who began by pulling the seat belt around my neck and making me take off my boots) and who was so STUPID I had to tell him to close the fucking door because the courtesy light was on and we were in yuppie-land and if anyone looked out a window and saw what was happening I'd have a bullet in my head because they'd be calling the cops and making a scene.
The cops rounded up every black man they could, all of them middle-aged fat bald guys who looked nothing like the six-foot twenty-something handsome black man with dreadlocks who'd held that gun at my temple. Lip-shtick service, that's all it was; it never made a difference to anything important and never really would or could have done so.
But, that's exactly what we've been discussing, Art and yours truly, in terms of biography and the way in which it truly doesn't matter, this bizth about who creates a given work; what matters is the value and worth of the work itself.
And, that's why I posted the link with the same question I did: One can't legislate a priori a curriculum based on biographical data and extra-literary details.
Do we have a book by a woman, a person of colour, a physically challenged creator, a post-modernist, a found poet, a visible minority, a structuralist, a Communist, and yadda-yadda-yawn?
Well, I never cared; I only wanted to teach great work and I only wanted to assess great work. And, I thought we were over all that, anyway. Maybe I'm just colour-blind, I don't know . . .
These questions meant nothing to me and never will, not after publishing thirty books and knowing that they have to be as good as (or better than) the next person's in order to appear in print (and, not because I am a dame, thank keerist). World-class or fuck it. IOW?
Give me meaning or give me death. p.s. Like Frank says on Rand; I don't endorse everything to which I link; I just make others aware of its existence; generally, I'm neutral, as I ought to be
The author of the piece from SLATE that you cite fails to understand what I (in my humble opinion) think is a basic principle for sensible reading and literary study: To choose to read a text (of whatever genre), and to either praise or fault that text, when the underlying reason for the choice (and praise or criticism) is the author's gender (or race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, etc.) is simply foolish and irresponsible; the text must stand or fall on its own merits (literary, aesthetics, etc.). I've never been a fan of political-correctness in the Western canon (and I never warmed up to Elaine Showalter's political arguments), and I would never select a text for my students based upon the author's gender (or those other irrelevant variables). That position, by the way, makes me a bit of a dinosaur (and Harold Bloom disciple) in the academic environment where political-correctness, canon-breaking inclusiveness, and adherence to the latest literary -isms are all highly cherished.
ReplyDeleteCouldn't agree more, R.T. and, to my everlasting discredit, that belief in the value of the work over its creators has gotten yours truly into no end of trouble, right from the beginning when I was working on my doctorate at U of T, in fact, in the early eighties, the height of the whole push to level (and I do think that's exactly the word) the playing field to the years I was a professor before I left the Ivory Tower in disgust at the way students had become nothing more than units and we had quotas and it made the Bell Curve look almost benign by comparison . . .
ReplyDeleteI was twenty-nine and had aced a tenure-stream slot, too. Man, now I think . . . Well, a pension isn't everything :).
But, two things happened: One woman of colour sent me a letter I shall never forget which is now among my archives and manuscripts at the Rare-Book Room of the McLennan Library of Montreal's McGill University. It was written on yellow legal-pad paper in huge letters saying, "Why don't you stick it where the sun don't shine?" (Because I asked her a question about literary "voice" in an interview and she thought that was an insult!)
I never answered. It was my first step towards enlightenment, towards not taking the bait, towards a true understanding that by responding I was legitimising a struggle I never started nor believed existed.
Might've also had something to do with the fact that, although I had won several doctoral scholarships, it was still expensive, graduate work, because I could only do it by drinking beer; and, in order to get through it, I was driving taxi at night in Toronto to afford that box of beer I had to drink after driving nightly to study for comps, languages, coursework, textbooks, etc.. Ended up an alcoholic, in fact. Quit drinking in '82, though (when I could afford Scotch and had graduated to it; and, no, I never drank and drove) . . .
I drove taxi from 1977 to 1980 (when I had to quit taxi-driving after being robbed at gunpoint). I just left the taxi parked in the middle of the street and when I went to look at the perps they'd collected, they were all wrong.
I have a photographic memory and had perfectly described my attacker (who began by pulling the seat belt around my neck and making me take off my boots) and who was so STUPID I had to tell him to close the fucking door because the courtesy light was on and we were in yuppie-land and if anyone looked out a window and saw what was happening I'd have a bullet in my head because they'd be calling the cops and making a scene.
The cops rounded up every black man they could, all of them middle-aged fat bald guys who looked nothing like the six-foot twenty-something handsome black man with dreadlocks who'd held that gun at my temple. Lip-shtick service, that's all it was; it never made a difference to anything important and never really would or could have done so.
But, that's exactly what we've been discussing, Art and yours truly, in terms of biography and the way in which it truly doesn't matter, this bizth about who creates a given work; what matters is the value and worth of the work itself.
And, that's why I posted the link with the same question I did: One can't legislate a priori a curriculum based on biographical data and extra-literary details.
Do we have a book by a woman, a person of colour, a physically challenged creator, a post-modernist, a found poet, a visible minority, a structuralist, a Communist, and yadda-yadda-yawn?
Well, I never cared; I only wanted to teach great work and I only wanted to assess great work. And, I thought we were over all that, anyway. Maybe I'm just colour-blind, I don't know . . .
These questions meant nothing to me and never will, not after publishing thirty books and knowing that they have to be as good as (or better than) the next person's in order to appear in print (and, not because I am a dame, thank keerist). World-class or fuck it. IOW?
Give me meaning or give me death.
p.s. Like Frank says on Rand; I don't endorse everything to which I link; I just make others aware of its existence; generally, I'm neutral, as I ought to be