Today in the Australian John Coetzee is reported as taking aim at Australian universities for equipping graduates to write books or play music but failing to teach them the history of their discipline.
Should we be worried that the graduating students are equipped to write novels and stories and plays for today’s literary market but not well informed about the history of these forms or about what has been achieved in the forms in the past?” Coetzee asked.
This struck a chord with me for a number of reasons.
For the past few years I’ve been trying to complete a MA. Before I had my son I started a Masters in Information Management. I was thinking I would give in to the family tradition and become a librarian. Needless to say I am still not a librarian.
In the end I decided to go back to my roots and study literature. I told people I was going to study lit because it was what I loved, I didn’t care if it was totally irrelevant. I had also found that the more vocational Masters I had been previously enrolled in had the very definite stench of vocation. I am not discounting the value of more profession-based postgrad degrees but I wanted education. In the broad sense.
For a lit postgrad to be acknowledging the uselessness of their higher degree there must be something wrong. Even now I am still mulling over whether to go back to my thesis (now a supervisor is available) because, to use a sporting cliche, at the end of the day, what use is it really? Should I just do the creative writing Masters and be done with it? I have shyed away from creative writing courses at Uni because, as I found during those impressionable undergrad years, by the end of the semester ninety percent of the class was writing in the manner of the person who got the most positive reaction in the first tute. (Being the pain in the arse that I am, I refused to follow suit). Should I do something that is more in line with my work, something in which I have no formal training and am not all that enamoured with?
Have I, like Coetzee, got some romantic idea that literary history and theory actually matters? Well, yes, I think it does matter. I would hate to think that the situation Coetzee describes actually exists – that universities are churning out writers and musicians to suit the market. But that could never really happen, could it?
Georg asks, “But that could never really happen, could it?”
Ah, yes mate, it could.
I believe universities just churn out idiot blanks, like sausage machines do, skilled in recitation of rhetoric with little or no understanding (nor humility) for the great masters of the past.
But Georg, by asking that question, you could be becoming politically incorrect. Be careful now. You seem to actually be starting to think objectively. That’s likely to upset academics no end. It could bring about your political and social demise. Take very great care.
You wouldn’t want the truth emerging that you were becoming a free radical, independent thinker. It might ruin a perfectly good lacklustre career.
LOL and all the best. This site’s a classic.
Yippee!!! I’m still celebrating!!!
Of course literature matters. So too does a knowledge of the history of your own discipline or field, whatever that may be.
Australian academia started going down the gurgler when learning another language ceased to be an essential part of an Arts degree, when mathematics ceased to be the cornerstone of a Science degree and when history started being despised ….. the corrosive effects of crass commercialism came later and only exacerbated an existing problem. Dumping a requirement to know the history of a particular discipline or field has seriously undermined and impaired an understanding of that discipline or field.
Thank goodness I was taught somrthing about the history of language …. and the history of science too before the rot set in. ((How’s that for smuggery in a public place?)).
I get the feeling Maximus that we may see the same outcome but for very different reasons. My concern is that the humanities, especially the studying of literature, is being commodified and vocationalised, like everything else in this life. I don’t want to see the influence of the market on something that can’t really be quanitified, that is, cultural knowledge.
Ah, Maximus, it is your site that is the classic! Anyone interested in increasing their “awareness of the darkness of feminist socialism and their adverse effects on all mankind” should hustle on over.
Georg, there’s a post at a new-ish Canberra blog, The Killfile, which casts a tangent to your post – http://thekillfile.blogspot.com/2006/04/university-is-not-vocational-training.html
Thanks Zoe. I too looked at the site of Maximus and was strangely tittilated that someone of such obviously conflicting views as mine seemed to agree slightly. Then I just felt dirty…
I’ll check out the post.
Graham, glad I could strike a chord. I’m not really that old-fashioned am I?
Georg, don’t worry about it. Whilst people such as yourself understand the true greatness that has gone before, it shall never be defeated. Time will only mature it further. Long live the masters.
What Graham Bell said and go for it Georg. I had the good fortune of studying English Lit at secondary school where Saucy Chaucy and the Canterbury Tales was top of the list—who could forget that as an intro to middle English (mind you, every copy of that book fell open at the Miller’s Tale).
Crass commercialisation indeed, which in regard to some of the the pulp put out by the non-Coetzee league, reminds me of what Gilbert once said to composer Arthur Sullivan:
In my line of work, when the history of case law especially in the 19th century comes to mind, the language is exquisite. Looking at some old wills recently: “I give devise and bequeath…whatsoever and wheresoever situate…” compared to modern day “I give the lolly from the ranch” (just kidding!)
How many people study Latin these days for the purpose of understanding english language roots? How I hated it at school, but years later so much of that stuff unlocks from the memory later on and one can read and sing along to Carmina Burana and understand some of it.
(I wish I could remember one word from Caesar’s Commentaries, it meant “these things having been done”)
Again go for it Georg, it might not be so commercially advantageous but being a living and happier cultural heritage for your children at least is not such a bad tradeoff.
Whoever transcribed Coetzee’s speech for the Oz left a word out of the last sentence. (See, that’s the kind of thing you learn about in English departments.) And it’s the last sentence that had me cheering furiously from my sideline: the VCs and other top brass in the unis can’t just keep chipping away at the areas of study which don’t bring in obvious rivers of research and development $$$ (or floods of fee-paying international students). The VCs need to be given reasons not to kill off Humanities that their specially formulated brains can recognise. Here we have a Nobel Prize winner telling them that Arts is something people with Nobel Prizes place the highest value on. I hope they listened.
I don’t know about how things are elsewhere, but at my uni it’s not the English department that is in trouble – I mean, things are kind of bad, but not as bad as they could be, and the high enrolments in creative writing subjects are part of what is keeping the place ticking over. (FWIW, I think training in reading literature is at least as useful as creative writing training, if what you want to do is write books yourself, and has other advantages independent of that.)
No, English is doing OK – it is precisely Music and Art History that are going under, as Coetzee says. Music was shut down in the late 1990s. I’ve heard rumours that Art History is doomed. These disciplines are vulnerable because there is no equivalent notion that studying Art History is pretty much the same as learning how to put paint on canvas. English adapted to vocational culture in higher education, other humanities disciplines don’t even have that option.
Laura: “…here we have a Nobel Prize winner telling them that Arts is something people with Nobel Prizes place the highest value on…”
Brava. I’m reminded of the Abstract Expressionist painter (forget which one, but definitely not the sainted Mr. Pollock) who responded to a hawkish questioner from the government…
STATE DEPARTMENT CRETIN: And what, exactly, does this style of painting contribute to national defense?
AB-EX PAINTER: Well, for one thing, we’re trying to make sure that there’s something left here that’s worth defending…
Classics is in deep trouble, too. In the Higher Ed a while back, there was a report of an international education consultant warning VCs of sandstone universities that they risked diminishing themselves at the very time that they are trying to establish themselves as research universities of international standing by destroying the disciplines that are at the heart of liberal arts. I get the impression that Melbourne and Sydney are the only two really committed to that project, but perhaps that’s wrong. The huge irony in all this is that we hear constant rot from people like Piers Ackerman and Kevin Donnelly about the great virtues of traditional humanism but in reality everything today in Arts Faculties is done by the numbers. You can’t teach any course with less than 15 students, you redesign the curriculum to go where the market is. And that’s even before you start talking about vocationalism.
O Tempora! O Mores!
As an aside, Georg, your comment about creative writing classes reminded me of the episode of the L Word I was watching last night (courtesy of bit torrent not ch. 7) where Jenny enrols in a class taught by Sandra Bernhard… I won’t go on lest I stray into spoilers.
On another tangential note, j_p_z was recommending Stephen Greenblatt’s new Shakespeare book on another thread. I bought it today and was reading it on the bus home from work. The fascinating thing about Greenblatt’s work is that rather than painting a dry as dust picture of Shakespeare from what’s known in terms of records, he makes inferences based on a wide and deep knowledge of social and political history from Shakespeare’s words and scenarios back to his life. It’s really fascinating, and something that just couldn’t be done unless you had a very sophisticated liberal arts education.
Peter: yes, I agree. One reason for doing it is to impart something onto one’s children, or child in my case. He already has a love of books so I am pretty sure I am on to a good thing. I would hate to get to retirement and regret not doing something because it didn’t make money.
Laura: You’re right, English is probably one of the more fortunate areas of the Humanities. At my uni we are ‘blessed’ with the Con, so music is a taken quite seriously (just don’t mention the old Dept of Music in the Arts faculty). I do despair though when there are arguments between the likes of P.P. McGuiness and Imre Salusinszky about whether the humanities should qualify for ARC funding. Although, for the first time in living memory I actually agreed with Salunsinszky in his call for humanities to opt out of the ARC funding grants system – it’s just not set up to deal with research in this area. Something else needs to be developed to address this but under the current regime I can’t see this happening.
Mark! The L Word! What in god’s name were you doing watching that? Although,a creative writing class taught by Sandra Bernhard…the mind boggles.
History departments survive in Australia by converting ARC grants into relief money to pay casual tutors and markers, or at least mine does.
It’s not exactly what the ARC is supposed to do, but then you can’t blame the Department heads for keeping their heads afloat.
…
JPZ, that’s a good old joke. I first heard it as an apocryphal response, given by a young Oxford don in 1917, to the recruiter who gave him a white feather and asked him why he wasn’t prepared to defend Western Civilisation:
“O Tempora! O mores!”
…or, as the sushi chef said when he was trying to attract a bigger customer base…
O tempura! O morays!
The L Word is really very good, Georg!
I’m a fan of Rose Troche’s work and I’m also a sucker for soapies set in California.
Let’s take a quick and historical head count of the all great poets, playwrights, novelists, painters, composers and musical virtuosi who actually learned their trade at a university.
Festina lente, we sa to each other mournfully at brake. Festina lente or I’ll beat you up.
1. Christopher Marlowe.
2. E. M. Forster
For example: did Coetzee?
Sophie Masson?
It depends what you mean, Rob. There would be very few composers or musicians now who haven’t been educated at a Conservatorium or a University. As to whether great poets and playwrights have done creative writing courses, I have no idea – since they’re only an invention really of the past decade or so (at least in Australia). But I suspect in the (post?)modern era, most great artists of whatever stripe have gone to University (whether or not they “learnt their trade there”) simply because the production of art is largely a middle class enterprise now.
As those who try to study “working-class literature” know. There’s simply not much of it around – in the old sense – unionists, poets, authors who “learnt their trade” through adult education and the culture of unionism and political parties (often Communist).
Anyway, I don’t know what you’re getting at with your comment. You could be read to imply that universities are failing in vocationalising art? I really don’t know.
Please be clearer.
He was Professor of English at Cape Town University.
Now, now, Liam …
Wasn’t the guy in Rob’s gravatar (Furtwanggler) an apprentice conductor rather than a conservatorium trained?
At my local degree factory 30 to 40 per cent of an arts degree is spent pondering the nature of ‘truth’ and ‘power’, and pretending to find profundity in the impossibly turgid, long-winded prose of the French dieties of cultural studies. In short, the course is rotten to its core units. Imagine what they could do with that wasted time.
That was well after he became a famous novelist, wasn’t it, Liam?
There’s often a difference between Arts Faculties in “old” and “new” universities – the Sandstones and some others (ie UNE to a certain extent) attempted to cover every discipline in self contained departments (now increasingly merged by University managerialists into “schools”). Ex tech universities saw Arts as something that you had to have to be a big U University and often it’s a very unbalanced and tied closely either to what “sells” – ie communications, journalism, creative arts/industries or the subjects required to be taught by teachers. The 60s/70s foundations, Griffith, Macquarie, Flinders, etc. are kind of a mixture – but usually with some concept of interdisciplinarity underlying the whole set up.
In some universities, the lack of renewal of the academic staff (because funds have often not allowed new permanent appointments to be made for years, or because positions are made redundant and not filled or casualised) means that there are a lot of disillusioned staff still caught up in paradigms from which people have largely moved on – ie 70s Althusserian/Foucauldianism. In a way, it’s government nigardliness from both the previous ALP gov’t and the current Coalition government that’s responsible for a missing generation of academics and thus a “frozen in time” post-structuralism in some Arts Faculties.
What’s your point, Rob? Would you care to clarify it?
Jason, he certainly never learned his baton technique in any Conservatoire!
Well, in fairness (re the ‘artistic’ merits of a uni education): Shakespeare certainly didn’t go to uni; but as Greenblatt points out in his book, a) a ‘grammar school’ education [which the S-man did get] back then was kinda more rigorous than your average uni education today, and b) Shakespeare would not have been our Shakespeare, had he not rubbed elbows at great length with uni-educated madmen like Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas Kyd. A bit chicken-and-egg, perhaps; all the same, he wouldn’t of just started chirping away spontaneously in a cornfield, like, say, John Clare.
But that’s off my point. Re the merits of a classics education: at the very least, if our young ‘uns aren’t studying the Latin, how on earth are they supposed to enjoy such gems as this…
Miles erat olim in Italia,
Qui magna habuit genitalia;
Dum puella negabat
Coitum, copulabat
Elephantos, aliaqu’animalia!
Write your education minister today. Before it’s too late.
I liked what Greenblatt wrote about the anarchic explosion of Latin salaciousness into Elizabethan grammar schools amidst the stern discipline and rote learning.
Reminds me of E.M. Forster’s Maurice – “omit the reference to the unspeakable vice of the Greeks”…
If you try to expurgate Latin poetry and plays, as Greenblatt correcly says, you have nothing left.
That was well after he became a famous novelist, wasn’t it, Liam?
“In 1965 Coetzee entered the graduate school of the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1968 graduated with a PhD in English, linguistics, and Germanic languages. His doctoral dissertation was on the early fiction of Samuel Beckett.
For three years (1968–71) Coetzee was assistant professor of English at the State University of New York in Buffalo. After an application for permanent residence in the United States was denied, he returned to South Africa. From 1972 until 2000 he held a series of positions at the University of Cape Town, the last of them as Distinguished Professor of Literature.
Between 1984 and 2003 he also taught frequently in the United States: at the State University of New York, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago, where for six years he was a member of the Committee on Social Thought.”
If I were you, Rob, I’d quit while you’re behind.
I’ve just posted a little chunk of Coetzee’s biography — I wonder what was in it to put it in moderation. He must have had a racier life than I thought.
Maybe whoever’s moderating would be so kind as to fix that typo in the last line.
Well, I was just a bemued by Georg’s comment (perhaps I misunderstood him) that there’s some intrinsic value in getting a higher degree in “Lit”. So I was just musing on how many of the truly great artists have ever had to rely on a university education to teach them how to become artists. Precious few, I’d bet.
Poor old T.S. Eliot was a humble bank clerk and he managed to produce some reasonably immortal stuff. Now 30,000 EngLit profs in the US alone pore over his bones.
Les Murray is another case in point. Whatever he learned, he didn’t learn it at uni.
Ian McEwan & Kazuo Ishiguro are both graduates of the creative writing program (the same creative writing program, actually.)
Oh by the way, Mark, there are Sandstone Unis and Gumleaf Unis…
and then there is whatever odd substance RMIT is made out of.
Rob’s point is ‘those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, criticise.’ Heard it all before.
Yeah, I know, Laura I was wondering how to classify a number of them…
And Einstein was a patents clerk, Rob.
Should we abolish Physics as a unit of study and a research area?
Done, Pavlov’s Cat, and last line fixed.
Incomplete, Laura. Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach. Those that can’t teach–become cultural theorists.
Georg is a she, Rob.
Is that postmodern irony Rob? I thought you said you didn’t have a sense of humour…
Laura has:
…and so have I, now that I come to think of it, over and over again. It’s a worn out old drama even more tedious and done-before than all of the Hollywood stories of underdog local sporting teams making good through rugged individualism.
Didn’t even an adolescent Jesus Christ quarrel with the scholars?
Yes, you seem to have got me there, Laura. I had the feeling I was on thin ice with that comment.
If it wasn’t for literary scholars, we wouldn’t know that there are only about 7 plots. Who came up with that? Was it Barthes? Or am I misremembering my lit theory?
I don’t have a sense of humour, Kim. See, here’s a Goon Show joke to prove it:
Well, I laughed. Just goes to show.
Unfortunately, Rob, I’ve never seen a visual of Furtwangler twirling his baton or whatever it is they do, only have CDs of his Beethoven and Wagner
Well, I don’t find Monty Python funny, Rob, so we’re probably square.
Can you help me out with my (mis?)recollection of Barthes, though? You are/were a fan, I believe.
Liam
Don’t forget Comrade Graeme. He doesn’t sound like he’s done a Physics degree yet he’s come up with mindblowing new theories of gravity and alternative means of energy generation.
He’s the new Nietzsche, as well, Jason.
And – Nietzsche went to University and was even a Professor!
I think James McConvill’s thoughts on the matter are relevant here:
What a bunch of bully-boy advocates of the status quo.
Well, if Coetzee is a UT man, then I guess any bad thing said about him just can’t be tolerated. Hook ‘em, Longhorns! (and JMC’s a Beckett man, too, eh? Not a bad combo…)
But still, you’d hardly put Mr. C. in the very front ranks of anything. I think Rob’s broader point is valid; but maybe we should split it into two parts… the merits of writing school vs. the school of hard knocks (or what was once jokingly called UCLA — the University on the Corner at Lexington Avenue), and the idea of creating a cultured populace that can evaluate and enjoy its own culture, instead of a literate elite and a minimum-wage many. After all, writin’ school gets us Flannery O’Connor and a host of very expensive nobodies; while the Hard Way gets us John Steinbeck and S. Beckett himself (busy getting his Irish ass kicked in the French Resistance, not in writin’ school!), plus the usual host of nobodies, but *for free.* Art is weird that way, I guess.
But for the second aspect, it’s far better to have too many literate, over-educated people, than not enough. It’s a question of what we can afford, being a wealthy society, after all… and if we ignore replenishing the roots and soil of our own culture, it will simply cease to exist, and be replaced by some low-cost alternative.
Really, I think, all those with Writing and Arts degrees should concentrate less on uni careers (there are simply too many candidates for too few slots: it being a pleasant, attractive way of life and all) and start creating more job paths that focus on giving proper cultural education to folks at the sub-uni level: y’know, regular folks. This would create a new job base for the tragically over-educated, and plus increase the market share for ‘high-end’ cultural product, by creating a larger share of the populace that appreciated art, and really *wanted* it. There used to be opera houses and touring Shakespeare reps in every little town on the 19th-cent. American prairie. Let’s bring back that kind of enthusiasm and connoisseurship for everybody. Right?
Just think what future would await James if he, like Nietzsche, left academia for Northern Italy???
Jason, your local music store should have copies of the DVD “The Art of Conducting” — two volumes. Wilhelm figures largely in both. Weird action.
Kim, I vaguely recall it was a Barthesism, but I can’t pin it down more closely than that, I’m afraid.
Les Murray is another case in point. Whatever he learned, he didn’t learn it at uni.
Les Murray studied modern languages at the University of Sydney, and got his first (and I think only ever) real job on the strength of it, translating scholarly academic texts in Canberra.
Whenever I gave lectures on Murray’s poetry I used to particularly enjoy pointing out the way his knowledge of foreign languages informed the way he uses English. The students liked it, too. Murray himself has been known to talk about other languages and his use of them, at writers’ festivals and such-like.
S/Z?
Moderator: it seems my rather (I thought) civilized cracks about Flannery O’Connor and the University of Texas have gone straight to moderation. Just lettin’ ya know they’re in jug, if you feel like liberating them. Cheers!
“Ian McEwan & Kazuo Ishiguro are both graduates of the creative writing program (the same creative writing program, actually.)”
I wonder which one Michael Ondaatje graduated from. Whichever it was, remind me to avoid it.
Well, I was just a bemued by Georg’s comment (perhaps I misunderstood him) that there’s some intrinsic value in getting a higher degree in “Lit�.
And what, pray, is so a bemuing about that?
At least it taught us how to proofread, and to tell the difference between girls and boys. Two highly undervalued skills, in my view.
He didn’t learn to write poetry at uni, though, did he, Pav’s Cat?
He may be just a RWDB, but then he’s only the world’s greatest living poet.
Book of Genesis: “there were giants in those days.”
Ian McEwan. Kazuo Ishiguro. Michael Ondaatje.
The Earth trembles from the quake of their tremendous footsteps.
[Not that that proves anything...]
Actually I was on the bus tonight and there was this very cute person who I couldn’t tell was a boy or a girl, but I couldn’t ask (or chat her/him up) because it’s rude to interrupt people listening to mp3 players…
So obviously sociology and fine arts degrees are of less “real world” utility than lit degrees!
j_p_z – you are duly liberated.
And, yeah, j_p_z – see also Mark’s comment (way above) about working-class writing being fostered by the very vibrant adult education pedagogical culture that existed in the 19th century and early 20th century.
BadLuckStreakInLatinSchool:
I’ve got a better idea. Let’s have a whip-around. Spend the loot on having those magnificent lines of Latin cast in bronze. Then, after acquiring a prestigeous location for it (Martin Place perhaps?), have the bronze plaque affixed to a column of the finest marble carved into the form which best reflects the words that have come down to us from great antiquity ….. and have the Minister for Education unveil it with all due solemnity, perhaps even gravity. Perhaps the entire AVCC could attend and make speeches at the unveilimg ceremony applauding Australia unchallenged position in arts, culture and education …….. why not?
It was code, PavCat, a secret deadly code. Little do you know what you were really reading. Even now the membranes of your mind are beginning to corrode, your ability to comprehend written speech will swiftly fade, until sudddenly
J_P_Z your comment got out of moderation, and I just want to echo Nobel Prize Winner Mr C’s point, in the article that began all this, that excellent writers are also uniformly excellent readers. Learning how to be a novelist or playwright or poet doesn’t have much to do with learning composition and rhetoric – the writer has to learn the forms, and how the forms render experience into words, from the inside out, and you can’t learn that except by seeing how writers before you achieved the things they did.
He didn’t learn to write poetry at uni, though, did he, Pav’s Cat?
Sheesh, you don’t give up, do you.
If you had seen the classic interview that Clive James did with Les Murray in Sydney some years back, you would have seen James recite from memory an entire poem of Murray’s that had appeared in Honi Soit. Murray did very little else while at university apart from write poetry and study languages, usually at the same time. My point, and I’ll make it again (*sighs*), was that his study of languages was intrinsic and central to his unique way of using English in his work.
Of course the other useful thing about a higher degree in literature is that it teaches one not to make wildly inaccurate pronouncements about poets in the public domain.
Which is kinda the point Greenblatt makes at the start of his Shakespeare book about the young William.
One is amused by the determined reluctance – and delay – in understanding what Rob was saying. I think you all knew.
These egghead professors running this creative writing racket can’t even write themselves. It’s all a big con. And of course there’ll always be a few academic scribblers who do actually make it, what would you expect, when there’s so bloody many of them. But no one can tell you what to say.
All you learn in creative writing classes – far as I can see – can be told you in three words: Show, don’t tell. (Wow)
The truth is you don’t even need secondary education. You don’t need education at all. You need to read, that’s all.
Rob, I’m not so sure Les Murray is an RWDB. If an RWDB is consistently right wing and always echoes the party line (forgive me if that’s an inaccurate definition).
Quote from his recent interview with Kerry O’Brien:
Quite right, R.H. Poetry is a gift, like harmony. You can’t teach it; many things influence it, including an education in laguages or metaphysics, but you’ve either got it, or you ain’t.
Pav’sCat, which of the following statements about Les Murray is not true:
(a) he is a RWDB
(b) he is the world’s greatest living poet.
Thanks for the half brulee, Chairman.
If this post keeps going strong (and Nabs hasn’t even turned up yet), we’ll be pushing the record for fastest to 100.
Yay, Georg!
And thank you Markus, for no deletions this month.
Rob – what was the point then of the trad school English curriculum where people had to learn metre, etc, with regard to poetry? Just wonderin…
And gang, if you’d like to see cultural cringe, cop a gander at Melbourne’s inner suburbs.
I’m reminded of what the great Frank O’Hara, the most important American poet since the death of Stevens, once said (metaphorically) about writing… “If someone is chasing you down the street with a knife, you just run. –You don’t turn around and say ‘Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.’ You just go on your nerve…”
That being said, Frank was, ironically, a grad of Harvard and U. Michigan, spoke several languages, and knew the histories of art and music backwards and forwards. But it didn’t stop him from writing in a way where none of these things would be readily apparent…
Again, it just goes to show that art is mysterious.
Apart from that, what these things really come down to is a species of sociology. It occurs to me, too, that the writin’-school game (at least in the US) also perpetuates a hardened species of professional *networking* that has a great deal to do with who gets published, and where, and how. The threats to English prose style are minimal from this system, compared to this socio-economic threat that sorts out which prose styles will be heard and read, and which ones will be ignored or suppressed (viz., do they follow the writin’-school party line?, etc.)…
Laura — in the grand scheme of things, I quite agree with your point. When it comes to these issues, I think it’s really a question of *scale,* as it were.
GMB the social reformer
http://badanalysis.com/catallaxy/?p=1688#comment-45675
j_p_z
It was ever thus, I suspect.
As an outside observer, I’d say the literary establishment is alive and well in Australia too.
RH is always amused to see recipes for poetry.
HAIKOOS for example.
The best writing is simple writing. It makes sense, that’s all.
Anyway, Georg, if the passion and number of comments on this thread is at all representative of anything other than LP, lit obviously still matters!
If more people donated to this blog, the world (Paddington) would be a better place!
(Have we reached one hundred comments yet?)
Eighty-six and counting, Chairman.
Waiting for the post-midnight shift.
No penalty rates anymore because of WorkChoices. Hard to get good after midnight commenters!
Does Melbourne have a Paddington btw or is it just Brisbane and Sydney who do?
Good night Miss Laura. Dreams are only what we would do. In other circumstances.
-Robert.
RH: “…RH is always amused to see recipes for poetry… HAIKOOS for example…”
On the one hand, I take your point, w/r/t a living literature. On the other hand, though, much of poetry begins and ends with ‘recipes.’ Form is what makes the thing work. Here’s a limerick:
RH,
you’re a stupid-head.
Not very interesting, is it? Not even ‘good.’ Doesn’t follow the recipe. We don’t have to get overly academic about it, but if we totally chuck forms, then we’re all just monkeys drawing pictures with our own faeces.
btw, the ‘haiku’ as a form (and this is not widely known in English) is far more formally demanding than the 5-7-5 syllable business we learn in grade school. It’s like saying a sonnet is anything that rhymes. Haiku are extremely complex in Japanese (they demand references to the time of year, and time of day, and so on) that can’t be rendered in English. What we read (or try) in English is a very limited approximation.
Just sayin’…
Miss Kim. Melbourne has lots of contenders.
Brisbane is an infant
That was kinda my point, j_p_z – surely it’s creativity within form. What’s the point of iambic pentameters and the like otherwise?
I think Rob’s set up a too hard (and possibly false) dichotomy between some sort of reified aesthetic and the drudgery of learning rules. It’s not in fact like that. Language after all has rules, and is form too. How we use it is as important as any inspiration we may have, and in fact it’s hard to separate the two in practice.
Well, I haven’t sampled the Melbourne brulee, Chairman. As someone once said:
And in fact, isn’t structuralism’s revelation of regularity in language and post-structuralism’s revelation of intertextuality and marginality just commentary on how language works, and how writing is done – read Marlowe or Shakespeare for intertextuality and marginality! People were doing so long before po/mo arrived in a blaze of … something.
For instance, when we were discussing Bettany Hughes and Helen of Troy the other day how many of us realised that “the face that launched a thousand ships” is a line from Marlowe?
That’s it for me – 1am and I turn into a pumpkin (brulee?). Night!
xx
Just sayin? Golly, never heard that before.
Who mentioned limericks? That’s rhythm.
Marks should never be given for metre, etc. That’s stupid.
Form shouldn’t be demanded, that’s artifice.
Jpz,
You’re-
a shithead.
Just sayin….
Nighty night
And Nighty off
And nighty night
And nighty off.
That’s called an RH.
Jpz. My apologies.
Sorry, I was on the phone for a while there and missed a lot of this.
Kim, re Les Murray, RWDBs are richer fields than your stereotypes imagine. They are ambiguous, baffling and strange. They are all artists (except for those that aren’t). Lefties, on the other hand, are depressingly and predictably straightforward.
“….read Marlowe or Shakespeare for intertextuality and marginality!”
Oh brother, how could I have missed them — amidst the drama, the horror, the passion, the humanity.
Time for bed.
Boo!
(Sorry.)
Bingo
“What’s the point of iambic pentameters and the like otherwise?”
Civilized torture.
I got up this morning and saw 102 comments. Wow. (Unforuntatley I retired to bed before all the action started). That’ll teach me.
The late shift arrives!
Springing into action with
My uni-learnt skills
Here’s a couple of poems – sonnets. Spot the similarities, and the differences.
Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,
The dear repose for limbs with travel tired,
But then begins a journey in my head
To work my mind, when body’s work’s expired;
For then my thoughts (from far where I abide)
Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,
And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,
Looking on darkness which the blind do see;
Save that my soul’s imaginary sight
Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,
Which like a jewel (hung in ghastly night)
Makes black night beauteous, and her old face new.
Lo thus by day my limbs, by night my mind,
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find.
(William Shakespeare)
All we were going strong last night this time,
the mots were flying & the frozen daiquiris
were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise
listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,
my head was frantic with a following rime:
it was a good evening, an evening to please,
I kissed her in the kitchen – ecstasies -
among so much good we tamped down the crime.
The weather’s changing. This morning was cold,
as I made for the grove, without expectation,
some hundred Sonnets in my pocket, old,
to read her if she came. Presently the sun
yellowed the pines & my lady came not
in blue jeans & a sweater. I sat down & wrote.
(John Berryman)
The threadkilling properties of first-rate poetical productions are not yet fully understood by science.
*pins clatter noisily to the ground*
I enjoyed the poetry Laura.
I’ll post some Charles Causley if you like, Laura. Better yet, some Christina Rosetti.
Two s in Rossetti Rob.
They say I should not wait about your street,
nor call upon your friends to hear of you,
or go to places where by chance we’ll meet
or hold your hand unless you ask me to.
They tell me I should emphasise my waist
and cultivate the arts that make men thirst:
should learn to waken lust and yet stay chaste
and I should never say ‘I love you’ first.
But I would come to you clear-eyed and plain,
my treasures in a kerchief wrapped. To you
I’d give the first primrose, a daisy chain,
a lucky stone, my heart for your tattoo.
And when, in time, they say ‘we told you so’,
my truth I’ll have and they their status quo.
.
(Diana Hendry)
Just for that I won’t post any.
What The Chairman Told Tom
Poetry? It’s a hobby.
I run model trains.
Mr Shaw there breeds pigeons.
It’s not work. You dont sweat.
Nobody pays for it.
You could advertise soap.
Art, that’s opera; or repertory -
The Desert Song.
Nancy was in the chorus.
But to ask for twelve pounds a week -
married, aren’t you? -
you’ve got a nerve.
How could I look a bus conductor
in the face
if I paid you twelve pounds?
Who says it’s poetry, anyhow?
My ten year old
can do it and rhyme.
I get three thousand and expenses,
a car, vouchers,
but I’m an accountant.
They do what I tell them,
my company.
What do you do?
Nasty little words, nasty long words,
it’s unhealthy.
I want to wash when I meet a poet.
They’re Reds, addicts,
all delinquents.
What you write is rot.
Mr Hines says so, and he’s a schoolteacher,
he ought to know.
Go and find work.
- Basil Bunting. Odes II:6, 1965
Laura, are you going to come back and tell us the difference between the two sonnets?
I think you proved the point about a higher degree in literature – obviously none of us have a clue!
But I’d like to learn.
I don’t think Les Murray is an RWDB precisely because of his nuance and ambiguities. RWDBs are predictable and straightforward which for mine is what makes them RWDBs in the first place, as distinct from someone who might happen to have conservative views. Interestingly my three favourite poets are/were all pretty conservative (Murray, Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin) and … who cares?
Murray is a bloody great poet. When I was an undergrad one of our lecturers was writing his bio and he was a poet-in-residence at the uni so I got to alot of his readings. Magnificent.
I agree Amanda. I don’t think Les Murray can be easily pigeon-holed and this is what makes him so interesting, and no doubt, his poetry so bloody good. Like you I have a fondness for Larkin’s poetry and he was not exactly left-leaning. I love that contradiction, or rather, that complexity that comes with people’s art and their professed (or judged) beliefs.
What Amanda and Georg said.
As conservative writers go, I’ve got a soft spot for PG Wodehouse, even though I know he was a traitor and a fascist. It’s because he’s actually funny.
Georg:
No, you’re not old-fashioned, you just avoided having your mind stolen by the cult-mongers, that’s all. In fact, nowadays you’re right out in the vanguard of 21st century’s first great movement …… just watch our for all the vicious, smug young bigots wielding their 4 ~ 5 metre pikes as you approach the enemy’s lines. Courage, Georg, courage …. and keep on going.
j_p_z:
Liked your note on worthwhile war aims. ((liked your “S’taten Island” joke on another thread too)).
Peter Kemp:
Chaucer. Miller’s tale? Nah. Knight’s tale …. essential reading for vigorous young gentlemen who wish to keep their ladies contented. Now, what’s all this codswallop about Literature having no practical application in the modern world?
RH:
Wasn’t that a limerick (in Latin) that BadLuckInLatinSchool quoted?
Kim:
Liked your Les Murray – Kerry O’Brien quote.
If not Monty Python then how about Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?
Laura:
Liked your “Pins clatter …. “
HitchHikers doesn’t really do it for me either! Must be an age thing!
“PG Wodehouse, even though I know he was a traitor and a fascist.”
I’m very far from being gruntled by that Liam.
I agree with Orwell that what PG did was a very stupid mistake and one that should be seen in the context of his world and that time. A culpable and useful idiot yes. A traitor and fascist no.
Of course Les Murray is a RWDB, as the sobriquet is applied by LP. He’s the literary editor of Quadrant, that well-known bastion of all things RWDBish.
Another great Australian poet, james McAuley, actually founded the magazine.
Liam and Nabs
for funny Tories you can’t go past Saki (HH Munro)
McAuley was a RWDB too, btw. But you knew that.
“you can’t go past Saki (HH Munro)”
Oh yes I know Herb’s work well and even have a first edition of his illustrated The Westminster Alice – even though he was very much a certain kind of English upper-middle class anti-semite of the times.
Evelyn Waugh was a funny tory too, Scoop, Decline and Fall, the best.
Kim, I’m sorry, it was more an experiment with no projected outcome, posting the two sonnets. I had no intention of commentarying on them, and I should really be frantically perparing for tomorrow – teach Lawson / Paterson / Baynton & the Bulletin literary scene in the morning, and The Merchant of Venice in the afternoon.
All I wanted to do was reiterate in another way the general point that poets write to their living world and social context, and they also write back to other poems. That might be part of what Coetzee was saying, in a way – learning the techniques that are in vogue now is not enough for a good writer.
Sonnets are a really clear case of this, because the technical form hardly changes, and the subject matter has a magnetic core of the nerdy lover using words to try to get to grips with the power of the beloved.
The two I posted aren’t a terrifically clear match, but you can still see how they both swing back and forth between unsatisfied desire and creative excitement. The teeming brain!
Kim:
No. it’s not an age thing …. I just happen to enjoy the absurd, the ironic and the satirical, that’s all; strange sense of humour, I suppose.
Kim — “Hitchhikers doesn’t really do it for me… [Python, neither, from a previous thread...]”
Och, lassie, ye’re missing out on an entire dimension of life! We’ll have to find you an online komedy kourse (they say “k”s are funny! eh? eh?), or hire Bettany to tell you jokes ‘Clockwork Orange’ style until you start to laugh at stuff…
As a diagnostic tool, (to help us select proper modalities of treatment) what sort of things *do* you find funny? [leaving out, of course, my more inane attempts to seem politically astute or informed...]
Meanwhile, back in the jungle… (while people are posting poems…)
‘DIGRESSION ON [POLLOCK'S] “Number 1, 1948″‘
I am ill today, but I am not
Too ill. I am not ill at all.
It is a perfect day: warm
For winter, cold for fall.
A fine day for seeing. I see
Ceramics, on my lunch break, by Cezanne,
And I see the sea by Leger;
Light, complicated Metzingers
And a rude awakening by Brauner;
A little table by Picasso, pink.
I am tired today, but I am not
Too tired. I am not tired at all.
There is the Pollock, white; harm
Will not fall: his perfect hand
And the many short voyages. They’ll
Never fence the silver range.
Stars are out, and there is sea
Enough beneath the glistening earth
To bear me towards the future,
Which is not so dark. I see.
(Frank O’Hara)
Poor RMIT! Now made entirely of blasted dreams and desperate hackery to entice foreign students, all glued together with carefully coloured and carved bits of managers’ snot.
What debt are they chasing? Forty mill?
I would make a guess that the fools who created that did not have a liberal arts education.
———————–
BTW – most of the arts, for most of their history, had a rigorous training system, often done by apprentices. You think Mozart never had to learn to play an instrument?
———————-
To complete the slide into irrelevancy, Wodehouse went to school with Raymond Chandler. Once our hard boiled godling gave up being an oil executive with a classical Dulwich education, he taught himself to write. As I remember it, he would take other short stories, extract the plot and retell the story in his own way. He did it for two years before he even attempted something original.
I was thinking that pretty well every writer I know more sophisticated than Carter Brown had an education, so I googled Carter.
“Alan Geoffrey Yates was born in London and educated at schools in Essex. From 1942 to 1946 he served in the Royal Navy as a lieutenant. After the war he worked as a sound recordist at Gaumont-British Films for two years and moved to Australia in 1948. In the same year he became an Australian citizen. Before devoting himself entirely to writing from 1953, Yates was a salesman in Sydney and a public relations staff member at Quatas Empire Airways.”
So before he was gazetted Lieut at the age of 19, he too had done his latin and greek declensions.
Gee, Carter Brown was a Qantas flack? Perhaps their inflight cusine gave him the inspiration for his red-blooded, hard-boiled, pulpy yarns.
And Thomas Pynchon was a corporate writer for Boeing’s missile division. I reckon his work on the BORMAC air defence missile still stands up well today.
It still seems too many people are in love in the idea of the artist as a full-blown genius bursting from the brow of Zeus to dam and tap their gush of creative juices in full flood. The reality for most people we’d call great artists is that they practiced hard at their craft, and often for money, as they built the skills and networks to create and then get their best work out there.
One bloke I met with a bona fide masterpiece to his credit told me the secret of being a good writer was to spend lots of time being a bad one first until you worked out how to do good word stuff.
Recently saw the fantastic Kubrick exhibition at ACMI and it made it very clear just how much patient, methodical, sober and well organised work went into being a true auteur like him.
Trying to squeeze artists of the calibre of him, Les Murray et al into your own ideological straitjackets is a pretty pointless exercise I’d say. Which is not to say great artists can’t also be complete nutcases – looking at you Ezra Pound.
Thanks, Laura.
j_p_z, I hope you’re using your good offices to arrange my comedy education with Bettany.
I’ve put up a post which is a meta commentary on this thread, among others.
Swinburne.
Read on via the link, it’s a long poem.
A funny thing is a ketchup bottle
First none comes out, then a lottle
- Ogden Nash
Don’t make me reach for my collected John Wilmot. Slimy cups of posey will get split then and again.
Kent:
You said – ““What’s the point of iambic pentameters and the like otherwise?â€? Civilized torture.”
Yes …. and not just in the West. When the Chinese had their “Eight-Legged Essays” and all the other literary torture, every barbarian and pirate in the world came in and beat the dickens out of them but within 2 or 3 generations of launching their Vernacular Literature Movement and of giving all that old convoluted rubbish the heave-ho, they became a world power. Who said Literature couldn’t influence the course of history?
((Isn’t that “post hoc propter hoc” or something like that?”))
David Tiley:
Good one!
btw, Aussie unis are in strife now because economists on staff didn’t take the “whatever-it-takes” marketeering ratbags out the back after committee meetings and beat the proverbial out of them, before the marketeers turned highly-respected Aussie unis into the despised loss-making degree-mills they are today.
“If you don’t get better marks in middle school, we’ll send you to an Australian universirty instead of to a real one”.
‘EPITAPH FOR A WAITER’
By and by
God caught his eye.
(Anonymous, attributed to Tiglath-Pileser III)
Oh, we’re the boys from the chorus,
We hope you like the show.
We’ve read the Odes of Horace,
And now we have to gooooo….
Tiglath-Pileser III, j_p_z, now there’s a name to conjure with. What a destroyer he was. The northern Israelite city of Hazor showed a destruction level of ash one meter deep to mark his tempestuous passage in 732 BC.
Maybe they should have served him that drink, after all.
That was relevant, btw.
I belive T-G III was the actual ‘Assyrian’, below, in Byron’s ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’. Could be wrong, though.
Possibly not his best work.
On the other hand, and in honour of tonight’s moon, a word from Dylan Thomas:
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
A nun in a supermarket
Standing in a queue
Wondering what it’s like
To buy groceries for two
- Adrian Henri. “Poem for Roger McGough�
If youse keep this up, I’m gonna get real Lord Rochester on your ass.
Ah yes, PC, from ‘Deaths and Entrances’, from which comes also Poem in October, which everyone knows.
Now this is the kind of Islam I like
——————————
When I am with you, we stay up all night,
When you’re not here, I can’t get to sleep.
Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.
~ Rumi
Lovely old Dylan T.; God bless him; he never gets old.
Then after the ‘raging moon,’ of course, there follows the sun-up… to wit…
Dawn must always recur
To blot out stars
And the terrible systems of belief;
Dawn, which dries out the web
So the wind can blow it,
Spider and all, away…
Dawn, erasing blindness
From an eye inflamed,
Reaching for its morning cigarettes
With Promethean inflection,
For democracy is joined
With stunning collapsible savages,
All natural and relaxed and free.
A bus crashes into a milk truck
And the girl goes skating up the avenue
With streaming hair…
As the day zooms slowly into space,
And only darkness lights our lives
With few flags flaming,
Imperishable courage and the gentle will
Which is the individual dawn
Of genius rising from its bed –
“Maybe they are wounds,
But maybe they are rubies�
– Each painful as a sun.
(Frank O’Hara)
I haven’t answered Rob’s questions yet, either, because I don’t accept the terms of either of them, but here’s an approximation:
– Is Les Murray a RWDB?
Dunno, Rob. I’ve been reading and, whenever I get the chance, listening to Les M since 1978, and I’ve only been blogging — ie aware of the RWDB tag — for a mere six months, so I’m not sure I’m in a position to answer this question, but since nearly all of the self-described RWDBs I’ve seen online have been proudly literal-minded, hard-fact-worshipping, finance-obsessed, scornful philistines who admire Miranda Devine, then Murray doesn’t qualify on any count, much as the RWDBs would like to claim him.
– Is Les M the world’s greatest living poet?
I’ve got no interest in ranking artists as if they were tennis players, even if I were arrogant enough to try. As for ‘the world’ — well, since English is the only language I read fluently, I’m definitely not in a position to answer this question and I bet you aren’t either. But FWIW to you, I’ve already been involved in one major online stoush about Les Murray, some years ago now, and it was in his defence. I think Murray is a wonderful poet, and if we’re talking about Translations From the Natural World, a magical one.
Sorry if this doesn’t fit your el weirdo preconceptions about feminists and literary critics, but I’m sure you’ll come up with an explanation that’s satisfactory to you.
Here’s my next contribution to the pot (pun unintended) – an extract (the last bit actually) of The Lady’s Dressing Room. I find this a fascinating poem in many ways – it starts off almost inauspiciously and some readers may think Swift has a warped, misantrophic, misogynistic mind but I think he pulls it off in the end and transmutes ugliness into beauty and we see that the ugliness is simply raw, sensual nature in all its force, and has the very same qualities as the being of Desire. And anyone else see the parallels between what he does in this poem and the narrative where Gulliver meets the Yahoos towards the end of his travels?
Thus finishing his grand survey,
Disgusted Strephon stole away
Repeating in his amorous fits,
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!
But vengeance, Goddess never sleeping,
Soon punished Strephon for his peeping:
His foul Imagination links
Each dame he see with all her stinks;
And, if unsavory odors fly,
Conceives a lady standing by.
All women his description fits,
And both ideas jump like wits
By vicious fancy coupled fast,
And still appearing in contrast.
I pity wretched Strephon blind
To all the charms of female kind.
Should I the Queen of Love refuse
Because she rose from stinking ooze?
To him that looks behind the scene
Satira’s but some pocky queen.
When Celia in her glory shows,
If Strephon would but stop his nose
(Who now so impiously blasphemes
Her ointments, daubs, and paints and creams,
Her washes, slops, and every clout
With which he makes so foul a rout),
He soon would learn to think like me
And bless his ravished sight to see
Such order from confusion sprung,
Such gaudy tulips raised from dung
Full poem here
http://plagiarist.com/poetry/8049/
Yes, the first question is a bit of trick question, really, PC. See, the term RWDB is used by right-wingers ironically, in mock deference to how the left perceives us. I believe, indeed, it was invented by Tim Blair, arch-”RWDB”, for that very reason. But it’s (mis)used by the left — including, I have to say, by most LP bloggers — as a spiteful vituperation, missing its original ironic intent.
Unfortunately for such stereotyping, however, most RWDBs turn out to be much more complex than the left will readily acknowledge. The left is happy to recognise diversity on its own side — e.g. there are many feminisms — but it is baffled by evidence of diversity on the right, since its stereotypes really don’t admit the possbility. So Murray will continue to confuse you (lefties).
As for the other question, I’d climb down a bit and say Murray is the greatest living poet in English that I’m aware of by direct reading or by reputation.
Poetry’s a gift alright – a Gift from the Muse. A Poet ain’t got it, never had it, he’s only the temporary possessor of the Library Card of Life — the Poet’s just the Bitch of the Muse — the very latest in a long line of Prison Bitches, which is all any Poet ever is. And one horrific day, when the Maiden is finally finished with your putrescent carcass, She’ll whisper sweet nothings in your ear and rant to your face, only to leave you all alone, frightened like a little boy lost in the wild, enraged as an impotent rich old man in the company of a comely whore. So now She is off to the next Poet in line, whom she’ll induce to cut your throat from ear to ear, and exhult in glory over your lifeless corpse, all borrowing rights revoked. Oh you’ll howl to the Moon, curse at the Sun, invoke Her sisters the Furies, but the Muse, the Terrible Muse, made you drunk with lust and insane for Glory, and left you stranded in that dump you call your life, spiralling down, all invocations and entreaties for Her return, ignored.
It’s nothing you have or own. Ever.
Jason: “…I think he pulls it off in the end and transmutes raw ugliness into beauty… has the very same qualities as the being of Desire.”
Nice encapsulation, that. You’ve put your finger on all the many dimensions. I agree: for all his craziness (and there was plenty of it), Swift still fought on the side of the angels. Here’s Yeats on the mad dean…
‘EPITAPH FOR SWIFT’
Swift has sailed into his rest.
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
World-besotted traveler; *he*
Served human liberty.
Jason, it reminds me of Grey’s Hudibras, a satirical commentary on the Puritan side of the English Civil War.
“When civil dudgeon first grew high
And men fell out they know not why
When hard words, jealousies and fears
Set folks together by their ears
And made them fight like mad or drunk
For Dame Religiion as for punk
Whose honesty they all durst swear for
Tho’ not a man of them knew wherefore;
When gospel trumpeter, surounded
With long eared-rout, to battle sounded
And pulpit, drum, ecclesiastick
Was beat with fife instead of a stick;
Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling
And out he rode a Colonelling.”
Grey & Swift: same metre, same rhyme scheme — they’re both in iambic tetrameter and rhyming couplets.
Sorry, couldn’t resist.
That’s great, Tyro Rex. Thank you. Your work? Sounds a bit like Francis Bacon, but he was a painter.
Down in ole’ Kentucky
A paradox was born
The corn was full of kernals
And the Colonels full of corn.
- Dorothy Parker, natch.
And yo, the Bloggers’ Ballad.
Tom O’Bedlam
I went down to Satan’s kitchen
To break my fast one morning
And there I got souls piping hot
All on the spit a-turning.
There I took a cauldron
Where boiled ten thousand harlots
Though full of flame I drank the same
To the health of all such varlets.
My staff has murdered giants
My bag a long knife carries
To cut mince pies from children’s thighs
For which to feed the fairies.
No gypsy, slut or doxy
Shall win my mad Tom from me
I’ll weep all night, with stars I’ll fight
The fray shall well become me.
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
All the sprites that stand by the naked man
In the book of moons, defend ye.
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
With a thought I took for Maudlin,
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, Sky bless you all,
I befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never waked,
Till the naked boy of love where I lay
Me found and stript me naked.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.
The moon embrace her shepherd,
And the queen of love her warrior,
While the first doth horn the star of morn,
And the next the heavenly farrier.
The moon’s my constant mistress,
And the lonely owl my marrow;
The flaming drake and the night crow make
Me music to my sorrow.
The spirits white as lightening
Would on my travels guide me
The stars would shake and the moon would quake
Whenever they espied me.
And then that I’ll be murdering
The Man in the Moon to the powder
His staff I’ll break, his dog I’ll shake
And there’ll howl no demon louder.
With a host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end-
Methinks it is no journey.
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
I now reprent that ever
Poor Tom was so disdain-ed
My wits are lost since him I crossed
Which makes me thus go chained
So drink to Tom of Bedlam
Go fill the seas in barrels
I’ll drink it all, well brewed with gall
And maudlin drunk I’ll quarrel
(altogether now)
Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys
Bedlam boys are bonny
For they all go bare and they live by the air
And they want no drink nor money.
- Trad. Arr.
Nabakov, Nabakov, Nabakov — that’s my absolute favourite poem, you bastard!
Although I think it’s a conflation of various version of the poem.
There are actually a number of versions of ‘Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song’. For those who don’t know, Tom o’ Bedlam [derived from the hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem where the isane were incarcerated in the 16th century] was one of the classes of rogues and vagabonds who wondreed around Elizabethan England. He was a fake madman — or was he? Shakespeare of course used this figure in King Lear.
Here’s another superb poem. :Anonymous. 15th Cent.
Quia Amore Langueo
IN a valley of this restles mind
I sought in mountain and in mead,
Trusting a true love for to find.
Upon an hill then took I heed;
A voice I heard (and near I yede) 5
In great dolour complaining tho:
See, dear soul, how my sides bleed
Quia amore langueo.
Upon this hill I found a tree,
Under a tree a man sitting;
From head to foot wounded was he;
His hearte blood I saw bleeding:
A seemly man to be a king,
A gracious face to look unto.
I askèd why he had paining;
[He said,] Quia amore langueo.
I am true love that false was never;
My sister, man’s soul, I loved her thus.
Because we would in no wise dissever
I left my kingdom glorious.
I purveyed her a palace full precious;
She fled, I followed, I loved her so
That I suffered this pain piteous
Quia amore langueo.
My fair love and my spouse bright!
I saved her from beating, and she hath me bet;
I clothed her in grace and heavenly light;
This bloody shirt she hath on me set;
For longing of love yet would I not let;
Sweete strokes are these: lo!
I have loved her ever as I her het
Quia amore langueo.
I crowned her with bliss and she me with thorn;
I led her to chamber and she me to die;
I brought her to worship and she me to scorn;
I did her reverence and she me villany.
To love that loveth is no maistry;
Her hate made never my love her foe:
Ask me then no question why—
Quia amore langueo.
Look unto mine handes, man!
These gloves were given me when I her sought;
They be not white, but red and wan;
Embroidered with blood my spouse them brought.
They will not off; I loose hem nought;
I woo her with hem wherever she go.
These hands for her so friendly fought
Quia amore langueo.
Marvel not, man, though I sit still.
See, love hath shod me wonder strait:
Buckled my feet, as was her will,
With sharpe nails (well thou may’st wait!)
In my love was never desait;
All my membres I have opened her to;
My body I made her herte’s bait
Quia amore langueo.
In my side I have made her nest;
Look in, how weet a wound is here!
This is her chamber, here shall she rest,
That she and I may sleep in fere.
Here may she wash, if any filth were;
Here is seat for all her woe;
Come when she will, she shall have cheer
Quia amore langueo.
I will abide till she be ready,
I will her sue if she say nay;
If she be retchless I will be greedy,
If she be dangerous I will her pray;
If she weep, then bide I ne may:
Mine arms ben spread to clip her me to.
Cry once, I come: now, soul, assay
Quia amore langueo.
Fair love, let us go play:
Apples ben ripe in my gardayne.
I shall thee clothe in a new array,
Thy meat shall be milk, honey and wine.
Fair love, let us go dine:
Thy sustenance is in my crippe, lo!
Tarry thou not, my fair spouse mine,
Quia amore langueo.
If thou be foul, I shall thee make clean;
If thou be sick, I shall thee heal;
If thou mourn ought, I shall thee mene;
Why wilt thou not, fair love, with me deal?
Foundest thou ever love so leal?
What wilt thou, soul, that I shall do?
I may not unkindly thee appeal
Quia amore langueo.
What shall I do now with my spouse
But abide her of my gentleness,
Till that she look out of her house
Of fleshly affection? love mine she is;
Her bed is made, her bolster is bliss,
Her chamber is chosen; is there none mo.
Look out on me at the window of kindeness
Quia amore langueo.
My love is in her chamber: hold your peace!
Make ye no noise, but let her sleep.
My babe I would not were in disease,
I may not hear my dear child weep.
With my pap I shall her keep;
Ne marvel ye not though I tend her to:
This wound in my side had ne’er be so deep
But Quia amore langueo.
Long thou for love never so high,
My love is more than thine may be.
Thou weepest, thou gladdest, I sit thee by:
Yet wouldst thou once, love, look unto me!
Should I always feede thee
With children meat? Nay, love, not so!
I will prove thy love with adversitè
Quia amore langueo.
Wax not weary, mine own wife!
What mede is aye to live in comfort?
In tribulation I reign more rife
Ofter times than in disport.
In weal and in woe I am aye to support:
Mine own wife, go not me fro!
Thy mede is marked, when thou art mort:
Quia amore langueo.
An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It’s a black fly in your Chardonnay
It’s a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn’t it ironic … don’t you think
Chorus
It’s like rain on your wedding day
It’s a free ride when you’ve already paid
It’s the good advice that you just didn’t take
Who would’ve thought … it figures
Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
‘Well isn’t this nice…’
And isn’t it ironic … don’t you think
Repeat Chorus
Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything’s okay and everything’s going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything’s gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face
It’s a traffic jam when you’re already late
It’s a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It’s meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn’t it ironic… don’t you think
A little too ironic… and yeah I really do think…
Repeat Chorus
Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out
Ironic – La Morrisette
That’s why you need to study matey.
“I think it’s a conflation of various version of the poem”
Um, that’s the point. It’s a folk ballad that keeps evolving. One day, one sunny day, I’ll extract my digit and update it for a wired sms hax0r age.
Or you might first.
One of theories about the song’s origins is that it was originally written by Shakespeare himself and then moved into the oral tradition where it transmuted in the usual way of such things.
Could even be true: look at Ol’ Man River.
Here’s a powerful song by Leonard Cohen that makes great poetry (even better when you hear it sung). It’s about the collapse of old certainties. Why some people would rather have Joseph Stalin and the Berlin Wall and St Paul back
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/leonardcohen/thefuture.html
Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it’s lonely here,
there’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that’s an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it has overturned
the order of the soul
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
When they said REPENT REPENT
I wonder what they meant
You don’t know me from the wind
you never will, you never did
I’m the little jew
who wrote the Bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
but love’s the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
to say it clear, to say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going
any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
you feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
it is murder
Things are going to slide …
There’ll be the breaking of the ancient
western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms
There’ll be fires on the road
and the white man dancing
You’ll see a woman
hanging upside down
her features covered by her fallen gown
and all the lousy little poets
coming round
tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson
and the white man dancin’
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St Paul
Give me Christ
or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
it is murder
Things are going to slide …
When they said REPENT REPENT …
Tht’s very good, Jason,
Here’s on from Charles Causley, until his death three yeras ago described as ‘the most unfashionable poet alive’. This is one of his poems for children.
Tom Bone
My name is Tom Bone
I live all alone
In a deep house on Winter Street
Through my mud wall
The wolf-spiders crawl
And the mole has his beat
On my roof of green grass
All the day footsteps pass
In the heat and the cold
As snug in a bed
With my name at its head
One great secret I hold
Tom Bone, when the owls rise
In the drifting night skies
Do you walk round about?
All the solemn hours through
I lie down just like you
And sleep the night out
Tome Bone, as you lie there
On your pillow of hair
What grave thoughts do you keep?
Tom says, ‘Nonsense and stuff!
You’ll find out soon enough.
Sleep, darling, sleep.’
I like Wallace Stevens on creating order from chaos, which was part of what he thought writing poetry was about, and is sort of the opposite of the collapse of certainties:
… tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
(Chaos from order)
God strike me dead tis foreskin Ned
The bastard from the bush
He’s swung his axe
He’s fucked the blacks
He’s pushed the emus off their tracks
He’s been to every two-up school
From Gundagai to Kew
What more could the poor bastard do?
-Copyright. Mr Mad Geoff W.
2006.
Seasonal Fenianism from Yeats 90 years ago:
Blasphemy from Les Murray and Harold Bloom:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18818644-2702,00.html
Kim, that’s just about my favourite poem ever. It’s been in my thoughts a lot lately. It never gives up all its mysteries.
Absolutely, Laura!
Oh yes?
And what about the mysteries in Foreskin Ned!
Don’t get posh.
Because Foreskin Ned will NEVER give up its mysteries!
Oh, I dunno, RH. Foreskin Ned is just as analysable as any other poem. Begins with a classic invocation (’God strike me dead’) and moves on to a bit of internal rhyme (dead/Ned) and alliteration (bastard/bush), starts out in ballad metre but moves on to something a bit limerick-like that I’m sure there must be a name for, except that the metre goes a bit wonky in the last line. Odd rhyme scheme, ABCCCDEE, which looks like four-sevenths of a drunken Shakespearean sonnet.
Not that I’m trolling or anything, because I’m not, honestly. Metre is a wonderful thing, and so is punctuation. Look what happens when you interleave lines from Hudibras and The Lady’s Dressing Room:
Thus finishing his grand survey,
when civil dudgeon first grew high,
disgusted Strephon stole away
(and men fell out they knew not why),
repeating in his amorous fits
when hard words, jealousies and fears –
Oh Celia, Celia, Celia shits! –
set folks together by their ears.
Etc.
Would just like to alert folks to the incredible recent discovery of a poetical papyrus from ancient XXIII-Dynasty Egypt, during the reign of Ramen-Hotep II (the so-called “Noodle” Pharoah), which casts amazing light on literary developments in ancient Egypt.
The papyrus was discoverd inside an ugly, poorly-made clay pot in the cave of Tel al-Q’seltzer south of Cairo, and contains this mysterious literary fragment:
As I was a-motorvatin’
over the hill
I saw Maybelline
in a coup-de-ville (?)
A Cadillac rollin’
down an open road
but nothin’ outrun
my V8 Ford
Scholars are still debating the meaning of the mysterious fragment (particularly its puzzling reference to the Assyrian fertility goddess Ma-bel-lina, as well as to a mythical ‘unbeatable’ V8 Ford, something which has never before been seen in early Egyptian automotive history). The poem is thought to be the work of the ancient blind poet Berrius, heretofore more noted for his 6-string-lyre playing than for his lyrical insights.
Further developments will be posted as they arise.
Thank you Miss Pavlov. You’re probably right about the drunken bit.
Mr Mad Geoff W. did not write Foreskin Ned, it is a rollicking old neighbourhood ballad from my childhood days.
We kids used to amuse the adults by singing it around the streets, and were sometimes requested to perform it at their drunken gatherings.
I don’t know who wrote it, probably a local. And I’m sure it would be lost forever if not recorded by me, because I’ve never heard it since.
To me, Foreskin Ned is as momentous as Ode on a Grecian Urn, because it is my first remembered contact with verse.
I get quite sentimental about it.
-Robert.
Chuck Berry was American. Not Egyptian.
Mayebelline,
Why can’t you be true
Oh Maybeline,
Why can’t you be true.
Don’t start out doing those things
You used to do.
Okay?
I like the Simon & Garfunkel version. Just sayin…
That’s ridiculous.
Their whole style is ridiculous. Except at a funeral.
There was a group called Sam The Sham And The Pharoahs, but Rock and Roll was not invented by Pharoahs!
Okay?
Or where’s your evidence for it!
Because you’ve got none.
Okay?
So shutup!
Bed time, Chairman!
Off you go.
I’ve just started.
This is Australia.
79 Grey Street St Kilda, a fleabag rooming house.
Little Breeanna performs for the down and outs:
Pussy cat is on his throne
Mice are talking on the phone
Puppy dogs go bow-wow-wow
Birdies bed down, any old how
Owls are hotting; hoo-hoo-hoo
Lions snoozing in the zoo
Little joey kangaroo,
In his pouch and sleeping too.
But one poor man his bed is saggin’
And all he’s got’s an empty flagon,
So bring him in one full of sherry,
Pop the cork and let’s be merry!
-Performed by: Little Breeanna, aged eight.
-Lyrics: R.H.
-Audience: Winos, prostitutes, and assorted felons.
Applause: Deafening.
Georg:
Wow. Did you imagine you would get past 7 or 8 comments when you started this?
GregM:
Thanks for the Les Murray / Harold Bloom in “The Oz” link. It gave me a chuckle. What else could you expect out of one of Australia’s eminent / distinguished / prestigeous Failure Factories?
Sluggo and RH:
Your arts grant cheques are in the mail.
Pavlov’s Cat:
Like your analysis .
Everyone:
Living out in the bush has a lot of drawbacks …. but on Thursday, a local bushman and poet gave me a copy of his book before it goes on sale ….. ha ha, beat you all ((oops, sorrry, it’s not polite to gloat, is it. Good poetry though)).
Yes, nice one, GregM. Reminiscent of the great education wars at Troppo a year or two ago.
Okay boys, I’ve refrained from drooling for a decent interval so far, but I’m not called Pavlov’s Cat for nothing and I’d hate you to think you were ringing your bells in vain, what with its being Easter and all. So here you are: think of it as a chocolate answer.
1) The papers were ringing up Les Murray and pushing his hot buttons about literature as long ago as the summer of 1988. To exploit a national treasure like Murray for the sake of selling papers and/or pushing one’s own hack barrow is obscene, and if you think Bloom and Murray weren’t chosen absolutely deliberately because the journalist knew beforehand exactly what they’d say, then you are being incredibly naive.
2) I’m sorry you seem to have seen something dreadfully nasty in the woodshed while you were at university, but I think you should try to get over it.
Come one, Pav, Murray’s always been a rightie. When he got the TS Eliot prize a few years ago, Thomas Keneally said of him, not altogether ungrudgingly, ‘Well, his politics are completely haywire of course, but…..’
And like I said a while back, he’s the literary editor of Quadrant, for heaven’s sake, and credited by Robert Manne with his (Manne’s) ejection from the editorial chair.
I write for Quadrant, too, as Jason intelligently surmised on the other thread, so your ‘guilt by association’ antenna should be twitching.
And just to confuse you further, next project is a defence of post-modernism in history to counter the redoubtable Keith Windschuttle’s latest attack on it. Don’t expect to win, though.
Hee hee. Button-pushing is a game at which two can play.
I never said Murray wasn’t a ‘rightie’, Rob, I said he was a national treasure, so don’t make simplistic assumptions. I’m also fully aware of his relationship with Quadrant, thanks, and of yours too, and indeed of quite a lot of Quadrant’s history including some of its funding sources.
I think you might be a tad conflicted yourself, though, given your next project and your wistful attempts to lure the luscious Kimberella to your lair. Have fun with the Windy project and I’m sure most of the LPers will be cheering you on, but it’s not like it’ll be difficult or anything.
Wistful? You have to be joking. It’s merely polite, as la Bahnisch has pointed out at Catallaxy, to respond to bloggers on their own blogs instead of doing it by proxy.
And LP lead poster Mark himself has stated a number of times that he ain’t no post-modernist.
As for lusicous, I only have Fyodor’s word for that.
I didn’t mean to be sharp or smartarse with that last comment. Apologies, Kim and Pavlov’s Cat.
PC, do you reckon you could knock up a quick little critique for us of this little number by Les Murray from Marxist, feminist and racial perspectives? I’d be happy to pass it on to him. He might learn something of use to him.
Pavlov’s Cat: Re Button Pushing:=====
Button-pushing …. predictable, controllable, reliable, safe, stupid and boring ….. that’s the way the news (a,k.a. amusement) industry in Australia has worked for decades ….. and that’s one of the reasons you’ll find so many excellent Australian journalists and writers working OUTSIDE Australia; they’ll come back for weddings and funerals of course – but to work here? Hell, No!
The Grand Booby Prize for Button-Pushing has to go to the use of former Victorian (not National) RSL boss-cocky Bruce Ruxton on anything and everything even remotely to do with war veterans (and a hell of a lot that had nothing at all to do with veterans as well!) – despite the ready availability of well-informed, articulate and, in some cases, quite colourful people who were right in the middle of whatever was happening.
Ruxton was never a Prisoner-of-War of the Japanese; never served in Viet-Nam, Rwanda or Somalia; so far as I know he never lived in South Africa or in a Communist country either, etc,. etc., ad nauseum …… never mind, wind the boofhead up, press the Start button and just let him rave ….. never mind what happens as a result; it makes a tittilating story for the mugs to watch or read.
btw. Pity John Coetzee himself hasn’t posted here.
Rob, to be fair, you posted the link to your own thread here.
I’ll certainly leave a comment when I next visit.
Just a mo’ – isn’t it the publicly funded State Schools that are supposed to be running down the study of literature? How come SCEGGS Darlinghurst is getting into this stuff.
Now back to work on my masterly essay Infrastructure, Class Relations and Labour in “Flowering Eucalypt In Autumn” by Les Murray.
GregM, well, yes, I could, actually, but I don’t want to, so nyerdy nyer. As for I’d be happy to pass it on to him — no need, thanks. I haven’t seen Les for a few years, but we got on very well last time we were in the same place, so if I want to communicate I can probably manage for myself.
Graham Bell — yes to all of that. There some exceptions but if I named them it would bring a number of people out in a rash, so I won’t do that either.
Pity John Coetzee himself hasn’t posted here.
Hmm. How can you be sure he hasn’t?
Pavlov’s Cat:
I would be delighted if John Coetzee had indeed posted here – cognito or incognito. If he did post here at all, I hope I wasn’t so ill-mannered as to unintentionally punch him out …..”A guest within the walls can do no wrong” and all that.
I think it’s unlikely Coetzee would turn up here, but I’m generally intrigued by the way so many bloggers seem to believe they’re having a private conversation in the private sphere, safe from the prying eyes of high-profile autogooglers and incognito commenters. The untrammelled bloggy trashing of public figures (or of anyone, really) could come back to haunt an awful lot of people in future years, or even future months. Andrew Bartlett obviously didn’t set up that elaborate disclaimer mechanism at his blog for nothing.
Re the teaching of literary, social and/or political theory at high school, BTW, GregM will be surprised to hear that I’m against it. Not because I object to the teaching of different critical approaches, readings and theories, but because I don’t think many secondary teachers are equipped to teach it or that many secondary students are equipped to understand the point of it, any more than I was equipped to understand Animal Farm at fourteen when I’d not yet been taught anything about the Russian revolution.
But then, I’ve done time on Year 12 text selection committees where very little in the way of logic or commonsense survives through to the final cut, and certainly no coherent philosophy about what a literary education might consist of. If you want your kid to be literate about literature, teach her or him at home.
Ms cat
I can cite lots of examples of when famous and infamous people we have commented on at Catallaxy have either turned up themselves or subsequently revealed themselves to have read our comments, scathing or otherwise.
They have included the likes of Ryan Heath, Clive Hamilton, Julian Burnside, Keith Windschuttle and scariest of all, Jim Saleam.
Pavlov’s Cat: “…if you want your kids to be literate about literature, teach ‘em at home…”
Amen to that. Anecdotally from one reader’s perspective, what little lit-wit I’ve managed to collect, was not got via grade-school — but from various mad pre-school obsessions that began with an enormous, mysteriously antique one-volume anthology of English lit (Chaucer to Hopkins) that was left casually lying around on the rug in our house, Sandburg’s “Rootabaga Stories,” and an oversize, Gothically-illustrated collection of Coleridge.
And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ‘em woe:
For all averred,
I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Try un-prying *that* from the skull of an impressionable 7-year-old…
Jason, yes, I’m sure this has happened many times (I bet Clive Hamilton took it better than Ryan Heath
), which is exactly why it surprises me that people continue to make, erm, intemperate remarks, and I worry about the laws of libel. Also, many people just don’t realise how horrible it is to suddenly see oneself being gratuitously and viciously trashed on a blog by a total stranger.
j-p-z, yes, this strikes a chord. I had a very similar experience with Beth Gelert the Faithful Hound — ‘Blood! Blood! he saw, on every side / But nowhere found his child!’
“Jason, yes, I’m sure this has happened many times (I bet Clive Hamilton took it better than Ryan Heath ”
Funny you should mention that. Clive Hamilton has in fact been using Andrew Norton’s review on Catallaxy to sell his books!
See here:
http://www.growthfetish.com/book.htm
and Andrew’s take on it
http://badanalysis.com/catallaxy/?p=90
‘Catallaxy – our critical reviews are so civil you can use them to sell books’
PC, I agree but the problem seems to be that you have to do the nonsense stuff in order to get good marks.
j_p_z, I started with a book of poetry ‘for boys’ yclept Lyra Heroica. Introduced me to Byron, Coleridge, Whitman, etc. It hd belonged to my grandfather and had his annotations in beautiful handwriting the like of which we seldom see these days, sadly.
Here’s another thing.
Who just loved getting into a library by yourself while young and loving the quiet…stealing around.
Then, if you found a book you loved. That was it.
You didn’t always know what you were getting. Bit of hit and miss.
But when it worked. Oh, when you picked the right thing up.
And the way old books smelled and the feel of the pages.
Then the words. Heaven.
I suspect it is more about loving words and silence and hearing what someone meant as they wrote.
Another Kim — yeah, I know what you mean about libraries.
Something that I now find funny about my old neighborhood library when I was a kid, was that the books were not really shelved with any hierarchical sense of their ‘importance’ — I remember picking up intriguing copies of Joyce or Kafka on the same day as equally intriguing books that no-one remembers, which they sat right next to… and having no idea at the time that Joyce and Kafka were more ‘important’ than the others…
Rob — What a beautiful book to have, your grandfather’s. I hope you still have it. That would be a fine thing to pass on.
Generally I’m not a ‘collector’ of books as ‘volumes,’ but there’s one heart-breaking thing I’ve got, that I found in a second-hand store once, that I just had to buy and give a dignified home to.
It’s a really old, decrepit, pocket-sized edition of Carlyle’s “On Heroes, and the Heroic in History.” Though it’s leather-bound, it must have been a pretty cheap copy in its day. What makes it special is a personal inscription, from one complete stranger to another, in that beautiful old-time hand you speak of; the date of the writing is 1917. The wording is vague, but seems to suggest that the recipient was leaving to fight in World War I.
PC, I agree but the problem seems to be that you have to do the nonsense stuff in order to get good marks.
Well, of course I don’t think of it as ‘nonsense stuff’, but then I have always made the distinction between understanding and belief that too many people seem unable or unwiling to admit when it comes to things like marxism, feminism, postcolonialism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis or any other form of social or cultural theory that pushes people’s hot buttons. Or, indeed, any form of religion, as the bizarre arguments about the literal truth of the Bible over the last few days have made clear.
But the ‘isms’ are too often improperly understood and badly taught, and certainly not suitable in my view for people still only in their mid-teens who know little or no world history.
jpz..that was all part of the treasure hunt and joy of discovery. Not knowing what you’d find.
I recall finding a child’s version of The Song of Roland.
I had to keep setting it down. I was too excited.
That’s almost too personal a recollection.
It fired my love of literature.
I hate to agree with you yet again, PC, but I’m with you there. I don’t see much harm in looking at literature from an -ism perspective at university. (I still think it’s a bit silly, though.) Bythat time people ought to be intellectually mature enough to see it for what it is and either accept it or reject it.
But that kind of pedagogy has no place in primary or secondary shcool, which in my very old-fashioned view should about learning ‘the basics’ upon which you can later build, if you’re so inclined, at the tertiary level. And if you’re not, at least you’ve had a taste of the real thing.
Pavlov’s Cat said === “I’m generally intrigued by the way so many bloggers seem to believe they’re having a private conversation in the private sphere, safe from the prying eyes of high-profile autogooglers and incognito commenters. The untrammelled bloggy trashing of public figures (or of anyone, really) could come back to haunt an awful lot of people in future years, or even future months”.
Ha ha ha!!!
No no no no no. Given all the lurkers, ratbags, officials, security wallahs, entrepreneurial lawyers, incognito celebrities and heaven knows who else could be hanging around, you would have to have rocks in your head to imagine, for a moment, that there was any privacy here at all. …… Litigation? Nothing of mine can’t be backed up in court. Anti-Terrorism laws? If you are going to be snatched in the middle of the night and subjected to “intense interrogation” and other brutality and maybe even death then forget logic and reason; it will happen whether you speak out against injustice and treason or whether you keep your mouth shut. So sit back, relax and enjoy the ride ……wherever it takes us.
Well, I went away for Easter and came back to this (I didn’t really turn on the computer while away). I can’t even begin to deal with everything raised here but I have a couple of comments to make.
Graham: even though I sensed perhaps a teeny bit of a patronising tone in your comment, no, I didn’t expect me mulling over whether to continue my MA would evolve into a 200 comment thread.
PC said:
I agree entirely. I think school time is better spent learning to love books than critique them. It is only with a real love can one actually care enough to critique and to be able to sort the critique from the crapique. If you know what I mean.
And one more: Ryan Heath. He used to live down the road from me when I was a kid. He was friends with my sister and taught by my Dad. It’s no surprise he trolls blogs looking for his name. But Ryan, if you’re reading this, I’ll take you on sunshine. (And by the way, Salusinky came off looking better than you in the weekend paper unfortunately. Believe me, I’m looking for a young voice to set against the boomer noise, but I don’t think you cut it).
Has anyone actually read Ryan Heath’s book? I’d be interested in reading a post on it. But I don’t want to spend my money on it.
I know what you mean Kim. I am interested in it but would never bring myself to buy it. There is always the library…
Yes, but I worry about what the librarians would think of me if I checked it out
They’d think you were broad-minded enough to be interested and that you were seeking to educate yourself on all viewpoints – but too cheap/had ideological reasons not to pay for it. They’d understand. Trust me, I know a few of them.
I’ve got a signed copy. Just sayin’.
So what did you think of it?
I’ll tell you when I’ve read it.
Please do. I am actually quite interested
What do you do with this blog Mark – turn on IM and go to bed?
Three things:
No one has yet quoted Chris Koch’s Miles Franklin speech (for Highways To A War).
This whole Left/Right thing reminds me of something someone said to me in the early ’80s which I will paraphrase here for my own purposes – Left and Right fight because they actually give a damn about the direction/s of society.
Said person wanted to see more connection, more passion/care and less fighting, if that was at all possible – putting my 21st century cyber-hippy schtick on it, there should be no middle ground, only a network of nodal connections where you all learn from one another.
Coming from a heavily polarised background, this I long to see, as I believe did McAuley after his own fashion.
Looking forward to your piece on Windshuttle BTW, Rob.
And finally (reverting after a fashion to Chris K.’s work) – I nearly forgot! time for some of you to read Tobias Wolff’s books with tongue very firmly planted in cheek.
Enjoyed all the poems, by the way. A poetry thread every once in a while would be bonzer.
Lit will always matter.
Georg:
Definitely no patronizing whatsoever! Congratulations intended! Surprised and delighted that a topic like this could attract so much attention and that the thread could wander all over the place as it has. To me, it means that not everything in Australia has been reduced to a photo-opportunity and a bottom-line; there’s hope for us yet ….. and you are right in wanting an education …. don’t give up.
You said = “I think school time is better spent learning to love books than critique them. It is only with a real love can one actually care enough to critique and to be able to sort the critique from the crapique. If you know what I mean”. …. How true!
For the record, I agree with PC and Georg about not deconstructing til you know what’s constructed.
Liam, can we expect a post on Ryan Heath, please?
Also, does anyone know if Missy Higgins is lesbian?
Thanks Graham. Apologies for doubting you sincerity.
Georg:
No worries! No apologies needed at all …. thanks for the comment though.
Good luck with your learning …. and with your studies too.
You said ….”I have shyed away from creative writing courses at Uni because, as I found during those impressionable undergrad years, by the end of the semester ninety percent of the class was writing in the manner of the person who got the most positive reaction in the first tute. (Being the pain in the arse that I am, I refused to follow suit)”. …. I’m glad you didn’t follow the herd …… we need all the originality we can get.
Lit matters. Prison is nothing.
MY Final Offer
(To Miss Kim):
Only say
You’ll be true
And I’ll give you
-Not Egypt.
I’ll give you
Africa.
-Loverboy Robert.