Two Espressos

Well, that was goddamn brilliant. Wow. I agree with TripWillis: you make me even more fascinated with the possibility of study and work in academe.

I'm in the States, and I'm not applying until the next cycle, but I am curious as to your thoughts about the program. What is it that you liked and disliked about it? If you want, I can PM you instead, but I figured that I'd ask publicly first, as others may be interested as well.

We don't necessarily need to understand what Shakespeare was saying. There is an army of poststructuralist critics who would disagree with your sentiments. I like to say that there is more than one correct answer in solving these academic problems, but there are many wrong ones. As I see it, a strict adherence to authorial intention (exempli gratia, what did Shakespeare think about Truth, what did he say about Truth, and therefore what did he want us to understand about Truth?) has fallen out of favor for good reason.

Hm, I'm not sure that I'd enjoy reading any more C.S. Lewis, haha. As a former Christian (now agnostic/atheist), I read too much C.S. Lewis for my liking in my youth (nearly all fiction, however)...The Screwtape Letters, Chronicles of Narnia, etc. These questions about value systems and ethics are perpetual issues in moral philosophy. I know that Walter Sinnot-Armstrong has a book called Morality Without God or something like that that argues for a moral system without a deity.

We posted similar insights at the same time. This issue is so complex. I'm most interested in the possibility of establishing some standards (literary or moral) from a postmodern position of doubt. Is such a thing possible? (disclaimer: the above is somewhat related to research interests currently trending with me.)

The conversation here is getting complex and controversial...excellent. I am sympathetic to much postmodern theory, and I'm a huge theory nerd altogether, so I certainly don't consider myself a staunch "traditionalist" by any means. I think that all human thought is linguistic/textual (a thought that many share--Jameson is only one famous example). So I disagree with the above comment that some sort of capital-T "Truths" exist independent of human conception of those truths. Yet at the same time, most would agree that some things are simply wrong (torture, raping children, etc). Why is this so? Can we have moral "values" (and, extrapolating from that, any sort of standard in assessing literary "value") without having some extra-human claim to "Truth"? The Theory Wars of the later 20th century began talking about the above, but as far as I'm concerned, we've barely begun to discuss these matters...

Yeah, Shakespeare is awesome. I just think that it is possible to criticize certain elements of canonicity while still establishing some standards. I was also going to add to the other post: DeLillo sarcastically portrays an academic department that analyzes cereal boxes, seemingly to suggest the complete absurdity and inanity of modern academe. But if you think about it, cereal boxes can provide lots of information about cultural values, more than one would suspect on first glance. Yet if Harvard decided to establish an Institute for Cereal Studies, you'd laugh, would you not? But an Institute for Shakespeare Studies wouldn't absurd at all. I guess I'm saying that while many texts (popular, haute couture, etc) have textual or "literary" value, some have more than others. I don't think that's outrageous, do you?

All of these are valid, necessary questions. The most salient are 2, 3, and 4. I actually was going to add those very questions to my original post but in laziness decided to elide them.

Gah, double post. Sorry guys.

A disclaimer: I've been drinking a (rather stiff) gin and tonic, so forgive any loss of lucidity on my part! Let me attempt to re-frame thoughts. I meant that there is much more to Shakespeare than simply his huge historical/cultural impact. His plays express a wealth of often highly complex ideas; we read Shakespeare not simply because he's popular but because he has a lot of important things to say. His plays have always been popular, and of course this popularity causes others to read him, fueling it ad infinitum. But Shakespeare possesses "literary value" not simply because he's popular...am I making any sense? I can't seem to formulate a coherent response here.

Wow, you're acerbic as all hell! I love it, though. I must admit to laughing aloud at the "what's it like to be illiterate and pursuing an English PhD?" comment. On Harry Potter and other matters of literary worth: I don't think there's any way to establish a firm canon (as others have stated), but c'mon, not every piece of writing is as deserving as others. I'm starting to think about the academic department in White Noise that analyzes cereal boxes. I think a starting point for establishing "literary" value (and I realize that this is contentious and certainly open to criticism/debate) is to evaluate the complexity of the ideas within the work and the originality with which they are expressed. One also can look at the historical/cultural impact, etc, certainly, but hugely canonical works (think Shakespeare plays) aren't ubiquitously read simply because they've had enormous historical/cultural impact, you know? I'm glad you posted this! I loved this interview.

I agree completely. Why is Stein even read? Tender Buttons is bad...really bad.

Yeah, The Squid and the Whale is an incredibly awkward (and funny) film. Thanks for reminding me about that quote. The father (Walter, I believe) is basically the most petty and narcissistic person ever. And he's an English professor. Oh boy...

I like dashes, semicolons, and colons. I use the last two quite frequently, and at one point a professor told me that I was using them too often! They're quite useful for forming 100-word Foucaultian sentences with lots of clauses and lists, which are always fun (if used in moderation).

Ugh, I can't stand Gertrude Stein. I admittedly have little exposure to her (only a handful of her poems), but I found the poetry to be fucking horrid. (And yes, liberal doses of profanity--and alcohol--are not only acceptable but expected. These are the literature boards, after all. )

And we wouldn't have it any other way.

I recommend this as well. A lot of people say The Sound and the Fury is his best book, but I disagree. As I Lay Dying was the first Faulkner book I read, and I absolutely loved it. Plus, it's easier to grapple with than The Sound and the Fury: all that stream-of-consciousness can be taxing! As I Lay Dying has wonderfully vivid, unique characters, and the ending is just perfect. So yeah...read it!

I think the philosophy/anthropology combo is an asset. Interdisciplinarity seems to be really trending now, so if framed in the right way, your interests/background could actually give you a leg up over other, more traditional applicants.

Congrats, Timshel and Bdon19!

Congrats, TripWillis!

I don't really have anything to add (I'm woefully uninformed about music, to be honest), but I wanted to second The National. They're really great. At least I have a thread's worth of cool, English-major-approved music to check out now!

While those are all vitally important jobs, they offer no intellectual stimulation whatsoever. As much as the job market, public opinion, and (financial) opportunity cost suck for humanities PhDs, there are very few other jobs that provide the kind of intense intellectual pleasure that academia does.

This is an interesting poll, Grunty DaGnome. I hadn't thought it necessary to personally contact POIs, as it seemed like brown-nosing to me, and the results from this thread, while clearly a limited sample size, have proven that at least some applicants have had demonstrable success without it.

Hahaha!

Great posts, Phil Sparrow! Also, the pink elephant in the room of academia, I think, is that an uncomfortable percentage of students in more "pragmatic" majors--business, secondary education, etc--are really quite incompetent. At least, that's been my experience. There's a big problem when a roomful of largely business and economics majors completely bomb an economics class (2 A's in a class of 40 students, in this age of egregious grade inflation, is not a good thing), but probably the only English major in the room gets an A. On-the-job training is easily acquired; what's more beneficial, in the long run, is the kind of high-order thinking and writing skills (not to mention foreign language skills) that a solid humanities education provides. Anyone can be a corporate lackey, but it takes real effort to engage in serious critical thinking skills. The self-defeating attitude of many students and professors in the humanities isn't helping anyone. We need to move past that.