Pleasure and Purpose: reading the Holocaust

Reading is indeed a pleasure, though a difficult one. And yet the word "pleasure" is completely inadequate to describe the experience of reading literature of the Holocaust. It strikes me as an awkward word to describe an encounter with literature about pogroms, ghettos, concentration camps, and death camps (it would also strike me as bizarre to suggest to writers and readers of Holocaust literature that the content of this literature doesn't matter).

Why, then, would we read Holocaust literature? Perhaps for the same reason many survivors write about the Holocaust: to witness. In the Holocaust literature I've encountered, survivors and others make little attempt to find meaning in the Holocaust. Often the works rather document, witness, pass on. A book like Charlotte Delbo's Auschwitz and After and the books of Primo Levi can provide the inner experience of a Holocaust victim and survivor. As a reader, I cannot encounter these works for pleasure and it would be blind to encounter them for no reason but to examine their artistry. But in reading them, perhaps I am participating in the effort to bear witness, to remember.

Torrential Downpour

Why I read: "for here there is no place that does not see you"
On Friday, I wrote about the very real impact literature has had on my life. And perhaps I should also recall my reading of Rilke's "The Archaic Torso of Apollo." I have rarely been able to separate my reading from a religious quest. I believe reading can be a deep, spiritual experience, a journey into the soul. Perhaps I should be embarrassed to speak of reading this way, but I am not. I read to know myself, to push myself into a deep and sometimes difficult journey into humanity.

Treat for class
In the past when teaching Pinter's "The Dumb Waiter," I've been tempted to bring in some contemporary comic versions of Absurdism to show the class. I think I may finally do it: it's a good lit class, engaging and thoughtful. They deserve some laughs. I'll show at least one sketch of The Kids in the Hall (there are some nice vaudeville riffs), and one sketch from Saturday Night Live (my favorite: Tim Meadows as the straight man census taker and Christopher Walken as a completely wacky fellow). I ought to borrow a DVD of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

I sometimes feel a low-brow guilt in my teaching: I'm perhaps too willing to incorporate popular culture into class. In my lit class, I've compared works we've read to things like The Simpsons, Office Space, Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, Nip/Tuck, The Sopranos, Big Love, and a whole host of other movies and TV shows that would probably make the professors I admired throughout college throw up. In comp class, it's somewhat more justifiable to focus units on pop culture: as students work hard to improve their writing, it can be useful to allow them to write about something they are familiar with.

Summer Reading
Between here and summer are still roughly 25 moderately sized papers, 25 lengthy final exams, 75 research papers, and a few other things thrown in. That makes it seem rather far away, which makes it difficult to process the fact that indeed it will be full-throttle summer in less than three weeks.

gave myself a rather arbitrary rule for summer novel reading. As most of my novel reading in the past year had been devoted to Dostoevsky (who writes rather long books), I plan to read novels 200-350 pages in length by several different authors. That may be tough: it will mean resisting my constant temptation to give up and just re-read The Brothers Karamozov. Of course I hope to read a fair amount of poetry, drama, and non-fiction as well.

Links
At The Philosopher's Magazine, James Garvey considers the difficulty of utilitarian arguments for vegetarianism. Worthwhile and interesting stuff, though I admit I don't think of my vegetarianism in utilitarian terms.

Martin E. Marty in "Imagine There's No Islam" (Religion Dispatches):

"Rather than seek to “'destroy' Islam and the Muslims, one infers, it might be better for all peoples of faith to look more in the mirror and less out the window, to promote peace."

Center of Gravitas on attempts to limit what professors talk about and assign for reading:

"Republicans give faculty way too much credit while giving university students none at all. If, as a professor, I had the power to 'indoctrinate' my students, do you think that Bush would still be sitting in the White House? I have no special power to brainwash my students into being radicals. Heck, I can’t even convince my students to use the spell checker on their wordprocessor before submitting a paper. Just imagine how little power I have to foment revolution."

Rohan Maitzen in The Valve:

"In The Practice of Reading (1998), Denis Donoghue also calls for renewed aestheticism--but in the interests of an enhanced ethical engagement: 'the purpose of reading literature is to exercise or incite one’s imagination; specifically, one’s ability to imagine being different' (56). My own impression of what the broader public is interested in--and also of where they might both need and appreciate ‘expert’ guidance--would be ethical as much as aesthetic criticism, at least of fiction. Amateur book bloggers, Amazon reviewers, Oprah’s viewers, even many newspaper book reviewers are preoccupied with plot and character, with what happens to and to whom and why, and with judging the people, their decisions, and the results."

My last thoughts on reading

In my experience both reading and discussing literary theory ("literary theory" here simply meaning ideas about what literature is and how we approach it, as opposed to discussion of actual specific literary works), I've seen a certain form of discourse.  Typically, proponents of an idea make universal, absolute, and rigid pronouncements of what literature is and how we should approach it.  What counts as discourse is merely crashing these grand pronouncements into each other.  Meaningful discourse--which for me means some recognition of subjectivity and plurality--rarely occurs.  I've encountered this tendency toward rigidity both in critics I admire and critics I don't.

As a student of literature and theory, it can be enjoyable to encounter, and consider, these absolute pronouncements.  As a participant, it is significantly less enjoyable.   In other subjects (sports, social issues), I've generally started to avoid the sort of contentious discussions that have no hope of moving anywhere.  Perhaps I will also make that decision about literary theory. 

I assert nothing but the prerogative of the individual reader.  The purpose of literature is whatever the individual reader chooses it to be (which means if you say "there's no meaning in literature but X," of course you'll be right: you'll see nothing else).

Literature in Our Lives

I've frequently used literature to make sense of or mark significant moments during my life.

As I noted below, my wife and I included a passage of poetry from Milton on our wedding invitations:

The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.

The hope and humanity in these lines helped make the moment more meaningful.

My son's birth was the most intense moment of my life. And when I finally held him in my hands, I quoted King Lear to him: "When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools." At this moment, this intense, dramatic, meaningful moment, I called on the Bard for deeper meaning.

During one stretch of bad luck (it seems insignificant now, but during the frugal days of grad school, it felt rather overwhelming), I was rather consumed by the idea that the universe was just a mishmash of hazard and chance, entirely indifferent to us all. I taped to my door two passages: one from the Bible, when Jesus tells his disciples not to worry so much (As an Obsessive Complusive, this is a pretty meaningful passage for me. Indeed, I again put the passage on my wall at my current house, feeling I need to be reminded that I ought not worry). But I also put a passage on the door from Hemingway's Farewell to Arms, a passage exploring the indifference of the cosmos to human problems. That I could look at these two passages every day in some way helped me.

Literature has not been an abstract, dry study in my life. These are rather concrete examples when I've used literature in my own life. In a broader sense, I've seen the world differently, I've experienced human beings differently, because I've read Dostoevsky, because I've read Fowles, because I've read Sartre. I see the world, myself, and humanity in a different way because of what I've read.

And literature offers us metaphors to make sense of our existence. Homer gave us Scylla and Charybdis to articulate the difficult, impossible choices we sometimes confront in our lives. In the shadow of Abu Ghraib, Cornwall's servant in King Lear, who disobeys his master to try stop him from blinding Gloucester, has deep resonance. Wilfred Owen gives us a poetry to discuss the horrors of war; we can share the reference of "Dulce et Decorum Est." The Lord of the Flies offers us an image: if we want to consider the dark side of humanity, we can picture a bunch of murderous boys running around an island (but then, that's not necessary: when I consider the dark side of humanity, I picture black and white images of Nazis and Death Camps, recalling the Holocaust literature I've read that made me ache for the evils of humankind).

Literature can be a deeply meaningful experience for our lives. It can help us understand ourselves and the world we face; it can help us confront the universal reality of death. Part of that is the aesthetic: when poetry renders an idea into a new, beautiful, resonant form, it has powerfully connected with us. But that aesthetic meaning can be richer when it helps us to consider the experience, the thought, the meaning within it (Lutheran theology might be used to explain the relationship between content and form. Literature is like Consubstantiation: as Lutherans understand communion to be both bread and flesh, wine and blood, so is great literature both content and form, not meaningfully separated). Ultimately, literature has little to no meaning other than that which the reader is willing to give it. But if we willingly engage in it, it can provide us with something deep and meaningful.

I don't engage literature as an academic exercise. I engage literature as a personal renewal, as a spiritual growth, as a meaningful understanding of myself in the cosmos.

Disobedience and Freedom

In "Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem," Erich Fromm writes of Adam and Eve:

"Their act of disobedience broke the primary bond with nature and made them individuals. 'Original sin,' far from corrupting man, set him free; it was the beginning of history. Man had to leave the Garden of Eden in order to learn to rely on his own powers and to become fully human."

Milton's Paradise Lost ends in an understated way; we've witnessed angels and demons and God and war and heaven and hell and all of creation, but at the end we're left just with Adam and Eve, holding hands:

The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow
Through Eden took their solitary way.

We end with Adam and Eve, alone but together (and still with "providence" as a guide), free to go out into the world. Before them is all of human history. It is not a tragic ending: it is quiet but noble, an appreciation of the goodness still in Adam and Eve and their freedom as they go out into the world to begin humanity.

My wife and I chose these four lines of poetry for our wedding invitations a few years ago. Those who recognized the lines found it rather ironic that we were marking our marriage with the final lines of a poem about losing paradise. But in these lines, I sense an understated sense of hope, a quiet recognition of humanity.

Reading and Pleasure

We read for pleasure. If we turn to books during those parts of the day that require nothing of us, it is because those books give us pleasure. We choose to read, and thus I agree with Harold Bloom when he writes that "It matters, if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments and opinions, that they continue to read for themselves. [...] why they read must be for and in their own interest." We read for ourselves, and we ought to read what we want and how we want.

I reject any theorist which requires me to read in a certain way. If a Marxist tells me I must read to examine political ideology and material conditions, I would decline, while not denying his/her right to read for those reasons. I embrace feminism and see purpose in Feminist criticism, but I would reject a Feminist critic that tells me the only reason I ought to read is to examine and reveal patriarchy.

Such approaches limit the reader's pleasure: they deny the reader the ability to read for his or her own reasons, in his or her own interests. They apply a rigid code to literature, not allowing readers to read as themselves or for their own reasons. Again, I don't reject Marxist or Feminist approaches to literature; I just deny that they are primary ways of reading that must be inflicted on everybody.

And so I come to Aestheticism.

It strikes me how moralistic Aestheticism is. Aestheticism, like other theories, seems to assert that there is a proper, correct, right reason to read and way to read, and anybody who doesn’t read the same way is wrong. This appears as a universalization of individual experience: because a particular reason for reading doesn't work for the Aestheticist, it ought not work as a reason to read for anybody. Thus Aestheticism is another approach that attempts to deny the reader his or her individual pleasure in reading; it asserts that the individual reader ought to be reading differently than he or she is. I ask if reading literature for ideas, for education, or for moral edification, gives a reader pleasure, why precisely shouldn't a reader read for these reasons?


Harold Bloom doesn't read as a moralist, but he does recognize the individual's pleasure--and purpose--in reading:

"Ultimately we read — as Bacon, Johnson, and Emerson agree — in order to strengthen the self, and to learn its authentic interests. We experience such augmentations as pleasure, which may be why aesthetic values have always been deprecated by social moralists, from Plato through our current campus Puritans."

And oddly, in my assertion that one can read for education or edification, I agree with Bloom when he says "Self-improvement is a large enough project for your mind and spirit: there are no ethics of reading." Aestheticism, in a sense, applies an "ethics of reading": it asserts a there is a proper way we ought to read, rejecting other purposes (actually in other places Bloom pretty much does the same thing).

I read as myself, and for my own reasons. Reading offers me the most pleasure when I am able to read for myself and for my own reasons. I can only suggest the same to others.

(This post is something like a response to Daniel Green's response to an earlier post of my own, but it seems better as a stand alone post than as a comment there).

Torrential Downpour

Politics and Literature
Jacob Russell writes: "Not that I believe for a second that literature and the arts are not in themselves, consequential--even primary to politics. But they cannot be so as Mandarin pursuits apart from the messy realities of power and its relations to everyday life."

This reminds me of something that I've tried to argue in the past: it's not that literature becomes politicized, but that politics underlies so much of how we approach literature.

In grad school, I took a course on Asian-American literature, and we very much took for granted that literature is political. During this time, I was reading William Wordsworth's "Nutting," describing an excursion tramping through the woods looking for nuts. How on earth is this a political poem?, I thought. Then I considered some questions one could ask about this poem. What political realities granted the poet access to the woods, and the leisure time to walk about in the woods? More pressing: what political realities lead professors to determine this poem belongs in any canon (in other words, that students should read it)? Why this poem instead of another? Suddenly there are political ramifications underlying my approach to Wordsworth's poem: politics in why I was reading it in the first place.

I don't suggest that one must ask these questions to read that or any other poem (though Wordsworth did occasionally touch on politics in his poetry--"The Prelude" includes his musings on the French Revolution and its aftermath). In fact, I think one would have a more authentic, meaningful experience reading the poem without those political questions. But it is good if somebody asks these questions. Whether you would like to ask these questions or not is up to you as a reader. But politics underlies the canon, and it is a good thing that people are asking the serious political questions about what the canon includes and excludes, and why.

Grammar, Clarity, and They/Their
English teachers should not teach and enforce grammar rules to be conservative sticklers of traditional usage; rather, English teachers should teach and enforce grammar rules to facilitate clarity.

The top priority of most writing (and all academic writing) should be clarity: one wishes to convey one's meaning as clearly as possible. Grammar is a (very small) part of clear writing: poor grammar can distort or confuse one's meaning.

I'm ready to accept the use of "they" or "their as a singular genderless pronoun on philosophical grounds. I don't like it, and I won't use it myself, but I'll tolerate it. Language evolves, and it's silly to resist change on one little grammar rule. However, in some contexts, the use of they/their as a singular pronoun can confuse the point. If a sentence has two separate nouns, and then later in the sentence they/their is used as a pronoun, it can be unclear whether the pronoun refers to both nouns or to only one (or which one).

On the grounds of clarity, I think I ought to encourage my students to maintain subject-pronoun agreement. It is not about nit-picking a clearly evolving grammar usage; it is about encouraging students to be as clear in their meaning as they can be.

Mostly Vegan
I'm in the early stages of working out precisely how I'm living for the next year (or more). While most days I am a fairly strict vegan, I am now also a "special occasions cheese eater." Those special occasions are rare: I ate pizza for my birthday, and in the summer, I foresee three special occasions: an important wedding, a trip to Boston (first real vacation in three years--I want to eat some cheese), and the Hazelweird Fantasy Football Draft.

Links (a few which will show how unabashedly low-brow I can be)
I thought Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was an outstanding movie in its way; it was a silly comedy, but it was actually exploring something meaningful, too. I hope the next one is just as good: in The New York Times, Dennis Lim calls it a "stoner protest film."

Ona Bonfiglio in Common Dreams: "Peace activists are often accused of being naïve dreamers when it comes to dealing with conflict or dangerous enemies. So what is the alternative? Usually it’s to fight fire with fire (i.e., revenge and retaliation)."

An article in The Onion for fans of Back to the Future.

At New Scientist, read "24 myths and misconceptions" about Evolution.

Stupid Summer Project: The Betrayal

Jerry: Oh my God, this drawer is filled with Fruit Loops!
Elaine: So what?
Jerry: And milk.

Jerry: Well, everybody is a little cranky on their birthday.
George: Oh, it's a bad day. You got everybody over at your house, you're thinking, "These are my friends?"
Jerry: Every day is my birthday.

Comment: The backward episode works. Perhaps this was the furthest stretch of Seinfeld's post-modernism: the episode really only works if you're already aware of all the conventions of the sitcom in general and Seinfeld in particular. It's generally pretty funny, and they do a lot of things to take advantage of the gimmicky format. I like that they go back two years (Nina is explaining the internet, Susan is still alive) and 11 years (Jerry meets Kramer and says since they're neighbors they can share everything).

Literature as a game we choose to play

John Fowles sometimes talked about literature as a game. As an author, he would pretend his characters have freedom, but he knew it was a game, and that he was playing God, in control of everything that happens. I find Fowles an admirable writer in part because he invites readers in on the game. In The French Lieutenant's Woman, he injects himself in to talk about the writing and reading process, he becomes a physical character in the novel, and he manipulates the "ending" while talking explicitly about it. But Fowles is not pulling one over on the reader--rather, he's inviting the reader to recognize fiction as fiction. In The Aristos Fowles writes about different types of games: games in which the play itself is what matters, and games in which there is a goal (to win). If fiction is a game for Fowles, it's a game that exists for its own sake, and a game in which the writer pulls the reader over to his side.

I sometimes think of Fowles as a Reader-response writer: he requires his readers to think about how they read. And perhaps this game metaphor is useful in thinking about how we read. For example, when I read, I know the characters are not real. They don't exist: the author made them up. Yet I'm willing to play the game: while reading, I will happily pretend that the characters are real. I'm willing to assess their actions and consider their desires and motivations. I'm willing to get to know them, try to understand them. I might like them or dislike them. I know the characters don't exist, but I'm willing to play the fiction writer's game. Fiction is pretend. But as children we find it's fun to pretend: we play pretend all the time. As we grow, we can still be willing to play pretend. I'm not giving up my reason or my critical faculties when I pretend that the series of letters I see on the page identify real characters or events: I'm agreeing to play the game. It's a game with conventions, and there is generally a set of rules that both author and reader have agreed to. You can experience literature without agreeing to the rules of the game or even treating it like it's a game. But fiction is, indeed, a game of pretend.

Useful Comparisons

In teaching literature, I sometimes find it interesting to let different texts illuminate each other. I teach Hawthorne's "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" and Joyce Carol Oates' "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" on the same day. They are each initiation stories, showing a young, naive, inexperienced indivdual entering the world and being confronted with the bad stuff (danger, evil, the dark side, all that). Instead of looking at each short story individually, we look at them together. If there are significant similarities (Connie and Robin are rural, isolated individuals that encounter society--with all its dark parts--in town) and significant differences (Robin may grow from his recognition and be better off--Connie has no such luck), perhaps we can learn something about each text in particular.

In a wider sense, perhaps we can learn something about the subject at hand (here, initiation). I don't want my students to encounter these texts as artifacts that mean nothing to their lives. I want us to talk about initiation, how it is often good but sometimes bad, and how initiations can be either traumatic or positively transformative. Encountering literature can be itself a tranformative experience, forcing us to confront ourselves.

Sometimes we need to think about the things we take for granted to recognize the absurdity.

Like justices of the highest court in the land discussing the probability for pain and the degree of suffering necessary to make the institutional killing of a human being illegal.

See NPR here and here.

Downpour: mostly links and excerpts

Teaching the text
In my general education literature class, I tell students virtually nothing about the author, and virtually nothing about the time and culture the book was written in. There are some very reasonable exceptions, of course. For the most part, though, I figure we've got enough to deal with in the text itself, and for the objectives of the course, I really think the text is sufficient.

Mostly vegan: private vegan, social vegetarian
When I'm eating alone and planning my meals alone, I'm a fairly strict vegan (though sometimes honey is an ingredient in what I eat). When I'm with people, socializing and going to a restaurant, I don't really want to bother checking whether the veggie burger on a bun that I order contains animal products.

Recently a woman asked and I described myself as "mostly vegan." That clearly implies total vegetarianism, doesn't it? She said she was "basically vegan," and I of course understood that to mean a person that never eats meat. That's reasonable, right?

Is blogging in your office "unethical"?
Apparently it is "improper" to use university resources, including "work-place internet access," for "outside activities."

So is blogging in one's office, but on one's own time, unethical?

It's silly how superior NPR is to everything else on the radio
"Rising Demand for Meat Takes Toll on Environment"

I almost thought Renee Montagne was getting a little defensive: she seemed to be trying to get Naylor to say meat production wasn't that much worse for the environment than other types of mass food production.

"Justices Weigh Death Penalty for Child Rape"

Nina Totenberg:

"'This case is a throwback,' says Washington and Lee University professor David Bruck. 'The death penalty for rape was one of the most disturbing and troubling aspects of this nation's entire experience until the Supreme Court called a halt, we thought, in 1977.'

"Disturbing and troubling, he says, because it was almost exclusively imposed on African Americans.

"Indeed, from 1930 to 1972, basically the last years when the death penalty was imposed for rape, nine out of 10 men executed for rape were black. Moreover, it appears that no white man has ever been executed in the U.S. for the non-homicide rape of a black woman or child."

Reading as Individuals
Harold Bloom in "Why Read?":

"It matters, if individuals are to retain any capacity to form their own judgments and opinions, that they continue to read for themselves. How they read, well or badly, and what they read, cannot depend wholly upon themselves, but why they read must be for and in their own interest. You can read merely to pass the time, or you can read with an overt urgency, but eventually you will read against the clock. Bible readers, those who search the Bible for themselves, perhaps exemplify the urgency more plainly than readers of Shakespeare, yet the quest is the same. One of the uses of reading is to prepare ourselves for change, and the final change alas is universal."

The Pope
Mary E. Hunt in "In the Papal Pocket: Benedict XVI and the Press":

"Press coverage of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States—his first as Pope—acts like a mirror reflecting the media’s complicated role in reporting religious news as a whole. [...] If the kind of coverage in 2005 that accompanied the death of Pope John Paul II, and the election of his successor, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) is any indication, we can expect a great deal of air time and print space, very little if any critical analysis, and a lot of free press for the Roman Catholic Church."

See also
In The Guardian, Fred d'Agular writes about poetry and the Virginia Tech murders of a year ago: "the elegiac art of poetry, when faced with grief, makes marvellous things happen."

In Times Online, Margaret Reynolds discusses editions of classics.

Peter Singer on human rights, words, and moral progress (Common Dreams).