Unfortunately, there's no Virgil handy to guide us out afterward, either. Contemporary satirists just aren't enough.
- If you need any further demonstration that Disbarred Rudy has gone bonkers, consider his screed urging the present mayor of New York City to not attend Friday's 25th anniversary eulogies for an atrocity. That screed underlines precisely why Mamdani should participate. It's not just because "he's a nonwhite Muslim," or anything else pointing at Mamdani himself as somehow an "inappropriate" mourner; it's because the attitude of taking action and spewing hate against those Not Just Like Me is precisely the attitude that informed the terrorists. They didn't go after a directly-related target, but a massively multiemployer office building… that employed more than a few members of their own religion, but were somehow lumped in as "Americans." So, too, for the first responders.† This ironic turn on "We have met the Enemy, and he is us" is no doubt beyond Rudy's narrow-minded consideration.
- As a further demonstration of endemic inability to look outside the box, to judge canonical literature texts by their covers… or to look at context, in the same way that the curriculum itself has been forced to look at context. (Initial aside: Even in 1980, there were paperback editions available… I had to buy one each semester. They fit much better in backpacks than did the casebound editions.) The fundamental problem is that Bauerlein believes that the canon represented by sole focus in even a survey course represents either "literature" or "the study of literature." That's not to say that one cannot impose some structure on the field — only that one cannot do so by preliminarily restricting the data set to material likely to reaffirm entrenched doctrine.
Somewhat more snarkily, a significant part of any movement away from canon by students (and younger instructors) came from increasing recognition that none of them could, or did, share a first name with Byron: Lord (really, state his "Christian name" without looking it up…). The context in which literature lived mattered more and more as more students from "less-privileged" backgrounds made their way into the better schools, convinced that they needed to be employable immediately after graduation so they could begin paying back student loans. Too, just off campus (even at elite schools) the unwashed kept getting closer, kept becoming more a part of students' lives. And meanwhile, some darned fine writing was coming up from civilization — the parts of the US west of the Hudson (and here, it's also important to remember that nineteenth-century-and-earlier Europe is east of the Hudson…), particularly in comparison to what was being newly published from the mid-1960s onward in the barbarian wilderness to the east.
Put another way, one absolutely, positively must study the Michelson-Morley experiment and its context to understand modern physics — even the parts that aren't about subatomic particles or the speed of light in a vacuum as a speed limit. The real point is that the experimental results ended up proving that its experimental design was futile; that, more than anything else, is the problem with taking the editorial efforts of Professor Abrams et al. as reflecting not a, but the, foundation of literature and literary study. One might also contrast Beowulf, Chaucer, and dare I say Spenser with even the nascent novels of Sterne and Fielding — let alone Cervantes and the chansons de geste that were already evolving from verse as printing made memorization from oral presentation less essential — but that might be gilding the lily; and it's worth unpacking that metaphor to compare to Bauerlein's explanation, particularly in the midst of the field of orchids and Nepenthe in which students today find themselves. Or, perhaps, it's just some hungry sailor mistaking a priceless tulip bulb for an onion.
All of which I say with a fondness for (many of the) classics — but, simultaneously, recognition that the classics constitute a corrupted data set, and that due to social and technological factors we simply do not have (and can probably never obtain) the rest of the data. That more lawyers (not excluding judges!) could do with the kind of "close reading skill" Bauerlein describes — one that necessarily asks about context beyond the document, such as why Ophelia should repair to a nunnery — is for another time.
- But that's a different-academic-perspective disagreement with Professor Bauerlein, not the kind of fundamental skepticism I have regarding a certain copyright-related settlement now in the throes of maladministration. The official administrator can't escape some responsibility here, but today I'm just haking my head at the ignorance — not much of a surprise, but definitely dismaying. I have no idea which lawyers told the President of the Authors' Guild that "less than 25% of claims had any issues at all, and that in most cases the problems stem from typographical errors or other mistakes that can be easily fixed and don’t involve actual disagreements" reflected an acceptable claims administration process — particularly when there's no need to prove initial entitlement (like in a medical mass tort) or uncertainty regarding the facial identity of potential claimants after the settlement class was narrowed inconsistently with governing precedent. Those lawyers clearly had never been involved with significant class-action settlements of this nature, where there's an admission of the relevant conduct (however "excused" it was earlier claimed) regarding a purported closed universe of claims against a specified settlement fund.
The Authors' Guild's track record in "representing authors" is — generously — abysmal. Ms Rasenberger has not helped matters here, perhaps aided and abetted by PW's own abysmal track record… But that's nothing compared to the noncredible explanation offered by a commercial publisher's CEO for the claim of 100% of payments by that publisher, and in that he's far from unique. The directions for filing claims were not a model of clarity, nor were other explanations offered clear and consistent, but I haven't run into an author yet who didn't understand that "If the publisher still had rights on the relevant date, I write '50%' for my claim because I have to assume the publisher will make its claim for 50% unless I've already been told otherwise" — even without consulting a lawyer. Another failure to engage in "close reading," I suppose.
- Which is still superior to the purported "objective test result" standard for Army cadet officers. Yes, this is tinged a little bit with interservice rivalry; that said, we should be expecting all officers to be substantially more capable than reflected in the fiftieth percentile of, well, darned near any widespread standardized exam issued below the graduate-school level. Indeed, one of the "practical lessons" of officership is that low standards lead to low achievement… and when it comes to making decisions involving the use of force, "the middle of everyone" is a low standard.
- Which is probably less frightening than AIs answer questions about the course reading for medical, nursing, and allied-health-profession students. The vendor's identity fills me with even less confidence than the probability that this will turn out well for anyone other than the vendor.
† It's just not worth going in to the broader bigotry that has followed 9/11. Followed, but (unfortunately) was merely amplified by — not caused by.