Ouch.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Kurt Vonnegut on English studies
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Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage (New York: Delacorte, 1981).
Ouch.
Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Ouch.
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Words to live by
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
#1 hit
In memory of
Blog Archive
-
▼
2012
(700)
-
▼
May
(53)
- Plagiarism in high places
- Jacques Barzun on gadgets and education
- Perry Mason and Gilbert and Sullivan
- Tendered buttons
- Maira Kalman on her daily routine
- Virginia Woolf on second-hand books
- Doc Watson (1923–2012)
- Fathers and sons and ringtones
- The Beach Boys in Newsweek
- Memorial Day
- Misses Rheingold
- Ellington and an iPhone app
- Minimalist iPad stand
- A mistaken bit of iPad folklore
- Mac recommendation: AppDelete
- How to improve writing (no. 37)
- Movie recommendation: Jiro Dreams of Sushi
- Dial-a-Poem
- More on “Kokomo”
- A musical analogy
- Beach Boys reunion dream
- Things I learned on my summer vacation (2012)
- Domestic comedy
- Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City (4)
- Telephone exchange names on screen: Naked City (3)
- Poetry and Naked City
- Hi and Lois watch
- Kurt Vonnegut on English studies
- An Old-Fashioned retronym?
- College Debt
- Happy Mother's Day
- Bicycle safety, 1954
- Shoe repairmen in the news
- At last
- Three great strip-mall restaurants
- A Blogger reprieve
- Maurice Sendak (1928–2012)
- William H. Chace on plagiarism in college
- Contrapuntalism
- Indy serendipity
- Kurt Vonnegut, Manager
- But also across time
- E-mail in the air
- Eponym of the day: satyr
- Hi and Lois watch
- Arkhonia on the Beach Boys
- Time-saving formulas
- Eponym of the day: hector
- Marjorie Perloff on the “well-crafted” poem
- Blogger, a mess
- Nancy is here
- The three sons
- A week of eponyms
-
▼
May
(53)
favorite posts
- Against “deep reading”
- Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer
- At the World Trade Center and St. Paul’s Chapel
- Being wrong about beauty
- Bobbing for apples
- “Bon Appétit!”
- “The Case of the Purloined Prairie”
- ChatGPT’s twenty-line poems
- “The ’Clipse”
- Couric and Palin and Orwell
- Digital naïfs
- Donald Trump’s spelling
- Ebinger’s
- Ellington for beginners
- “Extra credit?”
- Five desks
- Five pens
- Fluke life
- The gold standard, haircuts, and everyone else
- Happy birthday, Mr. Piletti
- Hoagies, pizza, and English studies
- Homeric blindness in “colledge”
- How to Write a Sentence
- Imaginary liner notes
- Invisible man: Louis Armstrong and the New York Times
- Invitation to a dance
- Is there a pencil in The House?
- John Lee Hooker and Canned Heat
- A Kerouac notebook page
- The kitchen shink [sic]
- Klenosky!
- “Make My Jotter Quit!”
- Lady Elaine’s can
- Mysteries of the tollbooth
- National’s et cetera
- Nick DeMaio and the Eldorado
- Obama revisions
- Obama thoughts
- On “On the New Literacy”
- On “Politics and the English Language”
- “On the Road”
- The Oteris and Marty
- The other little book
- Out of the past
- Peppa Pig and the Brontës
- Phones Are For People
- Politics and theory
- “The Poet”
- Proust: involuntary memory, foolish things
- P.S. 131
- Pullum on Strunk and White
- Re: the Beloit Mindset List
- Some have gone and some remain
- “The Spokesmen”
- Sports Illustrated and Proust
- The Springfield Daily Gazette
- That (in)famous line
- Things I learned on my summer vacation
- Van Dyke Parks in Chicago
- W(h)ither grammar
- What I hear in “Walk Away Renee”
Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 9
Well, the "what's your major?" take on "Howl," a unique approach.
It hurts, doesn't it? It's hard to grin approvingly when he takes a dig at the folks in the Education department, only to duck when he takes aim at us. But I'm glad you're enjoying Palm Sunday (or at least I think you are).
For the record, Herbert Huncke was not an English major. William Burroughs was a Harvard man.
Stefan, yes, I’m enjoying the book.
Neal Cassady: also not an English major.
In defense of the English departments, faculty and grad students I have been in contact with over the years, I must say I did not find them to be especially worthy of a dunce cap, but maybe that's because they were - and are - largely, though not exclusively, medievalists.
However, the characterization of what a fellow Germanist calls "pedagologers" is spot on. Who but an "educationist" would sniffily oppose actual foreign language courses intended to fulfill a foreign language requirement on the grounds that they are - wait for it - "skills courses"? As well they might be: German and the Scandinavian languages use the cognate of English "can" to mean to know how to do, including to speak, understand and possibly read a language, because doing so is, er, a - skill. Er kann nicht Deutsch, Jeg kan norsk - "He does not know German," "I know Norwegian" - well enough to speak, understand and read them.
As Anna Russell said, though in a different context, "I'm not making this up, you know..."
Norman, thank you for supporting English folk. Your account of language-rejection reminds me of a story I heard yesterday about a library not wanting to add books. Sigh.
Funny, gut reaction,
Curt as curt can be;
He issued no retraction
Consequentially.
Slaughter? How's that crass
To speak such words so sharp?
In education'n English,
One often finds just carp.
As you know: those who can, do; those who can't, teach. And, most wounding of all for the likes of me: those who can't teach, translate...
Adage is as adages' words
Which leaning lean to slant.
Those who can, they can,
And those who can't, they cant;
That last verb's apostrophic,
Meaning those who can't do rant.
Funny gut writ oh-so large
But curt his studied words;
One writes sometimes overlarge
To graze the grazing herds.
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