Secure the Galactic Perimeter

In what is necessarily a record, I have already read the worst book I will read in 2015.  Not only that, I finished it a week ago.  On January 1, I started the worst book I will read all year.  No doubt about it.  There is no possible way I will read a worse book this year.  It was bad.  Unbelievably bad.  As in, how-does-something-like-this-get-published bad?  And moreover, how in the world does someone who writes this book get a contract to write at least five more books after this one?  I despair about the state of literature in the world today.  I will do my best in what follows, but there is no possible way to convey the true awfulness of this book.  No matter how bad it seems, it was worse.  Much worse.  Let’s put it this way, I would rather listen to an endless concert by the Soronprfbs.  Don’t get me wrong—I really liked the movie (Frank), but can you imagine listening to that for hours on end?  Well, it would be better than the book I just read.  Much better.  So, really, listen to that song before reading further.  Listen to the whole thing.  All of it.  Don’t stop.  And then remember, the book is worse.  Much worse.

The book:

Christmas is Murder, by C.S. Challinor (which I sure hope is a pen name because surely nobody would want to be known as the person who wrote Christmas is Murder)

First: why did I read it?  It was a Christmas gift.  I read books people give me for Christmas.  I hasten to add that this book was not given to me by my wife.  I hope the person who gave me this book has never read it.  I hope it was just on the bargain rack of Christmas books at Barnes and Noble.  (I am glad the person who gave me the book does not know this blog exists.)

It was a story pretending to be a mystery—a sort of Agatha Christie whodunit except Agatha Christie threw out manuscript fragments vastly better than this.  It isn’t fair to call it a mystery because it was perfectly obvious who done it the whole time. 

The best thing that can possibly be said about this book is that it didn’t take long to read the whole thing.  In fact, that is the only good thing that can be said about this book.  I am trying hard to think of something else which was just bad instead of unbelievably awfully bad, but I can’t.  I started this blog post thinking I would catalogue all the crimes of this book—not the crimes in the book, but the crimes of the book, but I cannot bear to start listing them because it would take forever.  I don’t even know where to start.  So, how about this?  I’ll give you the motive for the murder.

You see, there is this lady who runs a bed and breakfast.  Her husband and son both died in Iraq.  An editor from some publishing house is staying at the bed and breakfast.  The editor has a manuscript she is supposed to read to decide whether to publish the book or not.  The manuscript is a book about George Bush.  So, the owner of the bed and breakfast decides to murder the editor and burn the manuscript because she doesn’t like George Bush.  I’m not kidding.  That is the motive.  By the way, the editor doesn’t like the manuscript—on page 30, she calls her firm and tells them that the book is terrible and shouldn’t be published.   

That motive is one of the more plausible things in the book, by the way.  Because, if you kill some mid-level editor at a publishing house to which an author submitted a manuscript about George Bush, then obviously…hmmm.  I can’t figure out what happens after that, but it is obviously a good thing for someone whose husband and son died in Iraq.

I know you don't believe me that the motive is one of the more plausible things in the book.  I know you think the book can’t be that bad.  So, how about this?  After the editor dies, our hero, the amazing Rex Graves, looks for the manuscript, but it can’t be found.  But, gosh, there is a big pile of ash in the fireplace.  Maybe that is the manuscript?  Fortunately, there are some small fragments that are not burned.  One of those fragments says “l Qa”  That starts lots of wondering about what “l Qa” could be.  Hard to figure.  So, they look in a dictionary and it turns out every English word that starts with a Q is followed by a u.  Shocking.  Yeah, you don’t believe me that this is shocking, but I can prove it.  A quotation from Christmas is Murder: “Well, blow me,” Charley said. “I never realized every word in the English language beginning with ‘q’ started ‘qu.’”  (That incidentally, is one of the more artfully written passages in the book.)  Fortunately, our hero later sees a newspaper which has...get this...an article about Al Qaeda...Wow!  who would have thought of that...so, maybe that heap of ashes was the missing manuscript about George Bush. 

Ok, so that is not even remotely the most implausible thing in the book.  How about this?  Three people are murdered in this hotel.  Ah, but there is a big snowstorm.  The hotel is close enough to town that our hero can walk to the hotel from town using a pair of tennis rackets he inexplicably brought along with him as snowshoes.  Ah, but the police can’t make it to the hotel.  Three murders, but, you know, the police guy in town, he has this cold, see, and there is all that snow, I mean there is a lot of snow, so it is really hard for the police to go up to the hotel to deal with all these murders, but maybe in a day or two, if some of the snow melts, they can come up to investigate.  Sadly, all the guests of the hotel also feel obligated to hang around a hotel with a mass murderer running around because, you know, it would be a drag to trudge through the snow to get down to town to stay at a hotel with no mass murderer.  Well, except that our hero and his love interest do ski down to town to go out for a beer, but, you know, it is rather silly to just stay in town, so they go on back up to the hotel.

Yeah, that isn't the most implausible thing either.  The most implausible thing is that anyone could write this book and that anyone could read it and think it should be published.  Yet it happened.  I have the evidence on my desk.  I despair.  Truly, I despair.

Oh, and if you still think the book can’t be all that bad, if you think I am just exaggerating, then I dare you to read it.  In fact, I double dog dare you to read it.

Revolting Against the Whole Carnabetian Army

The next book up on the pile of books awaiting review has me in a bit of a quandary.  I am stuck.  I stare at the book.  I stare out the window (it’s really nice out there—well, technically it is freezing cold—seriously sub-zero type of weather—but since I am inside and thus immune to the temperature, I just notice the crisp blue sky and the snow and ice covering the green and I think it is nice outside, which raises an interesting question of whether to be nice outside it must be nice when one is located outside or when one is looking at the outside.  Does being nice outside mean having to be located outside when making that appraisal?  If so, does saying that a painting is nice mean having to be located in the painting?  Yeah, I am stalling to avoid the aforementioned quandary.).  I realized some music might help solve the quandary.  So The Kinks are now playing.  I have no idea why I thought The Kinks were the most appropriate music to solve my quandary.  They aren’t helping.  (Yeah, I am still stalling.)

Here is the quandary.  I have this book, see.  I want to launch off on a written exploration of the book and see what comes of it.  That is the method of this here blog, after all.  But, the book in question has two launching points.  I don’t know which will be the more interesting launching point.  I don’t really want to write two blog posts about this book.  So, which one should I choose to commence this rumination?

I have of course added a further complication.  There is now a third way to start this blog post.  See the previous two paragraphs.  Egads.  At this rate, I will be living in a Borgesian universe.  Now, Borges is not the author of the book in question.  But Borges is sitting in the list of books to be reviewed.  Which now leads to a fourth possibility.  The blog post now being written could just be converted into a review of a different book than the book which started this whole problem.  Ah, but to switch books will just mean recreating the current problem at a future date.

The foregoing is a perfect example of why it is a good thing that Nobody reads this blog.

There’s one thing you gotta do/ to make me still want you/ gotta stop sobbing now.  Wow!  The Kinks come to the rescue.

Here are two alternate first paragraphs.  Deciding which to read is left as an exercise for the Reader.

First paragraph 1

            As I have presumably noted in this space before, I am always simultaneously in the midst of multiple books.  I like to read (shocking, to be sure), but I also like variety in my reading, so by meandering through multiple books at a time, there is always some book which will strike my fancy at any given moment.  In normal times, the books being read are sufficiently different that they feel non-overlapping.  But, I just had a very odd experience.  While reading Mark Edmundson’s Why Teach? A nonfiction book about the plight of higher education which my wife gave for Christmas, I was also reading Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members a novel which was given to me by one of my former students (Thanks, Meggie!).  Multiple times while reading one or the other, I forgot which book I was reading.  Dear Committee Members is a series of letters written by a cantankerous old professor.  Why Teach? is a series of essays written by a cantankerous old professor.  Multiple times I connected some comment on one book to a comment in the other book and then had the shock of remembering that the two comments were written by different people.  If I didn’t know better, I would have suspected that Julie Shumacher and Mark Edmundson are the same person.  Come to think of it: Has anyone ever seen both of them at the same time in the same place?

First paragraph 2

            Being a professor is normally a joy-filled occupation.  I love my job.  I love almost everything about my job.  Except grading.  I hate grading.  It is tedious and dull and boring.  The only other thing that even rivals grading in tedium is writing letters of recommendation.  (And let me hasten to add to Readers who have in the past asked or will in the future ask for a letter of recommendation that the thing I don’t like is writing letters of recommendation for other people.  I love writing letters of recommendation for you.  Love it.  It brings me great joy.  It is fun to recommend you.  It is the letters for those other people which are boring.  Really.)  The problem with letters of recommendation is that most of them are so routine and pointless.  The letters for graduate school aren’t too bad—at least they matter.  Some students have even done something distinct enough that there is actually something to say in a letter, and those letters aren’t too bad to write.  But, the bulk of letters of recommendation are pointless—nobody really cares what they say; the whole point is just to raise the cost of applying to make sure the applicant is serious.  After all, if nobody will write a letter for you, then you probably aren’t very good.  So, the existence of the letter is all that matters; the content of the letter is irrelevant.  There are tons of letters I have to write to this or that office at Mount Holyoke.  Those are always really idiotic.  I have been on committees where I had to read the letters of recommendation for internal awards—I skipped them all.  They are really lame.  “So and so was in my class and was really smart and should get this award.”  Letters like that are dull to write and dull to read.  One of my former students (Thanks, Meggie!) gave me a gift which was the most marvelous tonic to salve the pain of writing letters of recommendation.  Dear Committee Members is a novel, if you use the word “novel” to include Epistolary Novels.  It is a series of letters of recommendation written by an old professor who hates writing letters of recommendation.  They are hysterical.  I will think fondly of this book every time I have to write letters of recommendation in the future.  The book perfectly captures the idiocy of the whole enterprise.

OK, so there are the two starting paragraphs.  Now the trick is writing subsequent paragraphs which work no matter which one the Reader read.  (This is getting more Borgesian by the moment.)

Jay Fitger, the aforementioned fictional faculty member, has been writing letters of recommendation for too many years.  He has mastered the form.  All the annoyances of being a professor in the modern college are captured in these letters.  He has letters for students applying to things for which the student has no business applying.  He has letters for students who truly deserve the thing for which they are applying but who will never get that thing.  He has letters which are pointless by design because you know that nobody will ever read them or care about them. 

The fascinating thing about the book is how it captures the feeling of futility which the job of professor too often brings.  I want to help my students, but some students are so dead-set on what they think they want to be open to being guided.  I have students who will excel at this or that thing, but my knowledge comes from the fact that I know the student and I also know that there is no way I can ever convey all that I know in a letter which will at best be skimmed.  I know that much of the internal Administrative work at a college serves no purpose whatsoever, but I cannot unilaterally go on strike from writing pointless internal letters of recommendation because the only person who would be hurt by such a strike is the student and it is not the student’s fault that there are idiotic administrative hoops. 

There is a curious fantasy I occasionally have.  What if I had a set of a few dozen jobs/fellowships/internships/grad school acceptances which I could just hand out to students?  I could meet a student, know she is perfect of some particular thing or other and just give it to her.  Perfect matching.  Everyone would win.  But, then my fantasy comes crashing down with the realization that simply having things to hand out would not be enough—the students wouldn't want the things I could hand out.  They wouldn't know that this is actually a pretty good thing.  They would aim for something different.  Sigh.  Futile, I tell you.  Futile.

But, at least I have Schumacher’s book to fall back on to console me in my times of despair.  This book is very Wodehousian.  Don’t despair, it says.  Life is a comedy, it says.  Just laugh.

So, now I am off to write some letters of recommendation.  (Really, that is entirely true—I have three or four letters of recommendation I have to write today.)  I hereby resolve to write them “with candor, regret and a whiff of vengeance.”  OK, I won’t do that.  I’ll write them “in dire camaraderie.”   OK, not that either.  I will strive to write them “with genuine  as well as vicarious pleasure.” 

But, I will smile as I write them, thinking of this fun little book and this song.

Why Teach?

Why Teach?  An interesting question, that.

Another Christmas gift from Janet was Mark Edmundson’s book which has a title asking exactly that question: Why Teach?  In Defense of a Real Education. 

In a curious way, this was a rather thought-provoking book.  It’s a collection of essays which, truth be told, meander all over the place, united only by the fact that they have something to do with education.  The book is best described as a cri de coeur.  Edmundson looks out and sees a sterile corporatized (a favorite adjective of the Academic Left) educational system which has moved well past taking root and is starting to flower, bear seeds, and replicate itself.  That college is anathema to Edmundson.  He is a prophet standing on the hill lamenting and denouncing and calling his people to repentance,  Edmundson is Jeremiah. 

What does Edmundson want?  An education that matters, that rips right into the souls of the students and shakes them out of complacency into deep reflections about things that truly matter.  He wants faculty who don’t want to play the game of the modern college, who eschew the trendy pedagogical imperatives of the day.  He wants faculty who are most certainly not cool, who do not try to meet students where they are but force students to move to a better higher place.  He wants students to pause in their race to graduation and decide to learn something deep and meaningful.  Get rid of all that technological floor show, no multimedia spectacles, no simplifying the curriculum, no making everything easy.  Hard, meaningful work.  Studying important timeless things in timeless ways.  Professor, student, Great Book.  That is all you need.

Obviously, I agree with Edmundson.  He is the type of professor who says things to me like “Wow.  Even though I totally disagree with your politics, I really agree with you about education.”  I don’t know why liberal faculty are always surprised that a conservative academic preaches the value of Tradition in Education.  I suspect it is because they think the enemy of Education, properly conceived, is that “Corporatization” thing and Conservatives like “Corporate America” so Conservatives must hate Great Books.  It is strange how narrow minded modern liberal professors can be. 

By the way, this is not just some gratuitous swipe at Edmundson.  He fits the type I have met all too often.  For example: “My overall point is this: It’s not that a left-wing professorial coup has taken over the university.  It’s that at American universities, left-liberal politics have collided with the ethos of consumerism.  The consumer ethos is winning.”  So typical.  In this book Edmundson spends many, many pages showing that the whole neo-Marxist-feminist-multiculturalist-genderindentityist crowd have destroyed the reading, real reading, of Great Books.  That new crowd has turned every book into a mirror, simply reflecting back the author’s prejudices.  From the argument in Edmundson's book it is obvious that the left-wing professoriate has joined forces with the consumer culture to destroy the type of education Edmundson values.  Yet, Edmundson must periodically assert his left-wing credentials by giving the very people he is criticizing a pass.  Sad.  When people like me note how the reading of Great Books has been destroyed, we are just called Neanderthals.  Edmundson should just embrace his inner Neanderthal. 

The problem with the modem college is not some sort of Corporate takeover by evil outside administrators.  The problem is that the faculty have given up the battle to educate.  Providing an education is hard work.  One of the overlooked things about the modern academy is: faculty are really not interested in working hard at educating.  They get offended when you say this, by the way.  But, today, Wednesday January 7^th, I would suspect that about 10% of my colleagues are at work.  When I hear my colleagues wax poetic about all those new innovative pedagogical tools, the thing that is left unsaid is this: if you use these new tools, then you won’t have to do so much work.  Show videos in class?  Don’t have to prepare a lecture.  Encourage students to get together in groups to work on problems together in class?  No lecture.  Flip the classroom so students watch lectures on-line and then come to the class to work on problems?  What do you know?  Less lecturing.  Then there are all the pedagogical innovations that simply make less work for the students—and less work for the students means--you guessed it—less work for the professor.  Fewer readings for students?  Less reading for the professor.  Between my assorted classes this Spring, I have assigned 23 books.  Other than the textbook for one of the courses, I will read (or reread) every one of those books.  That is a lot of reading.  It takes a lot of time.  The fact that few if any of my colleagues will spend even a fraction of that much time reading material for courses has absolutely nothing to do with the number of Administrators at the college.  

Saying such things does not exactly make you popular with the crowd.  Edmundson almost says such things.  After reading the book, I doubt he disagrees with those things at all, but he never quite gets around to saying them.  He may be Jeremiah, but he is a kinder, gentler Jeremiah.

So, I didn’t learn much reading this book, but in a strange way, it sure inspired me.  It was one of those books that made me pause and think over and over and over.  Why Teach?  Why am I a Teacher?  What is my goal?  Teaching, really teaching, in the modern college is tough.  Very tough.  I love my students.  I really do.  But, truth be told, and it is not a pleasant thing to tell myself, most of my students, whom I dearly love, do not actually want an education.  Most of my students just want an A and a diploma.  The tough part of teaching, the really tough part, is figuring out a way to convince those students who just want an A and a diploma that maybe they should want something else. Maybe they should want to pause and get an education.  The students who want an education are easy and fun to teach.  Professor, student, Great Book—an amazing education.  I love teaching those students.  But, how to convince the majority of my students that this is what they should want, that their lives will be richer and fuller if they momentarily forget about that A and that diploma and just think about Truth?

Therein lies the thing I started pondering deeply while I was reading this book and have been pondering ever since.  I too have been playing the kinder, gentler Jeremiah—not with my colleagues, but with my students.  I have been using gentle enticements to try to lull my students into a new set of desires.  I have been trying to model a Joy of Learning, and hoping that the spirit will catch on,.  And it has worked on many, many students.  But not all.  If I am honest, not even most.  Maybe, and here is the intriguing part, just maybe the kinder, gentler approach should be accompanied by methods more dramatic.

I’ll give an example.  In my macroeconomic theory course—textbook intermediate level course required of all majors—I have long been assigning supplemental books, books which normal people buy at a bookstore and read.  I assign three a semester, tell students to just read them and enjoy them.  I then ask painfully simple exam questions about them—as I tell students up front, if you read the book, you will know the answer.  A few students read the books—it is surprising, quite honestly, how few.  Students don’t read anymore.  Yet I keep putting these books in the course because for the students who do settle into a comfortable chair and just read for the pleasure of reading, there is that gentle enticement to the realization that learning stuff just for the joy of learning it is rather enjoyable.

This semester, one of those supplemental books I assigned is Chernow, The House of Morgan.  It is a massive doorstop of a book.  I assigned it knowing full well that most students won't read it.  After all, last semester, most students didn’t read Michael Lewis’ Flash Boys, which is short, quick and lively.  So, I figured since most students don't read no matter how quick and easy the book is, why not throw in a longer supplemental book which will be immensely wonderful for that small minority of students who take it up and read it?  I assigned that book before I read Edmundson’s book.  But, now I am wondering—shouldn’t I do more to convince students that spending one month reading just 25 pages a night of a magisterial history book is something worth doing? 

One thing is certain, in attempting to do more to convince economics majors that they should want to read The House of Morgan (after all, if you are going to major in Economics and want to work on Wall Street, then you should be interested in the history of the Morgans—I have no hesitation is saying that emphatically—my students should want to read this book), I will fail.  Most of my students will not want to read this book.  It is 720 pages of text—a longer book than most of them have ever read.  Anything I do to convince them they should want to read it will a) at best convince a very few more students to read it and b) certainly annoy and offend lots of students who resent being told that their preference sets should be altered.  If Edmundson and I are right about the problems of the modern college, then this shouldn’t even be a hard decision to make.  Obviously I should do more.

Why Teach?  Because Teaching can improve the lives of my students.  There is no other reason to teach.  It’s not about the grades, it’s not about the diplomas, it’s not about making students happy.  It is about improving lives.  My students don’t know that.  I do.  Yeah, it’s out of fashion to suggest that professors know something that students don’t know about what is best for the students.  But, if I don’t know more than my students about what makes a better life, then why am I a teacher?

The Year of Blogging Dangerously

Back to Reality.

A few months back, this blog had its Five Year Anniversary.  During those five years Your Humble Narrator has realized there are two virtues to having an intermittent blog which Nobody reads:

1) When life intrudes, the blog can go on an unplanned hiatus, which theoretically means that Nobody will notice since Nobody is reading the blog, but oddly in reality means getting occasional complaints from said Nonexistent Readers objecting to the hiatus. 

2) When Life stops getting in the Way, the blog can just as easily be resumed without the need for fanfare or concern that the nonexistent Readers will be unaware of its return.

[I learned something about my Work Life in the Fall, by the way.  For unexplainable reasons, Mount Holyoke paid me to teach an extra course in the fall, so I ended up teaching four days a week (instead of two).  About a month into the semester I noticed that I was not getting to all sorts of things I normally do during the semester.  It was then I realized that my Work Life is divided between Teaching Days and Non-teaching Days.  I thought my choice of clothing was the only thing reliably affected by whether I was teaching on a particular day or not, but it turns out I have all sorts of fairly routine things I unconsciously just relegated to non-teaching days.  With only one non-teaching day a week, those things were not getting done.  I was a bit surprised that I did not know this about my Work Life; I mean I knew I did things on my non-teaching days, but I did not know I unconsciously put off things until a day I wasn't teaching.  Anyway, this blog was a non-teaching day thing.  Fear not: nonexistent Reader, the Spring has a return to a normal teaching schedule.]

It is a bit surprising to think this blog has existed for five years.  Truly.  As was noted at the time, it started on Lark.  I made a promise to myself when I started it:  I would never tell anyone about or suggest that someone should read it.  Five years later, I have kept that promise with one minor exception—I have told my children they should read this or that post because it would be good for them.  Then again, I know they will ignore me, so it is kind of like telling a wall it should read a blog post.

Andy Miller also once had a blog.  He stopped his.  He noted that only a fool writes without being paid for it.  So, instead of a blog, he wrote a book.  Janet gave it to me for Christmas:

The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books (And Two Not-So-Great Ones) Saved My Life

It is a Gimmick Book at its heart, but there isn't really a Gimmick.  Miller read 51 books.  (Yeah, it sure sounds like he read 52 from the title, but apparently, Miler thought it was a Grand Joke to note at the end of the book that he only read one Not-So-Great Book. Imagine hilarious peals of laughter when the joke is revealed.  You have to imagine them, because nobody would actually laugh at the joke.)  So, Miller read 51 books.  The not-so great one is The Da Vinci Code.  The 50 great books range from genuine Great Books to books that Miller thought he might like to read but of which nobody else has ever heard and nobody else would ever actually get around to reading (here’s lookin’ at you Krautrocksampler).  And, as long as we are on the subtitle, “saved my life” means “rescued me from being bored just living with my wife and kid and having a job.”  And, as long as we are the subject, the “danger” mentioned in the title is the danger of realizing that maybe reading books is something worth doing.  So, the real Title of the book should be:

Andy Miller Read 51 books and then Wrote Ruminations about his Life which Sometimes Mention the Books being Read and then Instead of Putting Said Ruminations in a Blog and Letting People Read them for Free, He Bound his Thoughts and Sold it to People so he can get Royalty Checks.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not complaining.  I fully support authors getting royalty checks.  I also enjoyed Miller’s book.  It is, truth be told, the closest thing to this here blog I have ever read.  Miller can be amusing at times.  He writes well-enough.  But, I would no more recommend Miller’s book to anyone than I would recommend this blog to anyone.  Like I said, though, don’t get me wrong.  Miller has not written a bad book.  I read it; I enjoyed it; I remember almost nothing that was in it.  I daresay that my experience would be typical.  I suspect many other people would enjoy it but I would be fascinated to know if anyone can actually remember this book a week after reading it.  There wasn't a single moment in the book when I though “I should read (or reread) the book Miller is ostensibly discussing.”  There wasn't a single joke which I can remember now other that the non-joke about the title.  I read this book less than a week ago, and it is gone from the memory.  I think we need a new book genre.  Since this isn’t really a Gimmick book because there isn’t really a gimmick, I hereby dub it a Cotton Candy Book: sweet, non-substantial, and ephemeral.  (Speaking of which, does anyone really like Cotton Candy?  I even hated it when I was a wee lad.)

It sure would be nice to say something substantive in this here blog post.  So, I will flip though the book to see what turns up.

(Please hold; the author will return soon.  In the meantime, here is some elevator music which can amuse you while you wait.)

Back now.  I looked over the appendix with the list of books he read, and I remembered a few things:

1. Miller read Dickens’ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which was unfinished when Dickens died.  I have never even been tempted to read that book.  Is it really any good?  It seems like it would be terribly unsatisfying to read an unfinished mystery.

2. He read a collection of the Silver Surfer comic books as one of his Fifty Great Books.  I was torn between feeling 1) glad someone put a comic book in a book about reading Great Books and 2) disappointed that the Silver Surfer was the book being elevated to that status, especially since as Miller noted, it was not exactly a great comic book.

3. I did not appreciate the summary dismissal of Wodehouse as if Wodehouse was just some lightweight humorist.  Really Miller; read better.

OK, even I am bored with random notes on a Cotton Candy Book.  Ah, but fortunately, I need not worry about complaints from Readers: after all, you get what you pay for.