You may be feeling the inevitable anxiety of an aesthete among libertarians. So many libertarians lack an experiential connection to the arts. They approach them analytically seeking a rational and utilitarian explanation of their value. (One is even tempted to say "market value.")
Tyler Cowen, a Renaissance man, is a great exception.
Don't lock yourself into an endless conversation in which you have to justify your own core assumptions. It will wear you out. I speak from some authority here, having been the literary and poetry editor of "Inquiry" magazine from 1977 to 1983. One starts to feel like a stranger in a strange land.
Your real influence is being yourself and shamelessly displaying the values that may puzzle others. Witness is more persuasive than argumentation. You are the missing half of the cultural dialectic. Keep doing what you are doing with panache and without apology.
I was curious about that sentence from Proust ("S’il pleuvait, bien que le mauvais temps n’effrayât pas Albertine, qu’on voyait parfois, dans son caoutchouc, filer en bicyclette sous les averses, nous passions la journée dans le casino où il m’eût paru ces jours-là impossible de ne pas aller.") so I looked it up in professional translations. The classic translation is by C. K. Scott Moncrieff; here is his version of that sentence:
"If it rained, although the weather had no power to daunt Albertine, who was often to be seen in her waterproof spinning on her bicycle through the driving showers, we would spend the day in the Casino, where on such days it would have seemed to me impossible not to go."
Some of the major current translations of Proust are revisions of Moncrieff. In the most commonly used one, which is the translation of C. K. Scott Moncrieff, as later revised by Terence Kilmartin, and then yet later revised by D. J. Enright, they delete the word "driving", but otherwise leave the sentence unaltered. A different revision of Moncrieff is by William C. Carter; he translates the sentence thusly:
"If it rained, although bad weather did not daunt Albertine, who was often to be seen in her raincoat flying by on her bicycle through the showers, we would spend the day in the casino, where on such days it would have seemed to me impossible not to go."
James Grieve (who started fresh rather than revising Moncrieff) writes:
"If it was raining – not that wet weather daunted Albertine, who could be seen in her waterproof dashing along on her bicycle, through the pelting rain – we would spend the day in the Casino. On such days it would have been inconceivable to me not to go there. "
Many years ago I took some classes in psychological testing and cognition at UC Berkeley. The most intelligent people, it turns out, are not physicists, coders, or mathematicians, but novelists. When we turn our little brains to literature, we (may) experience the vastness of these greater human minds, and their description of somethings often quite ineffable. We are forced to wrestle with a new experience outside of what we know. It’s like hiring a personal trainer for the body. But this is for a stronger mind. Perhaps the personal trainer metaphor would help people understand. But never apologize for reading literature.
"He sees that all life is a theatre, that all art is an attempt to access the larger, more inexplicable part of our world, to seek the truth." What a treat to read this at the end of a day spent in the stage of that theatre - an academic returning home.
I especially appreciate your thoughts on the task of Renaissance humanism. When I feel intellectually forlorn, I go back to the scholastics to get my bearings, but then I’m glad and ready to enter all that is human.
Please forgive me if what I say seems impertinent or aggravated: the issue with the humanities today is not the material. It is the bureaucratic institutions that act as gatekeepers and interpretive shapers, in particular for young minds who have not yet learned how to learn, not yet learned how to think, not yet learned how to question, not yet learned that (as smart as they are) they still know almost nothing.
The problem with the Humanities is that they have been ideologically captured by political operatives who see themselves as instruments of praxis rather than guides of learning and thinking.
Once again let me say that it is not the material. It is not Dickens or Conrad or Shakespeare or Chaucer. It is the collectivist institution that has become rotten. It is the priesthood, not the scripture.
The problem is that young people should already have read Dickens, Conrad and Shakespeare by the time they attend university, so that their minds are already prepared to go further at university. The reforms starts at home, on social media (booktok, etc.) and at secondary school.
My school always studied a Shakespeare play in final year English - for us it was Hamlet. I regret that we didn't also do Dickens, because the close study made Hamlet more rewarding than just reading it through would have been.
Also true. But also not related to my original point. Are you saying “it doesn't matter if Humanities Departments are ideologically corrupt, because people should just read these works on their own?”
Not at all, but it matters less if undergraduates arrive with a solid literary baggage already. It matters a lot at the moment because undergraduates arrive so undereducated.
Agree on the importance of the humanities, but we now have the ability to ask "why" about art and literature in a far more penetrating way.
One humanities professor pointed out to me that there were tens of thousands of novels published in England alone in the 19th century. Nobody studies even a small fraction of them. Now we can an analyze them at scale -- for example what differed structurally, thematically and stylistically between the books that the culture cherishes and the ones it has forgotten or never noticed?
Exceptional articulation of tacit knowledge in literature. The Proust passage hitting diferently for Murdoch's character captures exactly why humanities resist instrumental framing. Had similiar moment teaching engineers who suddenly understood optimization theory better after readign Borges, but could never explain why in a rubric.
People want everything to be justified, even being nice to their children (and literally not smack them or ignore them). I do wonder why even on Substack which is supposedly full of people who love literature there is this conviction that people need to be forced to read great literature instead of approaching it as something enjoyable. One passionate rant about a book making you feel more alive is worth more than a hundred lectures about the necessity to keep novels alive.
You may be feeling the inevitable anxiety of an aesthete among libertarians. So many libertarians lack an experiential connection to the arts. They approach them analytically seeking a rational and utilitarian explanation of their value. (One is even tempted to say "market value.")
Tyler Cowen, a Renaissance man, is a great exception.
Don't lock yourself into an endless conversation in which you have to justify your own core assumptions. It will wear you out. I speak from some authority here, having been the literary and poetry editor of "Inquiry" magazine from 1977 to 1983. One starts to feel like a stranger in a strange land.
Your real influence is being yourself and shamelessly displaying the values that may puzzle others. Witness is more persuasive than argumentation. You are the missing half of the cultural dialectic. Keep doing what you are doing with panache and without apology.
Yes, yes. a thousand times yes. Jimmy Cagney, "Never complain, never explain."
Please write an article on petulance. It feels like a very British emotion to me, the tempered /. sublimated rage (e.g., John Cleese).
I was curious about that sentence from Proust ("S’il pleuvait, bien que le mauvais temps n’effrayât pas Albertine, qu’on voyait parfois, dans son caoutchouc, filer en bicyclette sous les averses, nous passions la journée dans le casino où il m’eût paru ces jours-là impossible de ne pas aller.") so I looked it up in professional translations. The classic translation is by C. K. Scott Moncrieff; here is his version of that sentence:
"If it rained, although the weather had no power to daunt Albertine, who was often to be seen in her waterproof spinning on her bicycle through the driving showers, we would spend the day in the Casino, where on such days it would have seemed to me impossible not to go."
Some of the major current translations of Proust are revisions of Moncrieff. In the most commonly used one, which is the translation of C. K. Scott Moncrieff, as later revised by Terence Kilmartin, and then yet later revised by D. J. Enright, they delete the word "driving", but otherwise leave the sentence unaltered. A different revision of Moncrieff is by William C. Carter; he translates the sentence thusly:
"If it rained, although bad weather did not daunt Albertine, who was often to be seen in her raincoat flying by on her bicycle through the showers, we would spend the day in the casino, where on such days it would have seemed to me impossible not to go."
James Grieve (who started fresh rather than revising Moncrieff) writes:
"If it was raining – not that wet weather daunted Albertine, who could be seen in her waterproof dashing along on her bicycle, through the pelting rain – we would spend the day in the Casino. On such days it would have been inconceivable to me not to go there. "
I share this in case anyone else is curious.
Many years ago I took some classes in psychological testing and cognition at UC Berkeley. The most intelligent people, it turns out, are not physicists, coders, or mathematicians, but novelists. When we turn our little brains to literature, we (may) experience the vastness of these greater human minds, and their description of somethings often quite ineffable. We are forced to wrestle with a new experience outside of what we know. It’s like hiring a personal trainer for the body. But this is for a stronger mind. Perhaps the personal trainer metaphor would help people understand. But never apologize for reading literature.
I must get a hat that says "one of Henry Oliver's best readers"
"He sees that all life is a theatre, that all art is an attempt to access the larger, more inexplicable part of our world, to seek the truth." What a treat to read this at the end of a day spent in the stage of that theatre - an academic returning home.
"Intimations of other places, of elsewhere"
Bingo
I especially appreciate your thoughts on the task of Renaissance humanism. When I feel intellectually forlorn, I go back to the scholastics to get my bearings, but then I’m glad and ready to enter all that is human.
Please forgive me if what I say seems impertinent or aggravated: the issue with the humanities today is not the material. It is the bureaucratic institutions that act as gatekeepers and interpretive shapers, in particular for young minds who have not yet learned how to learn, not yet learned how to think, not yet learned how to question, not yet learned that (as smart as they are) they still know almost nothing.
The problem with the Humanities is that they have been ideologically captured by political operatives who see themselves as instruments of praxis rather than guides of learning and thinking.
Once again let me say that it is not the material. It is not Dickens or Conrad or Shakespeare or Chaucer. It is the collectivist institution that has become rotten. It is the priesthood, not the scripture.
The problem is that young people should already have read Dickens, Conrad and Shakespeare by the time they attend university, so that their minds are already prepared to go further at university. The reforms starts at home, on social media (booktok, etc.) and at secondary school.
My school always studied a Shakespeare play in final year English - for us it was Hamlet. I regret that we didn't also do Dickens, because the close study made Hamlet more rewarding than just reading it through would have been.
I can go along with that. But that is not the only problem. How many 17-year-olds understand King Lear or Heart of Darkness?
Does it matter ? They will grow into it. I’m sure I didn’t quite get much of what I read in my teens, but it still became a part of me.
Also true. But also not related to my original point. Are you saying “it doesn't matter if Humanities Departments are ideologically corrupt, because people should just read these works on their own?”
Not at all, but it matters less if undergraduates arrive with a solid literary baggage already. It matters a lot at the moment because undergraduates arrive so undereducated.
Agree on the importance of the humanities, but we now have the ability to ask "why" about art and literature in a far more penetrating way.
One humanities professor pointed out to me that there were tens of thousands of novels published in England alone in the 19th century. Nobody studies even a small fraction of them. Now we can an analyze them at scale -- for example what differed structurally, thematically and stylistically between the books that the culture cherishes and the ones it has forgotten or never noticed?
Exceptional articulation of tacit knowledge in literature. The Proust passage hitting diferently for Murdoch's character captures exactly why humanities resist instrumental framing. Had similiar moment teaching engineers who suddenly understood optimization theory better after readign Borges, but could never explain why in a rubric.
People want everything to be justified, even being nice to their children (and literally not smack them or ignore them). I do wonder why even on Substack which is supposedly full of people who love literature there is this conviction that people need to be forced to read great literature instead of approaching it as something enjoyable. One passionate rant about a book making you feel more alive is worth more than a hundred lectures about the necessity to keep novels alive.