Subject: Re: Bananastanley Fish
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 20 2000 - 14:55:28 EST
Dost thou think because though art virtuous, there shall be no more
cakes and ale?
I grin delicisouly at the thought of Scottie playing Malvolio. My icy
resolve turns to hot cocoa here.
Scottie:
> the whole movement, as it strikes me, to democratise
> literature: to elevate the reader to more or less the same
> level as the writer. 'We're all in this together ... you too can
> play your part in the whole venture [...]
Here I think you are mistaken. Surely, the dream of democracy
predominates in academics, but sadly enough, the academy itself is
populated largely with unhappy, resentful/elitist types who don't
necessarily want their students fingering the pages of Ezra Pound any
more than is required. Even if that is too brutal an assessment (I
know of a few cases in which it isn't), I am sure that, mission
statements aside, there is a general shortage of people who feel their
students are equally able to appreciate literature as they are, and
equally qualified to take up residence next to the author in the great
Text of the arts.
Jim mentions in his second post that (for Fish) distinctions between
the "types" texts we read are matters of convention, of the way we're
taught to read, more than anything else. And that's indisputably
true. That means that literature is literature because we say it's
literature, and not because it just Is. What it doesn't mean is that
there's no very real, very palpable difference between literature and
yearbook blurbs. Nobody (not me, anyway) is challenging the existence
of literature; nobody is challenging the candied terror, the soaring
misery, the beauty, Right-ness, etc. of literature.
> In conclusion, let me at least try bravely to congratulate
> you on your elevation to the bishopric. Yet I had such
> hopes for you.
Don't pack those hopes away just yet. Or if you do, pack them on ice,
next to a bottle of Asti. Currently, the only professorships I'm
qualified for would take me too far out of the way and too much
further into debt than I can consider. For all my mouthfuls of
fantastic jargon, despite all this fine critical cutlery, I've
probably already seen my best days on campus.
-- Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu - * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
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