Advice from a retiring Pundit

William Safire, in one of his final columns for the Times.

Most of his advice holds true for bloggers.

Goodbye William Safire. We'll miss you, en peu.

K-12 Literature: Girls Read, Boys Don't

Mark Bauerlein and Sandra Stotsky have a column in the Washington Post highlighting a tidbit from last year's NEH study about the nation-wide decline in the reading of books. What no one noticed is that, while there has been a marked decline amongst girls reading books, the decline for boys is phenomenal -- less than 50 percent of boys in K-12 are readers of books.

But here's their explanation for it:

But boys prefer adventure tales, war, sports and historical nonfiction, while girls prefer stories about personal relationships and fantasy. Moreover, when given choices, boys do not choose stories that feature girls, while girls frequently select stories that appeal to boys.

Unfortunately, the textbooks and literature assigned in the elementary grades do not reflect the dispositions of male students. Few strong and active male role models can be found as lead characters. Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound. Publishers seem to be more interested in avoiding "masculine" perspectives or "stereotypes" than in getting boys to like what they are assigned to read.

Hm, I don't know... Could Sony PS2, XBOX, and GameCube might have something to do with it? And: peer-to-peer downloading, internet chat, MP3s, etc. etc.

Shauna Singh Baldwin's Latest

Kitabkhana

I had a chance to buy Shauna Singh Baldwin's The Tiger Claw a couple of months ago, when I was in Vancouver, but I flaked. Now I'm not sure it's coming out in the U.S. It's too bad, because if Babu likes it, there's probably something to it...

You may remember that I've talked about one of Baldwin's earlier novels before. In fact, I was yelled at for mentioning her name back in April.

old post

More on uses of literature

I've been having an ongoing dialogue with Dan Green about the uses of teaching literature. Dan's latest post on the subject is here.

Unfortunately, I am so swamped with work right now that I don't have time to respond intelligently. All I can say right now is, I find the "literary literary" way of thinking to be a bit theological. (I hope I get a chance to try and explain what I mean by that soon...)

I can point people, quickly, to Scott McLemee's mini-biography of Helen Vendler in the latest Chronicle. Dan gets a mention there for his post on Vendler's Jefferson lectures; he generally agrees with Vendler on things.

Shakespeare's License

Via A&L Daily, a review of a book on Shakespeare's relationship with his 'players,' and the official authorization he had from both Queen Elizabeth and King James I. The reviewer reads Andrew Gurr's The Shakespeare Company as yet another twist in New Historicism:

Gurr has become the chief chronicler of the playhouse culture of Shakespeare’s age—and a key arbiter of the way Shakespeare is played today. His groundbreaking research on Shakespeare’s two playhouses, the open-air Globe and the indoor Blackfriars, has shaped the present-day reproductions of those theaters and the way the plays are staged there and elsewhere. Here he considers not the physical structures or the audiences (topics of his classic 1987 study Playgoing in Shake­speare’s London) but the team: the company who built the audiences, acted the plays, and helped create the phenomenon of Shakespeare.

Gurr explains the crafty deal that gave birth to what he calls “duopoly,” the domination of London playgoing by two companies for nearly half a century. In 1594, seeking to keep public performances out of the inns, where they’d been a source of disorder, the Lord Chamberlain gave just two companies licenses to put on plays; one, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later, under James I, the King’s Men), featured William Shakespeare as actor, writer, and partner. The stability of this arrangement (the company kept going for a quarter-century after his death in 1616) seems to have given Shakespeare the ability to develop his art, and it gave his plays the continuing production that helped entrench them in the canon.

This might be an example of the influence of "material culture" on the creation of "Shakespeare"; at least that is how the reviewer characterizes Gurr's argument.

Or, much more simply, it could just be a twist on what Indians call "Licence Raj": Shakespeare is Shakespeare because a queen and a king liked him, and gave him money and authority to do what he wanted to do.

More Lovely East Coast Radio

See Shashwati

Art: Popularity vs. Quality, Mathematically Speaking

On the one hand, evaluating art by statistical popularity seems pretty stupid -- nothing to do with the art.

But someone should go back and index these statistical popularity charts, which are based mainly on the annual number of exhibitions in major, public museums, with the relative value of the artists' works that are sold. I have a sneaking suspicion that the monetary value of an artist's best work correlates positively with popularity, even if the people who actually buy and sell very expensive works of art are about as distant from the 'masses' whose opinions are feeding these websites.

I say best work, because people like Andy Warhol and Paul Klee made lots and lots of art. Most of it isn't for sale, or it's relatively inexpensive. Their best work, however, is much more limited in quantity, and sells for lots of dinero.

The interest of thinking in this way is that it could potentially make art critics somewhat irrelevant as determiners of value. Are they already? What is the real value of their mediation? The same questions could and should be asked of literary critics and film critics. What is the value of formal, institutional literary criticism in an era of Amazon sales rankings and DIY reviews? What is the value of film criticism in an era of "Rotten Tomatoes"?

These questions suggest a tilt towards market fundamentalism. Do I really subscribe to that ethos? No, this is more of a thought-experiment. Even if the aesthetic value works of art is directly indexed to market value, there might still be ways to value the role of criticism. One such might be to think of critics as themselves market players. That is what an index like Rotten Tomatoes does -- it creates a statistical value that averages the opinions of film critics. Because those critics are pretty reliable, it represents a reliable stat. We'll have to see if the Artfacts.net index that is the inspiration for this post will be as good...

Ok, enough half-assed economics.

Surprises from the chart: Paul Klee (#3), Gerhard Richter (#5), and Joseph Beuys (#6). I like these artists (Klee and Richter moreso than Beuys), but I didn't imagine that other people liked them as much. Perhaps Klee and Richter are more popular in Europe than they are here?

Also, how is Nam June Paik so low (#89)? And Marcel Duchamp is only #27?

Art-class lesson for today -- the painting above (Richter's "Woman Descending the Staircase," 1965) is a response to the painting below (Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase," 1912). Write a 50 word (ok 25 word) compare-and-contrast essay in the comments. (Note, you might also consider another Richter painting, called "Ema, Nude on a Staircase". And a hint: it has something to do with Walter Benjamin's essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction").

Major Minors, and the Quandary they Present for Culture Snobs

We've seen the emergence of a commercial art-house in the U.S. It has a pretty recognizable product, means of distribution, as well as a clearly-defined audience. It is financed by specialty wings of major studios, which actually aim to make some money, though I gather they would be just as happy winning their parent studios some Oscars each year.

All of this year's 'cool' movies were major minors: Eternal Sunshine, Before Sunset, Being Julia, Vanity Fair, Napoleon Dynamite, Garden State, Sideways, and Motorcycle Diaries, to name just a few. In the year that I've lived in New Haven (soon coming to an end, I think), those are the pretty much the kinds of movies I've been shelling out to see -- usually at one of the art-house theaters downtown. New Haven now has two competing art house theaters -- York Square and the pompously named Criterion -- that, for some reason, seem to play basically the exact same films.

A.O Scott compares the situation to the music industry. But, while that does work to an extent (most "indie rock" that you've actually heard of has backing from major labels), it seems to me it's actually a little more insidious here with the movies. That's because, outside of New York and maybe 10 other big cities, it's impossible to even see any films that aren't Fox Searchlight, Miramax, Focus, Warner Independent, etc. A serious music listener might have tastes consisting entirely of obscure musical styles and performers. A reader has infinite possibilites as well. But 'serious' movie-goers in most places are stuck choosing between Sideways and crap like Garden State for their favorite movie of the year. Taste is defined along a much narrower range than it is with the other media I mentioned. Consequently, one's own particular regime of taste is somewhat less than truly meaningful. I am sorry to say, my taste in films has gone from Eric Rohmer when I was in graduate school (good video store) to Charlie Kaufmann and Richard Linklater (the good video store is now too far away!).

The only solution for the serious movie fan in a non-major metro is to find a really good, foreign and independent-friendly video store, if there is one nearby. But even that's a bit of a sacrifice.

We're soon moving to suburban north New Jersey (for awhile), so perhaps this quandary will be a thing of the past.

AIDS Drugs: Indian Parliament vs. the WTO

In the NYT: India joined the WTO in 1994, making a deal that would allow its drug manufacturers to make copycat pharmaceuticals cheaply until January 1, 2005.

Now, Indian drug manufacturers will have to stop selling copycat versions of drugs invented after 1995 (including recent AIDS 'cocktail' drugs) unless Parliament votes to exempt them. Those cheap Indian drugs have benefited Indians with AIDS, but also thousands of people fighting the disease in other countries.

Let's hope it happens.

Proto-fusion -- early Hindi appropriations of jazz and fado

Dilip D'Souza has a great post on early Bollywood musical fusion.

Death ends fun: Hey My Heart, Show Me

My own latest bizarre example: "Gela Gela Gela," one of the songs from the recent film Aitraaz samples "Thoia Thoing," R. Kelly's huge (and nonsensical) R&B hit from 2003. It actually kind of works.

Youth Curry (new blog)

I came across a brand new blog called Youth Curry, via Om Malik. Rashmi Bansal is a journalist in Bombay; it seems like this will be a blog oriented to Indian youth-culture trends.

Her point about IPods seems pretty self-evident -- the market that can afford 20,000+ Rupees on an MP3 player is very small.

I also like her point about how cell phones change the dynamic for teenagers in more conservative households. Unintentional liberalization:

The paradox of technology

Parents may feel a sense of security in knowing 'where their kids are', but the truth is - they have less idea than ever before. In simpler times, when you went to a friend's house for a sleepover you left your firend's telephone number behind.

In the cellphone era there's no way to tell where you really are. And when you don't want to be reached, you can always claim the signal was weak or you are out of network coverage. I'm not saying all teens use the cellphone to deceive their parents but many sure do.

Further, there is unprecedented privacy for the young person - especially girls from less liberal backgrounds. No longer can paranoid pappas vet all incoming calls and ask to know why such and such boy keeps calling.

The balance of power has shifted. Calls can be received after midnight on silent mode, with nobody the wiser for it.

True in America as much as in India.

(It also obviously brings up the issue of the recent MMS video cell phone scandal, but that was kind of an anomaly. This is going to be nearly universal middle-class households.)

Films Division: Another India Teaching/Learning Resource

The Indian Government's Ministry of Information & Broadcasting has a website where you can watch old, state-sponsored documentary films online. They are black & white films, seemingly from the 1950s, that have a strong statist, secularist, and patriotic tone to them. They are in "official" English.

After watching most of the film on the Partition and part of another one on the "Quit India" movement, I can say this: 1) the narration is densely historical, to the point that it is more than a bit boring, and 2) the reason they're worth watching anyway is for their status as visual archive of the nationalist and the early post-independence periods.

(Perhaps you have to be a bit of a history buff... but maybe try flipping around to get at the juicier parts.)

I can't hyperlink to individual documentaries on the site, but you can find them easily along the top of the page (the images in the 'film reel' click to the individual films that are available). Also, if you watch them in Windows Media Player at least, you can view the films in full-screen mode using the right-click. (I don't know how or whether this would work on a Mac.)

I found out about this via Another Subcontinent.

Grudging Respect

I find myself in profound opposition to her world-view, and I think her role in the Bush presidency has been, well, not good. [Insert forceful tirade about Iraq war here]

I saw some of the footage of her Senate confirmation hearings yesterday on C-Span. It seemed to me she destroyed Barbara Boxer both rhetorically and stylistically; it wasn't even remotely competitive. If things continue as they are, Rice will probably continue to be a force after the Bush presidency as long as the Republicans continue to run things. Vice President in 2008? Watch out.

[Also see Chapati Mystery on Condi]

Paris, not London. And literature, itself

I thought this would be a light blogging day, but there is just too much going on.

Pascale Casanova has a "big argument" book called The World Republic of Letters that was reviewed in The Nation by William Deresiewicz in December. There seem to be two prongs to her argument. One has to do with situating literature withing the world-system:

Casanova's work amounts to a radical remapping of global literary space--which means, first of all, the recognition that there is a global literary space. Her insights build on world systems theory, the idea, developed by Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, that the capitalist economy that has emerged since about 1500 must be understood as a single global system of interlinked national economies. Some of these economies belong to the ruling "core," others to the dependent "periphery," but none can coherently be studied as a discrete entity. Casanova, a scholar at the Center for Research in Arts and Language in Paris, argues, convincingly, that an analogous literary system, a "world republic of letters," has gradually taken shape since around the same time. In her analysis, a core group of nations--France, England and the founders of other "major" European literatures--having built up large reserves of "literary capital" over the past several centuries, control the means of cultural legitimation for the countries of the global literary periphery--a region that, as in the capitalist world system, has grown ever larger over the past two centuries with, first, the rise of European nationalism and, second, decolonization, as nations without previous literary standing, and writers from those nations, have sought international validation. And the capital of the world republic of letters, the place to which even other countries of the core must look for ultimate consecration and the global reputation it brings, is Paris.

The surprise being, of course, Paris. Most of us English lit. types think of it as London...

The other prong of her argument is about the autonomy of literature, its separatenes from social history. She is rebelling against historicism.

Whatever the terms under which it was conducted, however, it was this rivalry among national literatures that led to the creation of an international literary space. Indeed, it led, one might say, to the creation of literature itself--literature as an autonomous realm--for it was, paradoxically, through this same struggle that literary values were asserted independently of national political and moral agendas. By constituting a transnational sphere in which literature could be judged on its own terms, this rivalry enabled writers to appeal beyond their national publics, with their invariably conservative values. It made possible, in other words, the creation of an avant-garde. (And it is because of its unique hospitality to the avant-garde that Paris has endured as the world's literary center.) Here is where Casanova parts company with the historicism that has swept literary studies over the past two decades. Rather than tying literary phenomena to underlying social and political developments, she charts an autonomous history for literature itself. The world republic of letters is governed by its own rules, keeps time by its own historical clock, partitions the world according to its own map and features its own economics, its own inequalities and its own forms of violence.

Aha. I wonder what Dan Green will think of all this.

I may or may not end up agreeing with all of Casanova's claims, but from this review I have a feeling it's something I'll really enjoy reading.

Ambedkar's Annihilation of Caste

From Professor Frances Pritchett of Columbia, another stunning Internet resource: an online edition of Ambedkar's Annihiliation of Caste, which is based on a speech he gave in the 1930s. For those who don't know, Ambedkar was India's first high-profile Dalit ("untouchable") intellectual. He had a Ph.D. himself from Columbia, and was a major player in the independence struggle. He is also one of the primary framers of the Indian Constitution.

Pritchett's edition of his book is here.

It's fully annotated. Specific terms and names are hyperlinked and defined. Also searchable. This is about as good as it gets... It's almost a Wiki!

My only criticism is that she's using frames, so it's hard to link into the project -- you don't get unique URLs for each section.