Eleanor Catton on Literary Elitism, Some Thoughts

I recently read this year's Man Booker Prize winner, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. It's a sprawling epic of a mystery novel set in Australia during the gold rush, and brings together a large cast of close third-person characters. It's tremendously ambitious and very well-written, though to me, it seems a little "constructed" -- in large part due to the constraints of its narrative structure, which assigns each of the viewpoint characters an astrological symbol, and bases each chapter on an astrological interaction.

I then found this article that Catton wrote on elitism within the literary community -- a topic I've discussed quite a few times with people in the publishing industry, with fellow English majors, and with people who are enthusiastic readers but not involved with such communities:

http://metromag.co.nz/metro-archive/eleanor-catton-on-literature-and-elitism

Catton writes eloquently on the subject of literary criticism, and the idea of critics and qualified tastemakers in general. Her biases are, of course, obvious: she's the winner of a major literary prize, and a product of the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) system, which teaches what is considered serious literature.  (I have some of my own pet peeves with that school of thought, one of which is their rather rigid definition of what might be considered "serious literature" -- often snubbing genre fiction of equal quality -- but that's neither here nor there.)

Biases aside, Catton makes some excellent points. There is a difference between quality as discerned by a critic -- presumably someone well-educated and qualified specifically for the role -- and enjoyableness as experienced by the lay reader. That's part of the value of a degree in literature, after all: the ability to recognize quality and to critique. (That's not to say that only English majors are qualified to write novels, or that all novels are written by English majors -- it's merely that, statistically speaking, such an education is more likely to confer the necessary skills.) Also, it's less a matter of creation as it is of appreciation. There's always a context, an artistic tradition, in which a work of art is produced, and it's a critic's job to bring her knowledge of said context to bear when judging the merits of the piece. In the case of prizes, that's especially true: the only way to evaluate a novel as "better" or "worse" than any other novel, given the subjectivity of the reading experience, is to view it in the context of greatness, meaning, and technical mastery as established by the books that came before it. Obviously, any individual critic might have, say, a penchant for Shakespeare and a gripe against Dostoevsky -- personal preferences that color her judgment -- but across many readers, scholars, and thinkers over the centuries, "the canon" has generally been tested and found to be a functional measure of quality.

These books are not necessarily the most "enjoyable" to read -- in fact, many of the best books are, to a certain degree, difficult. They require a level of thought and engagement from the reader that makes the experience that much more rewarding. After all, art is in many ways a conversation -- with its creator, with all the art that preceded it, with its audience, and with the criticism and study that it engenders. People these days -- Americans, especially -- are culturally obsessed with the idea of genius, of creation springing forth like Athena from the mind of Zeus, without taking into account the foundation (personal or societal) laid in preparation for the act of creation in the present. (I've previously written about this here.) Just as a writer -- an artist in any medium, really -- learns the craft by studying the greats, so too should an informed and conscientious reader strive to be a better appreciator and critic by putting in the work to understand a novel in its proper context. Only then can the reader really evaluate the book, whether her reaction is positive or negative, or (most often) somewhere in between. A thoughtful and articulate negative criticism of a book, I find, usually requires the deepest literary background, because the critic must develop a good sense of what the book and its author were attempting to do, and where the work fell short, as compared to literary masters who did it well.

Anyway. This is a topic of particular interest to me, so I expect to revisit it later. Also, I imagine it won't go away anytime soon, so there will probably be more articles, and more perspectives, that catch my eye.

Write Your Own Academic Sentence (or, the Problem with Academic Prose)

Academic writing is notorious for its opaque (sometimes unreadable) prose. This contributes greatly to the common perception that academia is irrelevant to the concerns of the general population, who don't care to puzzle through the stylistic challenges of academic papers to get at the often interesting ideas within. It's a tragedy, because our society would be so much richer if everyone -- not just specialists, not just the people with advanced degrees -- were engaged in the culture of ideas and had access to the latest developments across a variety of disciplines.

I recently found this amusing little program that parodies academic writing:

http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/write-sentence.htm

It's surprising how many of these randomly-generated declarative statements seem to make some semblance of sense. (Of course, the ones that don't are hilariously bad.) What's rather tragic is that a broad swath of society actually believes that all academic writing reads something like this -- and for the most part, they're not wrong.

Obviously, part of the opacity of any academic discipline is a product of the specialized vocabulary required to discuss said discipline -- they need words to describe concepts that might not even exist elsewhere. As the sum total of human knowledge has increased over the centuries, each discipline is now much more specialized than in the past. Newton, for example, could give public lectures about cutting-edge physics and expect to draw sizable crowds that included a diverse swath of of upper and middle class London, the vast majority without formal science training. Today, the equivalent would be a Brian Greene or Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture -- which seems to appeal to a more niche audience.

We're seeing something of a reversal of this trend with the online democratization of education (e.g. Coursera, Floating University, Crash Course, SciShow, &c.). So far, that hasn't gained much traction in the realm of written research (though who knows what academic journals will look like in a decade or two?). Given that the audience of said journals consists primarily of other academics, it's unlikely that they'll change drastically. Public outreach, on the other hand, has never looked more promising.

Academia in the East and West

I was reminded of this quite excellent article, which I'd bookmarked a long while ago, after catching up with my friend over the summer:

http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/08/the_status_of_science_we_have.php

We were discussing sciences education, and the differences between the culture of academia in (East) Asia versus in the West. We observed that in Asia, there is a lot more interest in the sciences among students (grade school and undergraduate) than in the West. However, it seems that academia (in the sciences and otherwise), is dominated by Western institutions and Western publications. There have been attempts at many levels of institution and government to correct for deficiencies in each area; Western governments push for better science education, and Asian universities for more prestige in international academia. Both deficiencies, methinks, are problems endemic to their respective systems.

There are, broadly speaking, two distinct skill sets that academics ought have: that of teaching, and that of research. As argued in the above article, the Western system is skewed to reward the latter much more than the former. In every step of the process, from the new graduate student's first day to his becoming a respected professor, the Western academic is evaluated based upon the scholarly material that he produces. The quality of his teaching is secondary; the bulk of his effort is invested in honing his skills as a scholar, rather than as a teacher (so long as his teaching is not so poor as to inspire too much complaint). In fact, as the blog post argues, it is generally seen as a waste of time -- at least by the metric of career advancement -- to teach any more than is required, and certainly to engage in outreach beyond the university community. (My friend is a TA, so I'm inclined to take his word on this.)

Contrast this with academia in countries like China, Japan, and Korea. The culture in these countries respects and values good instructors at every level, so there is a lot of emphasis on effective teaching. This translates to interest in the sciences among students in middle and high school. In the Chinese system (with which I am more familiar, out of the three), this is further accentuated by the fact that students choose their emphasis -- a binary choice of humanities or sciences -- in high school. It's a pretty even split, and switching to the other side is discouraged. This ensures that about half the student population is at least nominally interested in the sciences.

But I digress. In Asia, at the university level, professors are expected to be able to command a lecture hall of hundreds. They're seen as founts of knowledge dispensing wisdom to their charges, essentially. Producing new knowledge, however, is a different kettle of fish. The system is such that until recently, professors didn't really need to publish. There was no real incentive for doing so; there's no need to gain legitimacy in one's field when one already has the support of an institution and a legion of awestruck students, and when there's no outside reward (or pressure) for such efforts.

The best system would be (as expected), some ideal combination of the two. Easier said than done, of course. But given increasing globalization (which is in itself another discussion), perhaps a merge of the two might yet be accomplished.

BBC: Britain's Chief Scientist Knighted

The British are doing it right [sic] (correctly, I know):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10293940.stm

This is what we should be doing for scientists who are reaching out to the public, and educating people, and raising awareness about global warming and other environmental issues. The U.S. does not have honours of this nature, to be sure; a fairly new democracy such as ours is not quite conducive to ancient orders of knighthood or other such accolades. Regardless, there are many other ways to recognize the work of similar individuals in the States, which is what we should be doing, instead of pandering to the conservative Christians and vilifying science. This is why (among other reasons) education in the U.S. has been going down the tubes.

We have a nerdy(ish) President. I suppose that's a start.

PhD Comics

For anyone who has ever considered, or been involved in, academia:

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

Sad, but true. I know a lot of current and future grad students, and most of them can't help wincing when reading these.

Incidentally, the author/artist was a grad student at Stanford; you can see it in the setting of the comics.