I have been reading this list for a month now and I would like to thank you
for the most intelligent post so far.
 
John.
 
>From: Everett Lee Lady <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Ezra Pound discussion list of the University of Maine
>  <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: discussions...
>Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2000 13:18:35 -1000
>
> >From:  Burt Hatlen <[log in to unmask]>
> >Subject:      Re: discussions...
> >Date:  Tue, 28 Mar 2000 05:44:52 -1000
> >
> >From: Jake
> >>
> >>       As a current undergraduate student very interested in Ezra Pound,
> >>I joined this list serve with high hopes for mature, academic discussion
> >>of Ezra Pound's works, most especially his poetry, as it is a formidable
> >>and challenging (but also invigorating, and, at its best, moving and
> >>affecting) collection.  At times, I have found this kind of discussion
>at
> >>its best.  But more often, I tend to find meaningless squabbles over the
> >>relative merits of completely unrelated books (i.e., the Seamus Heaney
> >>discussion) and bitter academic infighting.  If this is the life of
> >>academia, perhaps I should reconsider my choice of careers...  Is there
> >>any way the list serve could perhaps sped more time on actual,
>worthwhile
> >>discussion and less time on these more trivial matters.
> >>               ...
> >>--Jake
>
>I do think that it's a good idea for you to *reconsider* your choice of
>careers.  Not necessarily change it, but try to assess realistically what
>it will involve.  It's hard to do this realistically with any sort of
>career when you are a student.  One tends to be attracted to a career for
>reasons that are very different from the reality of it.  I think that a
>career in academia is probably no better nor worse in this respect than
>most others.
>
>People go to graduate school for all sorts of reasons.  Often, as in my
>case, it's because they can't figure out what else to do with their life
>at the moment, and going to school is one thing they know they're good
>at.  But somewhere in the mix of motives there is probably some love, or
>at least strong liking, for one's subject.
>
>It often seems that everything about the academic world is designed to
>kill this love one has for one's subject.  Certainly this seems to be
>true of most graduate programs, which are pressure cookers focussing
>students' attention on papers to be written, comprehensive exams, and
>the like.
>
>Within academia, it is the rare academic whose who manages to do work
>which is primarily a manifestation of love for his subject.  These are
>the exceptional scholars like Northrop Frye and Hugh Kenner whose books
>are intended to enable readers to have a deeper understanding of
>literature and a deeper enjoyment of it.
>
>For most academics, though, critical work becomes an end in itself,
>addressed not to the general audience of readers but almost exclusively
>to fellow academics.  Most of the articles you see posted on the list
>here are a reflection of this.
>
>There was a visiting writer here at the University of Hawaii a few years
>ago who said, "A short story should be an urgent message."  Whether this
>is true of short stories, or novels, or poems  is something that can be
>argued about.  But it is certainly seldom true of academic work, and
>this is one of the major differences between EP and the academics.
>Alomost everything EP wrote was written as an urgent message to the
>world, not something intended primarily to add to his publication list
>and boost his reputation.
>
>Not everyone contributing to this list is an academic, though.  I
>myself am one, at least technically, but not in literature but rather
>mathematics.  I do not consider myself an academic any more, though.
>Or at least, if I am, I am a totally irresponsible one.  Twenty odd
>years ago, I found that I had wound up at a university where good
>academic work is not rewarded.  (This is not the fault of the attitude
>of the academics here, but rather built into the structure of the
>university.)   At first I was very angry about this, because my work
>had been rewarded extremely well at the University of Kansas, where I
>had been previously, but after a while I realized that it was a
>blessing in disguise, because publishing papers in journals and
>establishing a reputation in the mathematical world was never something
>I really wanted to do, but something I did in order to satisfy the
>expectations of others.  Now, if I have something I want to say to the
>world (usually not mathematics), I put it on my web site and write it
>to satisfy myself, not some editor.  Occasionally someone sends me
>email to ask, "How do I cite this article from your web site?" and I
>write back, "Beats the hell out of me!  That's your game, not mine."
>
>But I got where I am by playing that game.
>
>
>I started reading this list because forty years ago I used to be one of
>E.P.'s regular visitors at St. Elizabeths, and I finally decided that
>I want to see what people now think about the man and about his work.
>
>What I've found is that there's now enormously more information
>available, but attitudes have changed very little.  The same old
>arguments are still going on, and it's still true that most people who
>write about him, and most people who have made a profession about being
>interested in him, have little conception of who he was (despite the fact
>that there are excellent biographies, such as those of Charles Norman and
>Humphrey Carpenter, which portray him very vividly) and are committed
>to ways of thinking that he condemned, such as concentrating attention on
>labels ("traitor," "Fascist," "Imagist") as a substitute for looking at
>the reality behind the labels.
>
> >I don't agree with you about the discussion of Heaney's Beowulf, which
> >has been, I think, a thoughtful exploration of the principles involved
> >in the translation of poetry.  But I agree that this list is the scene
> >of a excessive amount of egoistic posturing.  Pound himself was prone
> >to such behavior.  In his prose especially, he was in the habit of
> >announcing his opinions in a strident tone of voice, usually without
> >benefit of supporting argument, as if any sensible person should be
> >able to SEE the obvious truth of what he was saying.
>
>Academic posturing is different in quality from Pound's posturing, which
>for many people (myself being one) has a very refreshing quality, even
>while one notices that at times it is extremely foolish: the attitude of a
>bright young iconoclast (and even in his fifties, EP was still a bright
>young man) who is an enthusiast rather than a thinker.
>
>Posturing is an almost essential part of the academic world.  Go to some
>of your department's colloquia to observe this, Jake.  An academic is
>always grading, and always being graded.  The object is always to
>impress, because success in the academic world depends on impressing
>people.  When a new book in one's field comes out, academics will
>always have to *judge* it.  And the judgement is not primarily on the
>basis of "Did I enjoy it?" or "Did I learn something from it?"   but
>instead on the basis of "How good is it?"  "How does it stack up?"
>
> >this mode of discourse was energizing, sweeping away great tracts of
> >unexamined assumptions, and thereby opening a space for what has become
> >the most exciting poetry of the last half of the 20th century. As
> >applied to social and political issues, on the other hand, this habit
> >of mind and this mode of discourse issued in appalling results.  But
> >for better or for worse, many readers (I include myself here) were
> >initally attracted to Pound by the sheer bravura of that VOICE,
> >slashing through to what he claimed was the gist of the matter.
> >Therefore it isn't surprising that Poundians often try to talk LIKE
> >Pound. The problem begins when some of these readers identify with
> >"their" poet to the point that they begin to imagine that they ARE
> >Pound, and that their own snap judgements are as interesting as his.
>
>EP's egotism is of a very different nature than the egotism of academics,
>blatant in a way that would be unacceptable within the academic world.
>Within the academic world, it would be unacceptable to say, as EP so
>often does, "I am the only one smart enough to see these things.  My
>judgements are correct without question.  People who disagree with me are
>total idiots."  But I find this much less objectionable than the covert
>egotism of academics, who are always trying to impress, whether they are
>giving a talk on their own ideas in a colloquium or seminar, or fawningly
>introducing some distinguished visiting speaker, trying to steal a little
>reflected glory from him.  (And the distinguished speaker is, after all,
>just an ordinary person who at various moments of his life managed, often
>by a process he himself doesn't understand, to do something which people
>found remarkable.  The biggest danger for someone who becomes
>distinguished is that eventually, as happened with EP, they themselves
>start to believe the myth that they are not ordinary.)
>
>Having said all this, though, let me add that being an academic is not by
>any means incompatible with being a decent human being.  The "official"
>persona that an academic manifests when "on duty" should not be mistaken
>for the ordinary person who occasionally dons that persona.  I have sat
>in on a number of courses here at the University of Hawaii, usually in
>the English Department, and almost without exception I have found my
>teachers to be worthwhile human beings with a genuine love for their
>subject and a genuine desire to teach that love to their students.  (I
>can think of only one exception where the person in question seemed to
>fit my stereotyped paradigm of the academic, and I wound up not taking
>his course.)  It is only a more formal occasions among their own
>colleagues (or when presenting their ideas in written form in journals)
>that they fall into the more academic competitive posturing paradigm
>which is often also manifested on this list.
>
>--Lee Lady     Http://www2.Hawaii.Edu/~lady
>
>-------
>Unlike past American intellectuals, who saw the educated nonacademic
>public as their main audience, today's leftist intellectuals feel no
>need to write for a larger audience; colleagues, departments, and
>conferences have come to constitute their world.  -- Russell Jacoby
 
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