Dichotomies inform the polemic of arguments. But true nature, the cosmos, is not full of dichotomies with toggle switches, but rather it is full of spectra with slide bars, ever drifting under changing conditions and interaction, interbeing. Think of the butterfly flapping it's wings changing air currents effecting the weather!
Science gives us facts, literature gives us truth, quantum physics uncovers our cosmic wonder and brings scientific fact and human truth to the fore spiritually. I am 67 years old and have found BOTH science and literature interwoven in human truth. Literature, neuroscience, Buddhism and quantum physics are the vibe of my cosmology. Different languages leading down the same right, wise path.
I enjoyed English class in high school, but not with the enthusiasm for words I now have. Oh, I did a lot of writing back then, both comedic and serious. Now, as I better understand the beauty and value of literature, I dearly wish I could visit my HS teacher to discuss the old and new books I now read. Sadly, she has passed, and I miss her so much, even after a 50-year absence. Below is something I wrote to her, though she never got to read it.
You probably have no idea how many times I have thought of you over the past 40 years, for it was you who told me that I should be a writer. Your words of encouragement thrilled my heart, and I went on to become a… pharmacist. Through various twists and turns of events and choices I pursued a career in pharmacy, married, had a family, and now enjoy grandchildren, but through it all – though my writing activity has waxed and waned – my passion for it has never been quenched, and I realize that you were right all along.
A couple of other things come to mind as I recall your class. One is our difference of opinion on Mark Twain’s short story entitled “Luck.” I continue to hold my opinion that the protagonist was a genius rather than a fool, but to each his own. The other incident is one I look back on with great amusement. We had been assigned to comment upon Ernest Hemingway’s use of sensuality and its importance in his writing. Subsequent to your reading and grading our papers, you went out of your way to clarify that you had asked about sensuality, not sexuality. I can only imagine what you had been reading from your high school students attempting to comment on that which they (ideally) had no experience.
If you’re out there somewhere, I would dearly love to speak with you again. God’s blessings to a teacher who made a difference!
“It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die”. This, from Howards End. Iiterature is how we connect. It is to exclaim, “isn’t that beautiful? I’ve always just felt it is good to tell good stories.
1965-66 in a suburb of Chicago, I took part in a program called Junior Great Books. We read books like ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ by John Bunyan, and the discussions followed open-ended questions that led us deeper into the material, instead of just trying to remember certain facts. I felt like I was part of something special. Even by the time I started college in 1970, a Liberal Arts or English degree was still something to aspire to, and which still had a certain prestige attached to it. I was an English major, and even though I ended up with a satisfying career in health care, I am still a book nerd, and lover of the printed word, be it classical literature or something less cerebral. Reading helps me to understand the human soul and psyche.
There’s been a formal decline in humanities studies, but increased informal engagement on a daily basis - people just tend to stick to what they like, rather than be exposed to many different things. The example of med students reading literature is what there should be more of, but many people really dislike interdisciplinary studies because it is harder and can impact grades. But only one unit can change your entire perspective on a discipline - I was a creative arts/humanities student who hated science and then did a philosophy of science elective - going beyond rote learning of facts into something more complex made it much easier for me to engage with science after that.
Superb distillation of the seemingly frenetic race to go visual for anything and everything~I, like many, have made efforts to read books to my 3-year-old grandson before screens have him swearing them off, but I had not realized the fading of English might have "cancellation overtones," too.
(Makes sense, though, that if many former European white males are to be canceled so might be their words.)
From the James Marriott piece:
"If sympathy with Jane Eyre once implied an expanded sphere of moral concern capable of enhancing a person’s feeling for all humanity, it now signifies attachment to the culture of an oppressive elite. The rise of electronic distraction has only tended to increase English’s political vulnerability."
In other words, literature is on the decline from both apathy (from the electronically distracted) and being outright dissed by those who see it as oppressive.
Thanks, Susan, for this section:
" .... they revered literature as the apogee of the human spirit— and the antidote to the dark forces of mass culture and totalitarianism."
To me, the "dark forces of mass culture" include violent video gaming, which simultaneously connect to what might be called "the UN-glamorous mysteries of the human heart. (The mysteries of the human heart can go either way, would you agree?)
Several years ago, when trying to raise my teenage son who tabled his Rick Riordan novels for video games, I knew the contest for the literary soul of youth was on.
My ongoing research in this area confirms this still to be true at the community and societal levels.
After I graduated high school in 1965, I enrolled at a vocational/technical school to study mechanical drafting. After one semester, I quit. It just wasn't challenging or engaging for me. I was just doing it because I thought it would lead to a job. I had no idea what I really wanted do, but it was the Vietnam era, so I enlisted in the Air Force. Four years later I had completed my service and still didn't know what to do with my life. A friend suggested I enroll at a nearby universtiy. When I had to choose a major I remembered that I always loved English in high school. So I said to myself, "Why don't I just study something I love, and forget about a future career for now?" So I majored in English. By the time I graduated, I had a wife and a little daughter and no career prospects. My wife got a teaching job and I went to work in a factory. Even so, I did not regret my Enlish major. Eventually my path led to Human Resources work, which eventually led to an engineering consulting firm, where I worked for the last 20 years of my career. They hired me because in their words. they needed someone with expertise in "human factors engineering." Besides me, three other senior level staff in that firm had been English majors. Now retired, I have a house with several full bookshelves and abundant time to read and write. I am forever grateful for my English major.
My grandfather - who immigrated from Yorkshire, England to the U.S. in his twenties - taught me to love British literature before I knew what he was doing. It was his library, in which I found Kipling, Dickens, the Bronte sisters, and Austen, but also his birthday and Christmas gifts. Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Garden, Great Expectations, The Jungle Stories, Green Mansions, How Green was my Valley. Simply typing those titles takes me back to being curled up in his library's leather chair, enchanted and reading the afternoon away.
I longed to be an English major, and looked longingly at people in the library reading Charlotte's Web while I struggled with large heavy anatomy and physiology books to become a nurse. But I made my way back eventually to medical editing and writing:) in something called plain language. My son chose English as a major at a large public university and an MFA in poetry. I think that may have all been to be a better song writer. Both my sons were avid readers, but now seem afflicted by the ADPD: attention deficit phone disorder :):) It is weird at my age that I seem to have the longest attention span in the family, and that may have been helped by reading (something other than a phone)
I was an English Literature Major in college, graduated in 1972. I think that reading fiction does increase empathy, as well as appreciation of the beauty of language.
Thank you for this interesting newsletter. I just was reading about a medical school professor that teaches literature ( including Chekhov and Lorrie Moore) to increase empathy in med students. I remember reading that reading fiction does increase your empathy because you learn to see things from another point of view.
My mother was a high school English teacher. My grandmother owned a bookstore and I watched her read and write almost daily for as long as I could rememver. My high school English teacher was the teacher whose class lots of us ask to be transferred out of. My mother, who taught that English class where I was a student said, basically, "no way are you changing teachers!" Today, I manage a bookstore and read and write daily. And, I'm thankful for the love of reading and writing that was/is imprinted on my soul. Yes, I love literature!!
I was an English major. It was the first time I got to study what I loved and was around other people who loved it, too. One thing that always fascinated me about it is how stories capture history, language, culture, religion, philosophy, the human experience. It's beautiful. I learned how to think critically about life from literature.
I totally related to James Marriott’s essay. I have built my life around this faith too. I feel very isolated and sad at witnessing its demise. I don’t know how to live my life fully in this post-literature world.
Dichotomies inform the polemic of arguments. But true nature, the cosmos, is not full of dichotomies with toggle switches, but rather it is full of spectra with slide bars, ever drifting under changing conditions and interaction, interbeing. Think of the butterfly flapping it's wings changing air currents effecting the weather!
Science gives us facts, literature gives us truth, quantum physics uncovers our cosmic wonder and brings scientific fact and human truth to the fore spiritually. I am 67 years old and have found BOTH science and literature interwoven in human truth. Literature, neuroscience, Buddhism and quantum physics are the vibe of my cosmology. Different languages leading down the same right, wise path.
I enjoyed English class in high school, but not with the enthusiasm for words I now have. Oh, I did a lot of writing back then, both comedic and serious. Now, as I better understand the beauty and value of literature, I dearly wish I could visit my HS teacher to discuss the old and new books I now read. Sadly, she has passed, and I miss her so much, even after a 50-year absence. Below is something I wrote to her, though she never got to read it.
You probably have no idea how many times I have thought of you over the past 40 years, for it was you who told me that I should be a writer. Your words of encouragement thrilled my heart, and I went on to become a… pharmacist. Through various twists and turns of events and choices I pursued a career in pharmacy, married, had a family, and now enjoy grandchildren, but through it all – though my writing activity has waxed and waned – my passion for it has never been quenched, and I realize that you were right all along.
A couple of other things come to mind as I recall your class. One is our difference of opinion on Mark Twain’s short story entitled “Luck.” I continue to hold my opinion that the protagonist was a genius rather than a fool, but to each his own. The other incident is one I look back on with great amusement. We had been assigned to comment upon Ernest Hemingway’s use of sensuality and its importance in his writing. Subsequent to your reading and grading our papers, you went out of your way to clarify that you had asked about sensuality, not sexuality. I can only imagine what you had been reading from your high school students attempting to comment on that which they (ideally) had no experience.
If you’re out there somewhere, I would dearly love to speak with you again. God’s blessings to a teacher who made a difference!
“It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die”. This, from Howards End. Iiterature is how we connect. It is to exclaim, “isn’t that beautiful? I’ve always just felt it is good to tell good stories.
Excerpt From
Howards End
Edward Morgan Forster
https://books.apple.com/us/book/howards-end/id498910795
This material may be protected by copyright.
Beautiful article. I now have an even greater appreciation for my high school English teacher.
When I was in 7th and 8th grade in
1965-66 in a suburb of Chicago, I took part in a program called Junior Great Books. We read books like ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress,’ by John Bunyan, and the discussions followed open-ended questions that led us deeper into the material, instead of just trying to remember certain facts. I felt like I was part of something special. Even by the time I started college in 1970, a Liberal Arts or English degree was still something to aspire to, and which still had a certain prestige attached to it. I was an English major, and even though I ended up with a satisfying career in health care, I am still a book nerd, and lover of the printed word, be it classical literature or something less cerebral. Reading helps me to understand the human soul and psyche.
There’s been a formal decline in humanities studies, but increased informal engagement on a daily basis - people just tend to stick to what they like, rather than be exposed to many different things. The example of med students reading literature is what there should be more of, but many people really dislike interdisciplinary studies because it is harder and can impact grades. But only one unit can change your entire perspective on a discipline - I was a creative arts/humanities student who hated science and then did a philosophy of science elective - going beyond rote learning of facts into something more complex made it much easier for me to engage with science after that.
Superb distillation of the seemingly frenetic race to go visual for anything and everything~I, like many, have made efforts to read books to my 3-year-old grandson before screens have him swearing them off, but I had not realized the fading of English might have "cancellation overtones," too.
(Makes sense, though, that if many former European white males are to be canceled so might be their words.)
From the James Marriott piece:
"If sympathy with Jane Eyre once implied an expanded sphere of moral concern capable of enhancing a person’s feeling for all humanity, it now signifies attachment to the culture of an oppressive elite. The rise of electronic distraction has only tended to increase English’s political vulnerability."
In other words, literature is on the decline from both apathy (from the electronically distracted) and being outright dissed by those who see it as oppressive.
Thanks, Susan, for this section:
" .... they revered literature as the apogee of the human spirit— and the antidote to the dark forces of mass culture and totalitarianism."
To me, the "dark forces of mass culture" include violent video gaming, which simultaneously connect to what might be called "the UN-glamorous mysteries of the human heart. (The mysteries of the human heart can go either way, would you agree?)
Several years ago, when trying to raise my teenage son who tabled his Rick Riordan novels for video games, I knew the contest for the literary soul of youth was on.
My ongoing research in this area confirms this still to be true at the community and societal levels.
I appreciate this wonderful post!
After I graduated high school in 1965, I enrolled at a vocational/technical school to study mechanical drafting. After one semester, I quit. It just wasn't challenging or engaging for me. I was just doing it because I thought it would lead to a job. I had no idea what I really wanted do, but it was the Vietnam era, so I enlisted in the Air Force. Four years later I had completed my service and still didn't know what to do with my life. A friend suggested I enroll at a nearby universtiy. When I had to choose a major I remembered that I always loved English in high school. So I said to myself, "Why don't I just study something I love, and forget about a future career for now?" So I majored in English. By the time I graduated, I had a wife and a little daughter and no career prospects. My wife got a teaching job and I went to work in a factory. Even so, I did not regret my Enlish major. Eventually my path led to Human Resources work, which eventually led to an engineering consulting firm, where I worked for the last 20 years of my career. They hired me because in their words. they needed someone with expertise in "human factors engineering." Besides me, three other senior level staff in that firm had been English majors. Now retired, I have a house with several full bookshelves and abundant time to read and write. I am forever grateful for my English major.
My grandfather - who immigrated from Yorkshire, England to the U.S. in his twenties - taught me to love British literature before I knew what he was doing. It was his library, in which I found Kipling, Dickens, the Bronte sisters, and Austen, but also his birthday and Christmas gifts. Pride and Prejudice, The Secret Garden, Great Expectations, The Jungle Stories, Green Mansions, How Green was my Valley. Simply typing those titles takes me back to being curled up in his library's leather chair, enchanted and reading the afternoon away.
I longed to be an English major, and looked longingly at people in the library reading Charlotte's Web while I struggled with large heavy anatomy and physiology books to become a nurse. But I made my way back eventually to medical editing and writing:) in something called plain language. My son chose English as a major at a large public university and an MFA in poetry. I think that may have all been to be a better song writer. Both my sons were avid readers, but now seem afflicted by the ADPD: attention deficit phone disorder :):) It is weird at my age that I seem to have the longest attention span in the family, and that may have been helped by reading (something other than a phone)
I was an English Literature Major in college, graduated in 1972. I think that reading fiction does increase empathy, as well as appreciation of the beauty of language.
Thank you for this interesting newsletter. I just was reading about a medical school professor that teaches literature ( including Chekhov and Lorrie Moore) to increase empathy in med students. I remember reading that reading fiction does increase your empathy because you learn to see things from another point of view.
My mother was a high school English teacher. My grandmother owned a bookstore and I watched her read and write almost daily for as long as I could rememver. My high school English teacher was the teacher whose class lots of us ask to be transferred out of. My mother, who taught that English class where I was a student said, basically, "no way are you changing teachers!" Today, I manage a bookstore and read and write daily. And, I'm thankful for the love of reading and writing that was/is imprinted on my soul. Yes, I love literature!!
I was an English major. It was the first time I got to study what I loved and was around other people who loved it, too. One thing that always fascinated me about it is how stories capture history, language, culture, religion, philosophy, the human experience. It's beautiful. I learned how to think critically about life from literature.
I totally related to James Marriott’s essay. I have built my life around this faith too. I feel very isolated and sad at witnessing its demise. I don’t know how to live my life fully in this post-literature world.