Re: GG and scholarship

[Elmer Elevator <bobmer@javanet.com>]

Bradley's description of GG's essay style places him firmly in the
tradition of (for lack of a better description) highbrow popular criticism,
which is an honorable tradition indeed. The closest analogies are in
literary criticism, with examples being Matthew Arnold, Randell Jarrell and
(currently) James Woods.

 

You talkin bout James Woods the actor? Don't sell him short! He went to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)!

 

We're drifting into a pretty interesting issue here -- popular criticism, criticism for the masses, versus Authentic Certified Scholarly Journal criticism.

 

One of the problems with the latter is the way some naughty person once described The New York Review of Books: The New York Review of Each Others' Books.

 

So many critical and scholarly fields long ago degenerated into incestuous little communities of 850 people only talking to each other, only recognizing the ideas (?) of their approved colleagues, meeting each other every summer at the Convention ... but never really doing or saying anything that informs anyone's thought or life beyond their tight little Invitation-Only Subscription-Only village.

 

They're the dedicated full-time life-devoted scholars, they're the acknowledged experts.

 

And, like ... who cares?

 

The tendency is so often to devote their studies to the infinitessimal minutiae of their fields. These scholarly communities so often are institutionally hostile to Big Ideas or Brave or Surprising Ideas.

 

Most of their energies are devoted to making sure The Wrong People are never invited to speak or present papers; the emphasis is more on keeping out The Wrong Sorts than on keeping out really bad or worthless ideas.

 

At some point in scholarship, for it to have worth and meaning, attention must be paid to Vigor, or to broadening the base of interest, and of -- dare I say it? -- touching the lives, hearts and minds of people who are not Professionals and Certified Members.

 

If we think about it this way, it becomes very clear why there's a hostility among scholars to the notion of Glenn Gould, the Scholar.

 

Bob