Re: GG and scholarship

["Baldwin, Daniel" <baldwin@baermarks.com>]

I meant no slight to James Woods (the actor); I have been a fan ever since I
saw him in "The Onion Field" (197_ ?). The James Woods to whom I am
refererring is an English guy in his early 30s whose criticism frequently
appears in The New Republic. He is amazing.

-----Original Message-----
From: Elmer Elevator [mailto:bobmer@JAVANET.COM]
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2001 12:07 PM
To: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
Subject: Re: GG and scholarship


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