And little by little I began to wake up to the fact that I am, like everyone else in the academic humanities, really just scraping by in a ghost-career, a vestige of an older order that no one has yet worked up the courage to put out of its misery, but that really cannot continue to fulfill its purported function of shaping well-rounded citizens, when it is so fully subordinated to the primary function of the 21st-century university, which is, namely, fundraising.
“Content Creator” is a title that inadvertently tells on itself. It’s a tacit admission that the nature of the “content“ is meaningless and it exists to fill space. Might as well call yourself “Stuff Maker” or “Thing Doer.”
Josh Gluckstein’s cardboard coral reef
Two consecutive stories in my RSS feed. Turns out that if culture is being lost it’s also being found.
Another fascinating report on trends in American religion by Ruth Graham, the best religion reporter around. (Did I mention that she was my student? Only about a hundred times.)
Listening to the readings in church this morning, I couldn’t help thinking that the epistle might serve as a good meditation for … well, for everybody, but especially Christians who are caught up in the raging fevers of today’s American politics:
Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
Eric Fitch Daglish, from Birds of the British Isles (1948)
Finished reading: France on Trial by Julian Jackson. A vivid and powerful story. What a unique figure Pétain is. 📚
The crisis that doctors face in their new working environment is ultimately a crisis of identity. Doctors no longer know who they are. They no longer know, for instance, if they are more than scientists or technicians. They no longer know if they are mere allies of patients or something more commanding. All is at sea in the sphere of their minds. Their doubts haunt them even when they make minor decisions. The situation will only grow worse with the next forward and downward change in medical practice: the coming of artificial intelligence. Clinical humanities will give doctors a better understanding of who they once were, are now, and might become, thereby stabilizing their sense of identity.
Fidelia Bridges, Rooftops, Brooklyn, ca. 1867
Everett L. Warner, New York from a Seaplane, ca. 1919
The canon of well-known classics, the books one can find in just about every library and bookstore, the books most commonly studied and written about, is like the freeway system of literature. These works have, until recently, been our most accessible and most heavily traveled routes through our literary landscape. With the creation of the Internet Archive and the steady incorporation of material into its collection, a huge amount of our literary landscape — by now a large share of the published material from the seventeenth century on — is just a few clicks away from over half the people in the world. I look forward to seeing many amazing forgotten books and writers get rediscovered and celebrated anew as more readers come to realize that so much of the literature that has historically been remote and inaccessible can now be found just steps from their front doors.
I linked to this before, I think, but I continue to listen obsessively to Alec Goldfarb’s new record Fire Lapping at the Creek — which is, let the listener beware, microtonal blues. Which is crazy, except that blues blues has microtonal elements. What a record. ♫
My writing project continues, of course. What is that project? The production of books that mix the genres and styles I love most, while adding something new — pushing those genres and styles forward — in a way that attracts a large, enthusiastic readership around the world. These books always encourage their readers to contemplate scale, in one way or another. These books make scale undeniable. That’s it! That’s the project.
Me: slightly accelerated heartbeat. You know how I feel about scale.
I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way its name alone evokes a time of promise, for the thought of that tiny contraption way out there in the vastness at the edge of the heliosphere — perhaps the farthest any human-made thing may ever travel — a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work it was purposed to do.
I feel exactly the same way, but also claim a self-description: I too am “a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work [I] was purposed to do.”
Very glad to see that Francesca Gino’s bullying lawsuit against the Data Colada bloggers has been quashed by a judge.