To a Student in My Composition and Rhetoric Class (Introduction to Literature)

Dear Student,

I was very happy you recently emailed me about a research essay topic you want to pursue. That you felt strongly enough to ask a question is gratifying. You wouldn't know this, but I begin every semester hoping that students find plays, poems, and stories that move them profoundly, or at least profoundly enough to ask such questions as you have.

Unfortunately, after fifteen weeks of class this term, you alone have fulfilled this hope. Your classmates, though nice people and smart enough, have rarely shown the desire or self-motivation to vigorously explore the literary texts in our course. They have read, or skimmed. They have glibly opined. They have written papers. However, I feel they have not been taken by any of our texts. They were unimpressed by Hamlet's grief and by how severely he reckoned every possible course of action. They eschewed, or seemed to, the lonely and noble reflection of Jane Kenyon's "Let Evening Come." They saw no kinship between themselves and proud Sylvia in Toni Cade Bambara's "The Lesson." 

It takes passion to read anything, but especially drama, poetry, and fiction. It takes conviction to write, but especially to write an academic essay. What I have really been trying to tell and teach all of you is to be passionate, assertive, bold, and confident. If you can muster these attitudes for a class, you can muster them in your life. As much as any knowledge, skill, or wisdom that you take from school, these attitudes will serve you well in life and carry you far.

But there is more than utility to these attitudes. They have more value than getting you a job and helping you succeed in a career. No, these attitudes are the formula of emotional depth and perspective. The happiness literature offers is understanding happiness. From our best writing we learn that happiness is complex, fleeting, easily unrecognized, and surprisingly connected to outlook and effort. And the wisdom literature offers is that of adventure, for the worlds created in literature lead out to reality and to knowledge that spans centuries of human endeavor.

Just two examples of the happiness and wisdom I mean, and then I will close. Think on the rich, lasting happiness from the end of Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind":

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Shelley describes a happiness greater, if less pure, than a child's. It's a lasting, hopeful happiness. It's the happiness of knowing life continues inexorably. To Shelley, we are instruments of a powerful universe in motion. Such happiness comes from being bound sonically and temperamentally to that universe. We readers, too, joyfully recognize the intertwining rhyme Shelley uses. We see it and connect with him, and his world. We hear the trumpet tones and know this sound calls just as well in our world.

We take from Shelley a wise happiness, a kind of knowledge not found in movies, television, games, or other activities--all of which possess their own wisdom. Yet we talk about wisdom and knowledge as if they were only about having facts and being able to recall them. Consider, then, the wisdom of the speaker in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues":

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours. I just watched Sonny's face. His face was troubled, he was working hard, but he wasn't with it. And I had the feeling that, in a way, everyone on the bandstand was waiting for him, both waiting for him and pushing him along. But as I began to watch Creole, I realized that it was Creole who held them all back. He had them on a short rein. Up there, keeping the beat with his whole body, wailing on the fiddle, with his eyes half closed, he was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He wanted Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing -- he had been there, and he knew. And he wanted Sonny to know. He was waiting for Sonny to do the things on the keys which would let Creole know that Sonny was in the water.

The man admits at the outset he is limited in his knowledge about music. Yet, like the improvising musicians he observes and hears, he builds on what he knows and tries to expand it. Baldwin's writing here focuses on hearing and watching--listening to Sonny play and watching him expend effort. Baldwin searches and finds in the music a dialogue between Creole and Sonny, a dialogue that turns into Sonny's musical exodus or perhaps a musical baptism.

This is the wisdom of hearing and observing, yes, but more the wisdom of sharing and connecting. What sings in this prose is how the speaker voices--attempts to articulate on the fly--how he understands Sonny and Creole. He wants to partake of their interplay. He learns by doing and by actively being.

The happiness and wisdom of literature are unfathomably rich. My student, I wanted you and all your classmates to learn this. Excepting you alone, I failed this semester. I failed because your classmates did not want to be reached and did not think it was worth their energy. I failed because I was not focused or skilled or apt enough to overcome their extraordinary apathy and complacence.

I will retire as a college teacher at the end of this semester. I cannot foresee teaching an Introduction to Literature course again. After 17 years of teaching, I have lost the drive to lead any more classes on the perilous journey through the language and stories of the past, and through the struggle of writing now. I have ceased to be an effective teacher, if ever I was one.

My student, your letter is a comfort to me as I depart. As you go your own way in life, I hope some of what we have read this term stays with you and grows with you. I bid you, as Tennyson's "Ulysses," to seek newer worlds beyond the sunset. That is my intent. Perhaps we will meet again.

Larry Tanner, a teacher

And so this is Pesach, and what have you done?

Arguing together. It's enough.

I look forward to holding a small Passover seder with my wife and children tonight. Tomorrow, we will all go to my parents' condo and have a larger seder with my brothers and their families.

I love the seder. I like that we always have to think about the order of events as well as how to execute them properly. Performing the seder is never rote. Indeed, I always appreciated this in synagogue, say at Shabbat: there was always checking and double-checking at the bimah to make sure sure the service was going off correctly, even f everyone there had done 1,000 Shabbat services apiece.

I love the food of the seder, but I enjoy the songs most of all. The kids always get a kick out of "Dayenu." I cannot decide whether I like "Adir Hu" or "Chad Gadya" better. Mostly, I love the sound of my Dad's voice, and the knowledge that my Mom is happy to hear us all.

That the Exodus story is fictional matters not so much. If it comes up, we can discuss it. The Passover table is meant for serious discussion. Many households prohibit politics and/or religion at the dinner table. But at the Passover table, no subject is off-limits and no argument can get too heated.

Let's have at it, then. However you give meaning to Pesach, even if you give no meaning, I wish that you make it happy and get happiness in return.

Religion and Smallness

Checking in from dissertation land. As I get into the work, I tense up at how great the labor is, and how small I am before it. It's a multi-colored mountain of junk, trinkets, nuggets, knick-knacks, gems, and rotting fruit all piled higher than Babel. And I stand in front of it with slacked shoulders and bent knees, grabbing an item here to make a sort, walking around there to something else for a different sort. To say I'm daunted is way beneath understatement.

But continue on, I do. So Yoda has instructed.

My leisure thoughts turn to reflecting on 2011. My birthday approaches and I want to clarify one or two truths I've pulled from that other Babel pile, my life. More than anything else, the year was demanding. If last year I appealed to myself and to the blogosphere for peace, perhaps I sensed my desire to be--or at least feel--less put upon.

Didn't happen.

I was needed. My family needed my presence and engagement. My ambitions demanded my time and my mind. My work had its requirements, too.

Life is a wave passing by the center of the ocean, as far away from land as one can be. It has a force that I can't resist. I don't think anyone can. Some lucky folks keep their balance as the force moves them in the wave's direction. Some struggle in the sea for equilibrium. Others rotate around and around, unable to stop what the rushing wave caused for them.

In this image, I finally see what religion and religious experience really are. I don't mean the political religion of the popes and pastors and rabbis and mullahs and masters. I mean the private religion of people such as those I knew in my Chabad days and those I met at Alpha. I mean the faith of individual men and women trying to adjust to the wave.

Yes, religion involves community and stability. Yes, it feeds on family togetherness. Yes, it declares the believer's trust in what admired elders and righteous ancestors have openly, publicly shared. And yes, it helps one feel more certain that she is doing right.

These are all symptoms of a more basic awareness: that one is small and alone. When we get sick or scared, the awareness re-emerges. What drives religion more than anything else? What's the source of religion's symptoms and political fingerprints? It's not quite fear, as Bertrand Russell concluded, but both understanding the basic human situation and instinctively reacting to it.

It's a process. One slowly comes to grips with his smallness and solitude. One performs being small and alone, and one conjures a figure for the bigness and everythingness of the passing wave. One deals with oblivion by doing something, anything. It's something meaningless and pointless, but it orients one and directs his desire.

That's religion. Doing something for a release and for a wish. It might look like floating, or swimming, or surfing, or drowning. It might look like fun or fear or deference. But it's actually futility playing futility, an actor playing the part of herself. It's an undercover cop who actually is corrupt.

This is not a criticism of religion. How could it be?

Basically an Underachiever: Five Great Films by Woody Allen

"If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever."

I watched part one of the Woody Allen documentary last night on my local PBS station. It was very good, and though I had not planned to see it, it was quite compelling.

Many of Allen's films are special to me. Here are the standouts:

1) Manhattan (1979): My all-time favorite, not only because Mariel Hemingway is beautiful.

2) Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989): Great plot, great actors.

3) Zelig (1983): I love this movie! The PBS documentary had some moments that reminded me of the opening of Zelig.

4) Hannah and Her Sisters (1986): Another great 1980s film with an ensemble cast.

5) Sleeper (1973): Lots of smart gags.

The notable omission is Annie Hall (1976), which is unnecessary to put on a list. I have seen virtually no 1990s and beyond films by Allen (or anyone else, for that matter--in fact, I have not set foot in a movie theater since 2001).

I have a CD set of Allen's stand up act. It's the best stand up of all time, if you want my opinion.

I Do Not Fear the Time

My mother and father are married 47 years today.

In their honor, and in honor of the occasion, I have two mournful yet appropriate songs for them. This is, of course, a day to celebrate and be extremely joyful--partly because we know that it won't last forever. And so the celebration and joy includes mourning over the sweet receding past and the inevitable parting yet to come.

Here's a beautiful song written by Sandy Denny.

And here's a lovely one by Richard and Linda Thompson.

Moment of Silence

The Eagle Nebula Messier 16 (M16), a region of active star formation situated in Serpens Cauda. The starforming nebula, a giant cloud of interstellar gas and dust, has already created a considerable cluster of young stars.

Can Science Explain Art, Music, and Literature? (Part 2)

Some months ago, I criticized an article by philosopher Roger Scruton that argued science was unable to explain art, music, and literature.

I wrote at the time:

Scruton, as I see it, plots art and beauty on the same continuum with gods, free will, and souls. Defenders tell us we cannot explain the categories on the continuum. The categories are beyond our full comprehension, exceeding our language, and greater than the real things that are otherwise their material substance (e.g., religious writings and commentaries, neurons, cells and organelles).

What's more, Scruton and like-minded thinkers advise us not even to try explaining such categories:

The attempt to explain art, music, literature, and the sense of beauty as adaptations is both trivial as science and empty as a form of understanding. It tells us nothing of importance about its subject matter, and does huge intellectual damage in persuading ignorant people that after all there is nothing about the humanities to understand, since they have all been explained — and explained away.

This argument is deeply flawed. I don't accept Scruton as an authority to tell us what disciplines and methods to take seriously. Ultimately, the test of disciplines and methods is the knowledge they produce. In his given examples on music and sense of beauty, Scruton finds the Darwinist explanations "absurd." Fine. That's his opinion. But we need not accept those explanations fully to understand that they (1) are out in the public domain, (2) have some legitimacy, and (3) will ultimately stand or fall based on the collection of more data and the performance of more work in the area.

Another truly odious charge is that a Darwinist line of art or literary study obliterates any other modes of explaining and interpreting. The charge is simply untrue. Humanities studies can be interested in both biological explanations and cultural ones. The development of singing, to take an example from Scruton, seems to me very interesting. I want to know about the biological impulses and struggles that singing expresses, and I want to know about the arrangement of pitched sounds. Why that arrangement? What makes it as powerful as it is? What are its precursors? How has it spread and changed in culture?

At the time, I had a brief dialogue over at Scruton's site. I'd like to go through one of his rejoinders bit by bit. He says:

It seems clear that the sadness of a piece of music is a property of the music, not of the listener – otherwise why should we take such pleasure in listening to sad music?

Scruton is just wrong here: it's not at all clear and it's not true. We take pleasure in listening to music we find sad because we like to act out and simulate emotions. We are like cubs in a litter: their play simulates fighting and hunting because that's what they need to do "for real." We find ways to simulate emotions and empathy because both serve us in response to the unpredictable vicissitudes of life.

A piece of music is not in itself sad. The quality of sadness is not part of the music but a product of the listener's response to pitch, timbre, rhythm, and structure. If you want to argue that sadness is "in" the music then you need to be able to isolate and measure sadness. If you cannot isolate and measure sadness, then on what basis do you claim it's "in" there?

Let's move on to see how Scruton develops his argument.

Minor keys and minor triads are not necessarily sad – everything depends on the musical context.

Well, this is what I've been saying!

Just to take a well-known instance: ‘My Favourite Things’, from 'The Sound of Music', in E minor, and one of the happiest songs in the American Song Book. Admittedly, in (sic) changes suddenly to G major at the end; but there is nothing in that song remotely reminiscent of the terrifying E flat minor triad that opens the prelude to 'Götterdämmerung'.

All this supports my contention. If Scruton is echoing my points, why on earth would he say that I'm "in deep water here"?

Of course Larry is right that music is something more than the ‘selection and arrangement of pitched sounds’, just as a picture is something more than the selection and arrangement of coloured patches.

Is this a typo? I think Scruton really thinks I'm saying that music is nothing more than 'selection and arrangement of pitched sounds.’

What I am actually saying, however, is that the "something more" of music lies in what we bring to listening. We are never passive listeners. We distinguish music by understanding it as expressive; when we assign expressive power to a sound, it becomes distinguished from background noise.

But is there a scientific theory that enables us to pass from the description of the sounds to a description of the music – in other words, to a description of what a musical listener 'hears' in those sounds? I have tried to show that there can be no such theory, since musical organisation involves irreducible spatial metaphors – see 'The Aesthetics of Music', ch. 2.

Well, there are psychological and cognitive neurological disciplines that may offer such theories as will satisfy Scruton. But I am at a disadvantage because I am unfamiliar with Scruton's longer argument involving music's "irreducible spatial metaphors."

Yet I also think that raising music's "irreducible spatial metaphors" shows the serious flaw in Scruton's thinking, the flaw I identified and criticized in my earlier post here. As soon as we talk about "irreducible spatial metaphors," we are not explaining the music anymore. We have moved from the physical world to the interior world of human subjectivity.

Scruton, we recall, initially was concerned with explaining music and with saying that science could never come up with such an explanation. But if Scruton is correct, then it's because he wants science to explain something it cannot access, how it feels for a person to experience something. It's not unlike demanding to know what it's like for a computer to crunch a new set of numbers. It's not unlike wondering what the sound is of one hand clapping. It's not unlike wondering how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.

Scruton closes:

But the questions here are vast, and not to be solved by local skirmishes.

The questions may be vast, but we should perhaps whittle down the questions to ones that are, at least in principle, answerable.

Pablo Casals, "Song of the Birds"

Casals: "We have to leave it to the ignorant and the stupid to point out faults. We have to be glad of any bit of beauty."

This time of year, my morning run gives me audience to the wonderful music of the birds. Since I was a boy, I've loved the song of the chickadee especially. Maybe it's a Massachusetts thing.

A different and no less exhilarating birdsong is "Song of the Birds" ("El Cant dels Ocells"), performed by cellist-musician-human extraordinaire Pablo Casals.

Should you be interested in a summer read, I heartily recommend Joys and Sorrows, Casals' quasi-autobiography.

To Learn and Live and Yearn

Two lovely videos of learning from the ever-lucid Carl Sagan.