Helen Vendler proposes a new baseline of cultural education in this year’s NEH Jefferson Lecture. “The day of limiting cultural education to Western culture alone is over. There are losses here, of course–losses in depth of learning, losses in coherence–but these very changes have thrown open the question of how the humanities should now be conceived, and how the study of the humanities should, in this moment, be encouraged. I want to propose that the humanities should take, as their central objects of study, not the texts of historians or philosophers, but the products of aesthetic endeavor: architecture, art, dance, music, literature, theater, and so on.”
Tag: 06.04
The Great Florida Debate
Ever since Richard Florida published his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, urban planners and thinkers around the U.S. have been lining up either to sing Florida’s praises or to knock his ideas as half-formed and unrealistic. “Many of Richard Florida’s critics try to marginalize his theory of the creative class as being just about a few kooky artists in Austin. They are wrong… As governments take a serious look at his ideas, billions of dollars spent on subsidies of politically-connected industries hang in the balance.” So isn’t it time for a serious, substantive debate on the issues that Creative Class raised?
Lost In Translation
Would government subsidies for publishers help more translated books to appear on American bookshelves? John O’Brien doesn’t think so: “On average, a very good novel from another country will sell fifty percent fewer copies in the United States than a rather mediocre novel written by an American… I doubt that we can expect foundations to lead the way in an effort to support translations by working with nonprofit presses; however, what would be interesting to speculate on is whether the NEA couldn’t enlist foundations in this country in a joint undertaking with government agencies in other countries to create a fund for translations that would take into account all of the publication expenses rather than just the cost of the translations.
Laziness or Xenophobia?
What has caused the dropoff in translations in the English-speaking literary world? It surely has something to do with the pervasiveness of English around the globe, but Eric Dickens fears that a “selective xenophobia” may have crept into even enlightened minds in the UK and US. “United States power and prestige prop up the English language internationally; and yet English is only the mother tongue of a relatively modest number of people worldwide. Translation obviates the necessity of people having to write badly in English when they can be writing well in their respective mother tongues.”
Kimball: Pining For The Melting Pot
Roger Kimball writes that multiculturalism is destroying America. “Multiculturalism and ‘affirmative action’ are allies in the assault on the institution of American identity. As such, they oppose the traditional understanding of what it means to be an American. This crucible of American identity, this ‘melting pot,’ has two aspects. The negative aspect involves disassociating oneself from the cultural imperatives of one’s country of origin. One sheds a previous identity before assuming a new one. One might preserve certain local habits and tastes, but they are essentially window-dressing. In essence one has left the past behind in order to become an American citizen. The positive aspect of advancing the melting pot involves embracing the substance of American culture.”
Is The Broadway Musical Dead?
“The Broadway musical is dead. Such, at any rate, is the conventional wisdom, echoed by everyone from aging theatergoers who saw Ethel Merman in Gypsy to youthful academics who write about popular culture as if it were Finnegans Wake. Perhaps. And yet no other genre remains so central to American theatrical life. Most of the best musicals of the 20th century continue to be revived regularly, on Broadway and elsewhere, just as their songs continue to be sung and recorded. Still, it is evident that the demand for first-rate new musicals greatly outstrips the supply.”
New Music In Little Pieces
Greg Sandow observes that new music has difficulty widening its appeal. “New music in New York seems fragmented, right now, at least to me, and I’d like to see more going on that would bind us together. We talk as if we have common interests, and we have organizations that support us all. But how much do we even know about what we all are doing?”