Member-only story
- Academic humanities are strangling the humanities; cutting them off from the oxygen of real life, real humanity. That’s always seemed obvious to me, and I think it’s obvious to a lot of people. Yet you rarely meet people more pleased with themselves than humanities academics. If not just demand — but love — of literature and philosophy, poetry and thought, is not only declining but evaporating, how can that self-satisfaction possibly be justified? The answer is that, through the tenure system, professors are totally inoculated against their own unpopularity. They can contribute to the death of a literary culture while living comfortable lives.
- Generally, the creation whenever a bureaucratic system appears, a folk way of life dies.
- I hate going into new bookstores. Glossy, expensive, stupid books — mostly memoirs and puffed up newspaper articles. A new-only bookstores has no real variety because it reflects the thinking of a small handful of marketing departments at major publishing houses. It’s so boring only to be served what corporate executives think you want.
