Silence of the Lambs

[LARSSON at vax1.mankato.msus.edu]

Nick writes:
"3. As an American Studies kind of guy, I'd like to discuss GR and how it
reflects today's America. Look, any work of art worth its salt is applicable
to the reader TODAY. If not, the work is good for what I call "cocktail
party English." You know--you can talk about Eliot's objective correlative
over a drink and everyone thinks you're so "deep." But in the end, it's this
kind of crap that has driven students away from the humanities, lit in
particular. (It has driven me from the Joyce list, and perhaps many of you
from this list.)  HOW DOES GR RELATE TO US--NOW? And what does it tell us
about American politics, values, etc.?"

Good questions, Nick, which also have to do with the relevance of literature
in our time.  Look at college best seller lists and ask where the serious
(or, ok, wierdly humorous but really serious) lit. has gone--it's all
self-help and such, with only CALVIN AND HOBBES collections to provide
depth (and C & H *can* get deep!).  The authors who once meant something
to my generation are still producing, though some--like Mailer--drifted
into irrelevance long ago.  Others have emerged or are emerging but don't
seem to have the command of cultural attention as they once did.  For
example, I was very impressed with E.L. Doctorow's THE WATERWORKS, which
 I personally think is his best book since RAGTIME, but it's been 
shuffled off to the Back of the Book in the magazines and papers.  Ask
students what they think of it and they'll respond, "E.L. Who?"  And--
unfortunately, many won't get Doctorow's portrait of an emerging Modern
 New York (and America) that subsists literally on a vampirism of the
young--School lunches, anyone?

I wouldn't want to push Doctorow, or TRP, as political prophets, except to
say that they spark my thought, even when I might disagree with their
analysis.  In the end, though, for me at least they survive by "writing
well" (as Auden said of Yeats).

--Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN