Philip Roth

[Terrance F. Flaherty]

"You can't let the big they impose its bigotry any more than
you can let the little they become a we and its we-talk and
everything  that the we wants  to pile on your head. Never
for him the tyranny of the we  that is dying to suck you in,
the coercive, inclusive, inescapable moral we with its
insidious E pliribus unum. Instead the I with all its
agility. Self-discovery..."

Silky Silk Coleman, The Human Stain, Philip Roth

As Dewey says, "there is no such thing as educational value
in the abstract." 
A very good English teacher can encourage students to
approach the two roads in the woods, say Conrad and Achebe,
and if students choose the road less traveled by, why  that
can make all the difference. 



Otto Sell wrote:
> 
> DIE ZEIT No. 38, Sep. 14, 2000, p. 49-50 * Literatur: (sorrily not online)
> "Bleib nicht, wo du bist!"
> Die Kulturkritik ist am Ende und Big Brother herrscht über die moderne Welt.
> Ein Gespräch mit Philip Roth. Von Denis Schenk
> 
> Pynchon is only mentioned shortly in a question of the interviewer (with Don
> DeLillo and Saul Bellow).
> Roth says some nice things about Bill Clinton, novelwriting and literature.
> He says that despite the fact that the last twenty years have been a "Golden
> Age" for the American Literature the number of "readers" has declined:
> "Sie haben drei Schriftsteller erwähnt, ich käme wohl auf zehn, darunter
> natürlich Updike und Toni Morrison, auch Robert Stone (...) Dennis Johnson
> (...) Raymond Carver (...) William Styron (...). Alle diese Schriftsteller
> sind unglaublich stark, und keiner gleicht dem anderen. Es gibt keine
> dominierende Schule, keine vorherrschende Ästhetik oder verbindliche
> Ideologie. Wir haben in den letzten 20 Jahren eine echte Blütezeit der
> US-Literatur erlebt. Aber Amerika ist ein Land von Romanciers ohne Leser.
> Gegen den Tod des Lesens kann man nichts tun."
> (DIE ZEIT No. 38, Sep. 14, 2000, p. 50)
> (there's no cure against the death of reading)
> 
> He offers a good explanation of the *Big Brother*-phenomenom: Orwell had no
> idea that Big Brother isn't the government but the media, so it's not *Big
> Brother is watching us* but indeed *We're watching Big Brother* - the trap
> is even more perfect because we believe we are watching the counter-reality
> raised by the media by our own free will, thus developing no resistance.
> Reading and p-listing keeps me effectively from getting the idea of watching
> it . . .
> 
> I loved Achebe and Conrad when I came across them, the first at school
> (really, a very good English-teacher, Arthur Eva) and Conrad at the
> university where it was used as "background" for colonial studies.
> 
> Otto
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Terrance F. Flaherty <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
> To: Paul Mackin <pmackin at clark.net>
> Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 3:10 AM
> Subject: Re: Rocket(s) & Savagery.7
> 
> > Anyway, I'm not teaching Conrad's Heart of Darkness, To Kill
> > A Mockingbird, or even Things Fall Apart (Students hate this
> > book, that's my experience, taught it dozens of times), but
> > I'm teaching Savage Inequalities again and  Monster :
> > Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member,The by Sanyika Shakur,
> > Monster Kody Scott. Word!
> >
> > Peace out,
> >
> > Terrance