Monday, June 1, 2015

Starving Liberal Artistry

The Bookocracy

Reading lots of books all my life,
mostly literature and philosophy, 
 pop science, various aspects of
religious experience, holy texts
and pious commentary, writing 
 analytical papers and dissertations,
teaching and exploring in classrooms 
from 7th grade to college senior seminars
—what anyone might call the practice
of liberal art has not made a nice person
out of me. I’m still basically as ignore-ant
as ever, discriminating, a bad listener,
 un-empathetic, narcissistic, a procrustean
cherry picker  ripping off from the whole
what suits my agenda same as  I always was.
Me first.   Granted, I’m aware of IT where 
before: oblivious and defensive.  


I don’t mind Hating & have a calling for it. 
But I hate to see others doing it and feel
compelled to give them a hard time best I can.
I know that sounds hypocritical or contradictory
or inconsistent—but that’s a language problem. 
"Words are so inadequate, Sam," my students
remind me and they are right. My hate is of a
higher order—in tune with god or the universe
or nature: hating the haters. Scolding the scolders.
Mocking the mockers. Besides: I am large—
I contain multitudes.


33 comments:

  1. http://liberate.org/2014/11/03/faq-what-if-legalism-isnt-the-problem/#

    I think there is a profound thought there, that being "bad" is a form of legalism or self-rightousness, or self-saving, as we all struggle with it one way or another.

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  2. And this one: Levant interviewing Chomsky. Youtube threw that one at me.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgxLvwKhvmY

    Levant was student union president at the University of Alberta after my time. I think he makes some good points while looking a little out-matched. A good little debate, don't you think?

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  3. I'm deluged with reading student end-of-semester writing, so I won't take on these links. Chomsky is a hero: is profound work in linguistics (Deep, Structural, and Surface Grammar distinctions.) .Also a political liberal. I'm more interested in your thoughts about these matters than listening to links from others. (You know me and long quotes)

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  4. I can wait. I am deluged, too. June is that way.

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  5. Hello, Sam. Just beginning to read your posts. I'll comment as I have time. Can't believe you're still doing this. Thirty-one years was all I could manage. More than half a century ago, you forced me to read The Bear. I was sixteen, and I've been reading Faulkner ever since. Thanks.

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    1. Faulkner's paradise lost and one of the best hunting stories ever, Was it a Jordan HS or Warren Wilson?

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    2. It was Jordan, and I used to drop by your office at NCSU as well. How long have you been an insomniac?

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    3. Comes with age. I sleep good--from c. 8:00 to 5:00, You got me guessing. Jordan was an apocalypse for me (unveiling)--didn't know squat and was forced to make Socratic virtue of it. Probably my best teachIing though running on fear and trembling. After finishing grad school I knew stuff and wasn't as effective.

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  6. So when did the curmudgeon appear?

    The only thing Jordan unveiled for me was the boredom of it all; and as the only proper response to that was some sort of self-immolation, I spent 31 years teaching English, including 11 years at Jordan.

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  7. Taught 3 years at a Quaker school (7 & 8) in Pa. before coming down to teach at Jordan, part of my MAT program. College is a lot easier. We did "The Bear" as juniors. I remember Ben Campbell going to the board to explain some card game in an earlier story. The daughter of his first wife went to WWC, Rose McClarney and is doing some recognized poetry. Wendy Salinger was in touch a few years back. And Bill DeTurk sent a album he'd made. I had some of you 2 years straight--10 and 11 grades. I see Don Knowles on FB associated with sports cars, Carolyn (blond) and her younger sister (Hadley? blond) I passed walking home years ago--younger sister living down the road and raising Australian Ridgebacks . Curmudgeon? Just trying to provoke, evoke, taunt, tease, twerk and be liked, really liked. My version of publish and perish--virtual Hyde Park and Groves of Academe. Cerebral yoga. Keeps me in game. You in Durham?

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  8. The Hackney sisters are Carolyn and Dudley. I always wanted a portal into Ben Campbell's brain - absolutely the most interesting person in our class, and probably the smartest. I wish Ben blogged, but he's escaped beyond the ether; I can't even get his brother-in-law to reveal his whereabouts. We've lost the other two English teachers in our class, Fred and Margo, as well as the Hill twins and Ralph Travis, whom you missed teaching as he arrived as a senior. Such a lot gone from that rarefied little group. Eloise was also a teacher, but I can't recall what she taught.

    Your son(?) Jonathan and my son John apparently share a love of indie rock. Both my children went their own ways, something I was never able to do, and I don't know whether they did it because of me or despite me or both. They are the joy of my dotage and their mother, the best woman in the world, has somehow stuck with me for forty-two years. I'm not only still in Durham, but still at the same address. I'm twice the size I was in your class - all width, no height, the only consolation being that it's generally muscle and not fat. I should be unrecognizable to the people from fifty years ago, but that never seems to be the case. I would love to have conversations with Wendy Salinger, not about the revelations in her book, but about Richard Wilbur, whose poetry fascinates me. I don't do social media. In fact, what I have shared here is probably 75% of my output for the last decade.

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  9. Fred Rawlings? Margo ----? The Hill twins--both blonds, one with ironed hair? The other--trying to recall. A little larger? Lost? l "Coached" Fred tennis into the finals at UNC. Wendy had some fascination with Randall Jarrell who I think committed suicide walking the highway between Durham and Chapel Hill. She may be able to give a clue to Ben Campbell--my student Rose McLarney said he went thru some emotional difficulties. I remember "teaching" some Emerson and thought he might get down on paper some of the bromides. "Got in here," he tells me--pointing to his head. What's the connection (other than indie rock) between Jonathan and John? Chapel Hill? He's been managing a ski resort in Utah for the past 25 years--& Liz does horses--teaching, training. trading, showing. Gone their own ways. My wife (next best-woman in the world) grew up in Durham--which is how I got down there. Social media is my virtual Hyde Park and Groves of Academia and I get more decent converse action from it than locally. What are you doing in retirement?

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  10. Twerk? Really? At your age?
    I may have the ass for it, but it ain't gonna happen.

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  11. Yes, Fred, Margo Powell, and Susan and Nancy Hill are all deceased. And, yes, Randall Jarrell did die out on NC 54. I'm sure our sons have never met, but they both have an interest in Merge Records. The Merge owners also came through Jordan. John is a fine musician with an excellent mind, but he dropped out of Jordan to pursue music in San Francisco. Never a moment of college but he has been successful and has quite a bit of influence in Triangle music. He's now more management and promotion than actual performance. Works way too hard and has a lot of respect in the music community. My daughter, Anna, is a farmer in Snow Camp. She and her husband provide a refuge for rescue animals and do some real farming. She was a horticulture major at State and he brings in the coin from IBM. His undergraduate degrees are in English and physics and his graduate degree is in linguistics. He taught ESL at UCLA until poverty got the best of him and he went with IBM. They eventually sent him the RTP and he and Anna met.

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  12. All that efflorescence, bifurcation, branching generating (among other things) out of a handful of us talking about "the Bear" in a school trailer, early 60's--in pride and humility. Had a student from Jordan in my Linguistics course last fall. My brother Jon quit college to do music--ended up eventually as part-time tenured prof at UofUtah teaching composing for dance. Rest of the year, in Santa Cruz. Anna: "grace' --my wife's name--2nd best wife in the whole world). A lot of death and dying in that small group--all of whose faces I see, shining and healthy.

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  13. Makes me think of Agee in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men -- "Who are you who will read these words and study these photographs, and through what cause, by what chance, . . . ." And then his ruminations on the inevitability. That's as close to philosophy as I can get. And yet, my daughter reads Bertrand Russell. All I can think is How? Why? For me, it's akin to drinking Milk of Magnesia. You would like Anna. Best read person I know. She and Billy make quite a pair. He's lapsed Catholic from Toledo. Carries that tanker load of guilt everywhere. Has to save everybody from themselves. He's a volunteer fireman and an EMT when he's not at IBM or farming. I'm sure he wears hairshirts and is a self-flagellant. But we all love him. You have to. And of course, they met at AA.

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  14. Attended EA (emotions anonymous) for a year after my fourth and final institutionalization (depression and mania) back in 1980. Same protocol as AA--between hospitalizations (the first was my first year at Jordan) I finished degrees, taught at State, ( politely let go after 2 rehabs in 6 months), moved to Warren Wilson, served as dean for 6 years and then one final depression took me out of administration and into so-called teaching for the past 30 years where I'm out of the loops but still in the game. Too much milk of magnesia in the early years (undergrad philosophy major). .When are you going to unveil? Been trying to recall who visited me at State and can't quite...

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  15. Did both undergrad and graduate degrees at State. Went there majoring in applied math with a Ford Foundation scholarship. That lasted two years. Became a protege of Jim Clark and Richard Walser, so English. I was the smallest person in your class except, perhaps, Susan Jenkins. Morning and night I milked cows on the family farm. Was smart enough to stand as peer to Donna Elliott and Steve Bowling throughout our years at Hope Valley, but by ninth grade, I was bored with the whole thing and was nobody's idea of a good student. Does that help?

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  16. Milking cows rings a bell--not loud. I remember Steve Bowling walking into the trailer pleased with the word "grandiloquent' and now that you mention Donna Elliot I recall a quiet faced brunette. The name Susan Jenkins sounds familiar--but no face. If your were good at math and literature (poetry) you share the genius qualities of Minister D--August Dupin's nemesis, though Dupin had the added advantage of being empathetic--which made him a master master-mind and able to outwit the purloiner. There was a fellow in the class ahead of you--Hugh something--dour and ironic, told me a looked like a woodpecker one day when my hair was seemingly pony-tailed. And then a some what long faced smart girl who adored Ayn Rand. I'm trying to sweep the corners here--a total of 4 classes in that trailer. Dudley's class I had 10 and 11. Your class: just 11.

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  17. I'm certainly no Dupin, though I would embrace the empathy. Hugh Maxwell is still dour and ironic and spent many years teaching German at Northern and Jordan. I suspect the "long faced smart girl" with a penchant for Ayn Rand was Virginia Naylor who was Dudley's classmate. Steve is at MIT with government contracts in sonar development. Donna is a psychiatrist in Chapel Hill and Susan Jenkins is a pediatrician in Chattanooga.

    Do you remember Laurie O'Neal (Dudley's class)? Jane Roberts (also Dudley's class) told me the most horrific tale concerning Laurie's family. It's mind boggling in its awfulness and occurred at a time when family considerations kept me preoccupied and unaware of what was going on among people I had known very well. So I have to distance myself from the particulars of the case, but it's sort of like something that Faulkner and James Elroy might write together.
    When Hodge O'Neal came to Duke as dean of the law school, he and his family lived in a house beside our farm. I enjoyed the family - Hodge and his wife Annie Laurie and the three children - Laurie, Mark and Dee. I must have been about twelve when Laurie gave me my introduction to William Faulkner. I have no recollection why, but she pulled out a scrapbook or two from her mother's graduate years at UVA when she was apparently graduate assistant to Faulkner. I'm not sure I knew what the Nobel Prize was then and I had certainly never heard of Faulkner, but the presentation of the scrapbooks was significant enough that I have always remembered it. Dee at that time was only a little tot. By the time she was in her teens, she had developed some hefty emotional difficulties and spent time either in public or private institutions, perhaps John Umstead at Butner. My own awareness of the details of this is so fractured that I hesitate to include it in a public venue, but there must be some truth at its core. Apparently Dee came home for a visit at a holiday time (Thanksgiving?), dissension arose at the dinner table, Dee took a knife from the table, stabbed her mother, and killed her. For me, the ghost of Faulkner has always hung over that story.

    Speaking of James Elroy, Anna has always been a big fan, and about a decade ago I was in LA waiting for John to headline at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. I was browsing a bookshop directly across Sunset Blvd. and ran into Elroy, whereupon I immediately bought a whole trove of his books, including a ghastly coffee table book of early LA crime scene photos, and had him inscribe all of them for Anna. You never know.

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  18. Are you writing in yr "retirement"--you got the sound Voice is everything, yes? Content's galore. My son replies to me: " I do know Merge. Great label out of Chapel Hill started by a classmate. Who is his son? What's his last name?" As long as we're morbid--how did the 4 die? Virginia N. may have been the long-face Rand fan, but I recollect her as in Carolyn H. and Wendy S's class. Seniors. My wife grew up in Durham, dated Nello Teer, went to Durham High; her dad was head of medical illustration at Duke--good friends and go-fer for Mary Semans. You still milking mornings and evenings?
    .

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    1. Okay, my son's name is John Booker. Does that help? All four died of cancer. Susan was the last victim. Virginia Naylor was in Dudley's class. Tall girl and very smart. Had dinner with Nello's nephew(?) last Thursday. (Anyway, Mary Teer Barringer's son. The huge iconic Hope Valley house at the corner of Hope Valley and Chelsea. The one with the miniature version of itself in the front yard. Mary's playhouse, I think.) He's head of the Jordan Alumni Association. He was talking about the Google executives and other Silicon Valley perps who are Jordan grads and contribute liberally to Jordan needs. I, with malice aforethought, asked about Carley Fiorina, whereupon he exclaimed, loud enough for the whole room to hear, "She's a bitch!" Then he clasped both hands tightly over his mouth. I haven't enjoyed anything so much in quite a while.

      Durham will miss Mary Semans for years to come. She was my grandmother's cousin through the Angiers. I recall walking through Mapelwood Cemetery (morbid, again, but beautiful), listening to her observations on generations of Durhamites. She was having so much fun, she called Jim to come and join us.

      I don't milk anymore, but my daughter and son-in-law do. I don't write. I remember an anecdote from Richard Walser concerning Victor Hugo, who was a modest man who hated writing. Apparently, the only way he could do it was to strip naked in his study and throw his clothes in the hall. His wife would collect them and return them when he had produced a set number of pages. Since that moment, I've felt a great affinity for Hugo.

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    2. I am beginning to get an image of a Booker (Calvin? no--I've got a Calvin now) seated on the left, the desks nearest the trailer entrance. You must have been quiet--dutiful maybe although you say bored. Amazing: cancer. It never seemed ubiquitous back in he 50's I still have an image of smart Naylor in Carolyn's class (senior). You guys were all smart. I got depressed teaching "Paradise Lost"-- my know-nothing Socratic pedagogy hitting the skids for awhile. Jim Semans joined our board and he and Mary would drive over. She was generous and good spirited, he was genial and affable. My writing is all conversational--response to students, FB and faculty which I blog--hoping to provoke but hardly succeeding.

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  19. I forgot to ask. Do you recall a student at WW named Wendy Underwood? I taught her at Sanderson High many years ago, '72 I think. John is a great fan of James Falco. Did you have dealings with him at WW?

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    1. Don't recall Wendy U. I came here in 71. James Franco is in his second degree program--Fiction now having take one in Poetry. Well liked.

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  20. Of course I meant Franco. I'm happy to be at that point where I can blame age.

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  21. Had a cousin named Calvin. He and two of his siblings also died of cancer. But I'm Curtis. I certainly was not dutiful, and if quiet, that was because I hadn't read the assignment. As seniors, we had the unfortunately named Katherine Looney, and as you and Gertrude Chewning had spoiled us, it didn't go well. We drove her . . . , well, you know. She had a bosomy student teacher from Duke who I felt mainly wanted to bed the boys. She taught us the Cavalier Poets, which was fine. After that, Mr. Teer removed the advanced class from Miss Looney's tutelage and put us in Carol Bilbro's trailer with an old lady from UNC who, for our sins, regaled us with Milton for the rest of the year. We did Lost, we did Regained, we did Samson Agonistes, we did the Areopagitica, which I think was the only one I read. It was short and I liked freedom of the press. Then, mercifully, we graduated, with the threat of Lycidas hanging over our heads. After elementary school, I was never a dutiful student. In fact, I really didn't do high school at all. There's a reason you can't quite remember me. I didn't really do college either, but Viet Nam always breathed hotly on our necks. My senior year at State, the draft lottery appeared and my number was 364. So I did my student teaching at Sanderson in Raleigh and stayed there for the next 11 years. My grandfather subsidized teacher penury. So during that time I got married, had kids, got in a row with the principal and walked out on the tenth of March and came home to Durham where I taught for the next 20 years.

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  22. Curtis Booker: yes--I remember the name (I was close with Calvin). Were you on (my) left side of the trailer? Were you with Ben (juniors)? in which case I "taught" you one year. Or with Dudley--in which case--soph and jr. years? A dentist from your class has been practicing in Asheville (Tommy?--no) for years, but I haven't seen him. Mrs. Chewning was a legend. Mr. Smith as Principle--good old guy who the legend has it: would take his teeth out from time to time.Doug Koestler (Duke classmate of my wife) coached basketball. I think Carol Bilbro took over the seniors from me, my second year. Were we at State together (68-70)? All that Milton was way over my head--awful to read. I concentrated on Am lit at Duke--much more accessible. I was walked out of State and walked out of deaning. What keeps you occupied now?

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  23. Ben and I, Fred, Donna, Steve, etc., were classmates. Gertrude Chewning was our teacher at Southern and opening year at Jordan. T. W. Teer was principal during your second year. John Smith was on "sabbatical," actually rehab. My mom was his pharmacist and he took some heavy stuff. I graduated State in 1970. Weren't you in grad school with Jim Clark? And didn't you come to State together? I admire Dr. Clark profoundly and he still intimidates me a little. He has absolute mastery of that genteel Southern thing, a sort of laconic industriousness, a taciturn gentility that no one possesses or can possess. I always feel the need to genuflect. There always seems to be so much he could tell me, if he would.

    In retirement, I take care of older relatives; my mother, at 92, tops the list. There are trusts and family properties that I have somehow had custodial responsibility for since 1996. My children and some cousins are desirous of liquidation, so I try to balance that desire with overall fiduciary responsibility and hope to bring it all to a close in the next decade. Perhaps making everybody rich in the bargain. In the meantime, it makes me tired.

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  24. Joyce Wasdell--another Jordan star for me. Can almost remember Jim Clark--Ben Stein and another fellow: we all came over from Duke together. I see that class ahead of you (Jordan's first graduating class) is having its 50th. Sounds like you're busy with practical things that matter, I have no skills whatsoever, being one for whom I teach because I can't do--so I mean to take IT a year at a time as long as I stay unembarrassed at embarrassing myself. Good talking with you, Curtis. Best to you and your family.

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  25. Thanks, Sam. I feel as though I've gotten to know you all over again. Saw John in concert in Raleigh last evening. I'll check in again some day. Our fiftieth is next year. I'll relay details to you. We'd love for you to take your bike down the mountain to see those of us who are left.
    My best to all the Scovilles.

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  26. Does your son have a website or page or any music on line? Great shooting the shit with you. Any time. It was a privilege taking over The Smart Kids from Mrs. Chewning and learning how to teach out of ignorance. Somewhat handicapped by my small knowledge ever since but still finding it a resource.

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