Harold Bloom on the Ghastly Decline of the Humanities (and on Obama’s Poetry)

in Literature | January 14th, 2008

Open Source (iTunes Feed Web Site) is back. The radio show host­ed by Christo­pher Lydon hit some finan­cial snags last sum­mer and went off-air. Now, thanks to the Wat­son Insti­tute at Brown Uni­ver­si­ty, the pro­gram has found new life, and it’s already regain­ing some of its old momen­tum.

Right before the New Year, the show aired a three-part inter­view with Harold Bloom, Amer­i­ca’s most well known lit­er­ary crit­ic. As always, Bloom does­n’t hes­i­tate to share his views here. But he saves his sharpest remarks for when he address­es the state of the human­i­ties in the Amer­i­can acad­e­my (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site). For Bloom, a long­time pro­fes­sor at Yale, it’s not a pret­ty pic­ture. The human­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly the study of lit­er­a­ture, has “com­mit­ted sui­cide” by “going in for polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness to a sim­ply sick­en­ing degree” and “get­ting away from canon­i­cal stan­dards [and] cog­ni­tive and aes­thet­ic stan­dards.” The human­i­ties, Bloom sum­mar­i­ly says, “are not worth cel­e­brat­ing until they estab­lish them­selves as a dis­ci­pline again,” and, until some res­ur­rec­tion takes place, they won’t have the insti­tu­tion­al stand­ing of the social sci­ences. These are strong words, but frankly they’re among his milder com­ments. Have a lis­ten, and find the com­ments men­tioned above about 13 min­utes in.

For­tu­nate­ly, the con­ver­sa­tion does end on a pos­i­tive note (at least sort of). Bloom gives a kind nod to the poet­ry writ­ten by the young Barack Oba­ma (read it here), liken­ing his poems to the work of Carl Sand­burg and Langston Hugh­es. It’s fair­ly high praise, espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er that he’s will­ing to call Jim­my Carter the “worst poet in North Amer­i­ca.”

Below find the two oth­er seg­ments of the record­ed inter­view with Harold Bloom.

1) On Walt Whit­man (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

2) The Jazz Bridge (MP3 — iTunes — Feed — Web Site)

And also see our ear­li­er piece: The Art of Read­ing a Poem (Accord­ing to Harold Bloom). Here you get to lis­ten to a class where Bloom gives a crit­i­cal read­ing of a Wal­lace Stevens poem. This one is long on straight­for­ward schol­ar­ship and short on polemics.

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Smart Links

in Uncategorized | January 14th, 2008

Below, we’ve listed some links that will hopefully pique your interest. Some were sent in by readers. Many thanks for them (and feel free to send good stuff our way. Contact us here.)

* How Google Earth Unearths Ancient Cities: Yes, Google is rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing even archae­ol­o­gy.

* Nor­man Mail­er Archive Opens: It took the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas two years to orga­nize 1,000 box­es of let­ters and unpub­lished man­u­scripts writ­ten by Nor­man Mail­er. And it’s now ready, just a short two months after the author’s death. Among oth­er things, the archive hous­es cor­re­spon­dence that shows a warmer side of a writer often known for his surli­ness.

* 2007 Dar­win Awards Announced: Here’s a lit­tle dark humor. The Dar­win Awards, which “com­mem­o­rate those who improve our gene pool by remov­ing them­selves from it,” has released its awards for 2007. You can find some of the “hon­or­able men­tions” here.

* Islam, the West and the Bhut­to Lega­cy: Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Benazir Bhut­to, FORA.tv has assem­bled a video chan­nel “built around three pub­lic talks she gave in the year before her recent return to Pak­istan. Fif­teen pro­grams relat­ing to Pak­istan, Islam and approach­es to extrem­ism are now there, more will be added.”

* Clas­sic Film Clips: Over on YouTube, one of our read­ers has assem­bled a video col­lec­tion that fea­tures seg­ments from many clas­sic films — Dr. Strangelove, Metrop­o­lis, etc. It nice­ly com­ple­ments our own col­lec­tion, to which you might want to sub­scribe.

* Lost Star Wars Intro: Here’s the lost intro that mer­ci­ful­ly nev­er made it into the final film.

* Print Pub­lic Domain Books on Paper: This inter­me­di­ary ser­vice makes it easy to print paper copies of free pub­lic domain books found on the inter­net. The books are free; the print­ing is not. But it nets out well over­all. Via Red­Fer­ret

*  Best Online Doc­u­men­taries: Title is fair­ly self-explana­to­ry.

*  Sir Edmund Hillary: A Life in Pic­tures — From Nation­al Geo­graph­ic.

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Malcolm X at Oxford University 1964

in History, Video - Politics/Society | January 11th, 2008

We love find­ing these vin­tage media gems. Below, we have Mal­colm X speak­ing at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty in 1964. In this clas­sic speech, you get a good feel for Mal­colm X’s pres­ence and mes­sage and also the social issues that were alive dur­ing the day. You’ll hear X’s famous claim that lib­er­ty can be attained by “what­ev­er means nec­es­sary,” includ­ing force, if the gov­ern­ment won’t guar­an­tee it. Then there’s his notion that “intel­li­gent­ly direct­ed extrem­ism” can achieve lib­er­ty more effec­tive­ly than paci­fist strate­gies (e.g., what MLK had in mind). You can lis­ten to the speech in its entire­ty here (Real Audio), some­thing that is well worth doing. But we’d also encour­age you to watch (see below) the dra­mat­ic clos­ing min­utes and pay some atten­tion to the nice rhetor­i­cal slide — to how we get from Ham­let’s doubts (“To be or not to be”) to tak­ing up arms against state enshrined racism. This piece of video is added to our YouTube playlist.

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The Launch of Wikia Search

in Web/Tech | January 7th, 2008

There’s lots of buzz today around the launch of Wikia Search, the new search engine cre­at­ed by Wikipedia founder Jim­my Wales. It’s premised on the same ideas that made Wikipedia, Wikipedia .… open source and the pow­er of peo­ple. Here’s Jim­my Wales giv­ing a quick expla­na­tion of the project. (For a longer con­ver­sa­tion with Wales, click here.)

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Pulp Fiction Audio Tales

in Audio Books | January 7th, 2008

Here’s one for fans of hor­ror, sci-fi and hard­boiled fic­tion. Well Told Tales (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) brings you a series of “audio tales” from the pulp tra­di­tion. Each sto­ry runs some­where between 15 and 35 min­utes, and they’re pro­duced with an eye towards qual­i­ty. The mak­ers of this pod­cast select good short sto­ries. And then they get pro­fes­sion­al actors to read them, which saves you from hav­ing to endure a poten­tial­ly ama­teur pod­cast.

If these pod­casts are up your alley, then you may also want to peruse some oth­er audio­book col­lec­tions in the same genre.

• Escape­pod iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Col­lec­tions of well-reviewed sci-fi sto­ries on audio.
• Pseudo­pod iTunes Feed Web Site
  • The world’s first audio hor­ror mag­a­zine.
• Stranger Things iTunes Feed Web Site
  • This high-qual­i­ty video pod­cast fea­tures sto­ries of ordi­nary peo­ple stum­bling into strange worlds (a la The Twi­light Zone).
• The Time Trav­el­er iTunes Feed Web Site
  • Explores vin­tage Amer­i­can fic­tion. Orson Welles, Philip K. Dick, etc.
• Uto­pod iTunes — Feed — Web Site
  • A free French-lan­guage pod­cast, cre­at­ed by Lucas Moreno and and Marc Tiefe­nauer, that offers read­ings of fan­ta­sy and sci fi sto­ries writ­ten by not­ed authors across the Fran­coph­o­ne world.

NOTE: All of these pod­casts are includ­ed in our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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When 165 Thinkers Changed Their Minds

in Science | January 6th, 2008

What Have You Changed Your Mind About? — That is the ques­tion that the web­site, Edge.org, posed this year to 165 lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic minds. The answers, which are all over the map, can be found here. (Make sure that you scroll down the page a lit­tle.) Some of the more well-known thinkers to offer their thoughts include: Richard Dawkins, J. Craig Ven­ter, Daniel Gole­man, Sher­ry Turkle, Daniel Den­nett, Steven Pinker and Stew­art Brand. And then even Alan Alda is added to the mix.

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Christopher Hitchens on the Unalterable Celestial Dictatorship of God

in Religion | January 4th, 2008

I’m no fan of Christo­pher Hitchens. Actu­al­ly, I find him an almost entire­ly dis­agree­able fig­ure. But I have to give him points for cre­ativ­i­ty. Inter­viewed last week (MP3 — iTunes — Feed), Hitchens, the author of the recent best­seller God Is Not Great, gave his spiel on athe­ism and offered a unique argu­ment against God. Not against God’s exis­tence. But against God itself.

For Hitchens, if there exist­ed a God who answered prayers and inter­vened in human affairs, “we would be liv­ing under an unal­ter­able celes­tial dic­ta­tor­ship that could read our thoughts while we were asleep and con­vict us of thought crime and pur­sue us after we after are dead, and in the name of which priest­hoods and oth­er oli­garchies and hier­ar­chies would be set up to enforce God’s law.” Essen­tial­ly, we’d be liv­ing in a super­nat­ur­al Orwellian world.

In a quick cou­ple sen­tences, the the­o­ret­i­cal virtues of an all-know­ing God get turned into a vice. It’s a cre­ative and provoca­tive remark, just the kind that sells books in Amer­i­ca. Many, many books, in fact.

This bit appears about 41 min­utes into his inter­view. Dur­ing the rest of the con­ver­sa­tion, Hitchens con­tin­ues jus­ti­fy­ing his sup­port for the Iraq war and offers his thoughts on who killed Benazir Bhut­to. If you want more Hitchens, and if you want to hear Hitchens behav­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly bad­ly, you can always lis­ten to this oth­er inter­view from last year.

And don’t for­get to check out our large col­lec­tion of Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­casts.

R.E.M. George Bush Style

in Music, Video - Arts & Culture | January 3rd, 2008

This cre­ative bit has been mak­ing the rounds in the world of web 2.0. If it holds appeal, you can also check out the George Bush ver­sion of U2’s Sun­day Bloody Sun­day and Tony Blair doing the Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go?. All videos have been added to our YouTube Playlist. (Feel free to sub­scribe.)

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Classics from The Atlantic Monthly

in Uncategorized | January 2nd, 2008

The Atlantic Month­ly has been around a long time. Since 1857 to be exact. And, over the many years, it has pub­lished works by leg­endary authors. Quite nice­ly, The Atlantic web site makes avail­able some of these clas­sic writ­ings for free (although if you’re a sub­scriber you’ll get access to much more). Here are a few that we uncov­ered:

• The Aure­lian — Vladimir Nabokov (1941)
• A True Sto­ry, Repeat­ed Word for Word As I Heard It — Mark Twain (1874)
• The Facts Con­cern­ing the Recent Car­ni­val of Crime in Con­necti­cut — Mark Twain (1876)
• Some Ram­bling Notes of an Idle Excur­sion — Mark Twain (1877)
• A Tele­phon­ic Con­ver­sa­tion — Mark Twain (1880)
• The Dis­turber of the Traf­fic — Rud­yard Kipling (1891)

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Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore

in Current Affairs, Film, Politics | January 2nd, 2008

The Iowa cau­cus is final­ly and mer­ci­ful­ly upon us. And right in time, film­mak­er Michael Moore has offered an analy­sis of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic field of can­di­dates. There’s much here that I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly agree with here, but Moore makes two large claims that strike me as being fun­da­men­tal­ly (and regret­ful­ly) true:

• The “Demo­c­ra­t­ic front-run­ners are a less-than-stel­lar group of can­di­dates, and … none of them are the slam dunk we wish they were.”
• “For months I’ve been want­i­ng to ask the ques­tion, “Where are you, Al Gore?” You can only pol­ish that Oscar for so long. And the Nobel was decid­ed by Scan­di­na­vians! I don’t blame you for not want­i­ng to enter the viper pit again after you already won. But get­ting us to change out our incan­des­cent light bulbs for some irri­tat­ing flu­o­res­cent ones isn’t going to save the world. All it’s going to do is make us more agi­tat­ed and jumpy and feel­ing like once we get home we haven’t real­ly left the office.”

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