David Bromwich slams English-Class-as-Show-and-Tell.

Friday, cigarette #1
Outside RDU airport, 7:40am

I'm glad to see Phi Beta Cons taking notice of Stanley Fish's new book, because I've been looking for an excuse to dredge up this quote from my other favorite candidate for "The Left's answer to Closing of the American Mind," David Bromwich's Politics By Other Means:

. . . To give a public lecture on a literary subject may now mean to address not an audience of peers, who are relied on to know the material as well as the lecturer, but an audience of fellow strivers eager to be entertained. In such company, works of the mind are viewed with something of the interest children bring to show-and-tell.

David Bromwich cuts through the tangle of the canon wars — which at Yale still results in occasional skirmishes between "The Western Canon is, objectively, the best expression of human values!" and "Yeah, if by 'values' you mean 'oppression!'" — by pointing out that whether we pick a canon of dead white men or paraplegic Chicanas we should at least pick one, because an English department where certain texts are practically in the air supply will cultivate different habits of mind than an English department that's just a lot of "Come look what I found!"