Monday, 03 July 2006

Theory & Comics, Together At Last (Again); or, What If...?

[X-posted to the Valve.  The reason for the "again" above, if you're curious.]

Passage from a letter excerpted in Ernest Jone's The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (3:392):

If I had my life to live over again, I should devote myself to telepathy rather than to psychoanalysis.

To which I can only say this:

What would the world look like if Freud had his druthers?  What would theory debates look like?  What claims made?  I planned on outlining this all, but got so involved in the gimmick I'm too tired to make the joke.

Jul 3, 2006 11:15:28 PM | Academia, Books, Dissertation, Evolution, Film, Literary Journalism, Literary Theory, Literature, Philosophy, Television, Weblogs

4 Comments

The Little Womedievalist

Nice.

Posted by: The Little Womedievalist | Monday, 03 July 2006 at 11:22 PM

Scott Eric Kaufman

Do you mean, "nice" like "sweet"? "Super-sweet"? Or "Blah blah blah, you're a nice guy, blah blah blah"?

Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Monday, 03 July 2006 at 11:23 PM

wendy

Well, I think we can all agree that Freud has some strange views; but, I believe that debates are tough enough as they are!

Posted by: wendy | Tuesday, 04 July 2006 at 04:20 PM

Scott Eric Kaufman

Wendy, what a sad attempt at spam. I mean, you should at least put the links to words. It took me a couple of seconds to center the cursor over punctuation marks, much less click on the link "brokencredit." (If I'd been inclined to do so, that is.)

Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Wednesday, 05 July 2006 at 12:10 PM

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Literature Today: A Link Dump Like No Other Some regular readers who don't regularly read the Valve asked why I'm not x-posting my literary link dumps. Since I couldn't muster much of a response, I caved. (Don't worry, I have another post planned for the evening, and it is something else, I tell you, something else.) I. Thanks to the passage of time, terrorism is now an acceptable novelistic subject. Just don’t make it Middle Eastern terrorism, because according to Brad Thor, “We’re getting Islamic terrorist fatigue.” Harper Lee, 80, returns to the public eye old: “[In] an abundant society where people have laptops, cellphones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.” Film novelization is a dying art, and that’s a shame, because “Quadrophenia [was] surprisingly good.” Realism must embrace fundamentalism or risk losing its license. The remains Sophia, Nathaniel and Una Hawthorne all repose now in Concord. “It’s very emotional,” explains Imogen Howe, “They know now in spirit that everyone is reunited.” Being dead, Sophia, Nathaniel and Una were unavailable for comment. Few in Macondo Aracataca care about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. Or they’re unpersuaded that a town he hasn’t visited in 20 years can bank on his name. Finally, the announcement of my new project, an attempt to create an abstract database for literary scholars. II. This week on Bill Moyer’s Faith & Reason: Salman Rushdie. (Check local listings.) Future episodes to include Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Mary Gordon, David Grossman, Colin McGinn, Richard Rodriguez, Anne Provoost, Will Power and Jeanette Winterson. Complaints against clumsy literary erotica mount. David Morrell, Canadian author of First Blood and holder of a Ph.D. in American Literature from Penn State, won the 2005 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel for Creepers. (Stephen King thinks him “chilling and hypnotically readable.” Frank Gado, reviewing John Barth: An Introduction, disagrees.) Malawi must seek beyond its borders for quality literature, says MacMillan’s Constantine Simwaka: “Most Malawians are not creative enough to produce works that may attract the youth to read more.” Publishers are determined to bring bling to literature. “Mental Case,” whose real name is Sal Dizzal, attributes the genre’s anticipated success to the fact that “People like to hear and read about where they come from, and the public [in general] wants to hear the gangster folklore.” Harry Potter is the source of Latin mania across the UK. If you enjoyed that story, you may also find “violence“ and “changes to waste disposal“ of interest. From beyond the grave, Chesteron continues to win converts. III. Time magazine demands answers, slackers: “Who is the Voice of Your Generation?” Has he or she been unjustly neglected? An impoverished idiot complains about literary theory’s infiltration of the Fed. From literary theory to Critical Race Theory, yet she still likes T.S. Eliot. Homer is a woman, maybe: The idea of a woman writing The Iliad and not being bored out of her mind by the endless fighting and...
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Welcome Readers of Inside Higher Ed Scott's article neatly summarizes the situation circa two weeks ago, but I suspect his panel had more of an impact than he suggested. Since we spoke, I've received offers to review three pre-publication manuscripts and one published book. (The book—Julian Wolfreys' The Old Story, With a Difference—will be reviewed on the Valve in the coming weeks.) I'll follow up later today with a more substantial response to Scott's article. The potential conjunction of academia's reputation economy and academic publishing's bottom line could have a substantial impact on the future of the profession, and thus is something whose implications I need more than a single cup of coffee to work through. (A damning expose on performance-enhancing drugs in academia, next on Inside Higher Ed? Not quite. I just need a few more hours of warm-up reading before I'm able to think about anything, much less something with implications.)

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