Self-Educating
Despite being impossibly busy between curricular and extra curricular activities, in addition to the incessant and omnipresent quest for a summer internship, I have begun a new challenge, hopefully something that I will be able to tangibly track on this blog.
Partially inspired by this post (the other two parts being a complete pillage of my uncle’s college textbooks, in addition to a friend’s recent quest to become Gordon Gekko), I have begun a quest to self-educate myself on selected topics. Why, you might ask? Despite the fact that I already dual-major and minor (for inquiring minds: Finance/International Political Economy, Latin American Studies), I find myself yearning additional stimulation.
After a minuscule amount of internet researching, I thought I would open this up to community discourse. Below are the subjects I have narrowed my interests down to, in addition to a rationale behind each one, with the materials I have at my disposal in parenthesis.
I am looking for a) additional subjects that may be deemed essential to my “rounding” that I may have missed out on.
b) tips/resources to implement a self-education regimen.
c) essential resources in addition to the ones I have listed below, whether it be books, websites etc.
I’m not sure whether I can realistically dedicate myself to all 6 of these subjects, and I fear intermittent study would prove more detrimental to anything. The key, as I see it, is to develop a routine: maybe an hour of the day cordoned off for self-education, regardless of any other commitments I may have that day. No doubt, this may be increasingly easier to implement over the summer. I’ll have to begin experimenting, and check back in.
- Chess – The game of Chess has always interested me. As young as elementary school, I played Chess both with my father and during a lunch time Chess club. However, I never significantly committed myself to the game beyond the occasional recreational game. I think the thought processes behind the game could prove vital across many disciples. (Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess)
- The Classics – I love to read. As it stands, reading takes up a significant part of my day. However, I find myself seeking out increasingly recreational reads as my curricular load has grown (although I’m currently LOVING Bill Simmons’ Book of Basketball.) I would love to begin delving into some of the “classics,” specifically Don Quixote. This is an area where I could use more recommendations. (The Complete Works of William Shakespeare)
- Lynda.com (Internet-y stuff) – As a student, we have complete access to the Lynda.com library. As Howard Lindzon recently gushed over Twitter, Lynda is the real deal. There are a TON of tutorials that I’d likely find valuable, but some of the ones that I’ve keyed into include Adobe Photoshop, Dreamweaver (CSS), and Microsoft Excel advanced applications. Again, any recs? (Lynda.com)
- French – A language that I have decent application in. However, like they say about languages, if you don’t use it, you lose it. This is where I grabbed a majority of my booty, I now have a small army of mid-70’s French textbooks at my disposal. (A small army of mid-70’s French textbooks)
- Portuguese – My third language (not counting English), and probably the one I need to study the most, being as I’ll be in Brazil this time next year. I’ve taken all three Portuguese classes that Penn State’s lackluster program has to offer (ahem). I’m considering auditing the most advanced class that I’ve already taken, although I’m unsure whether I’ll find it overly repetitive and/or below my level. I’ve yet to be impressed by the Rosetta Stone series I’ve procured (sorry, impossibly expensive on a student’s budget.) (Ponto de Encontro + Workbook, my college notes, Rosetta Stone)
- Economics – An area that I’ve already pursued somewhat in my curriculum. It seems like between my two areas of study there may be a small information gap, one that I’m happy to fill independently. Moreso macro than micro. (A dated 70’s Macroeconomics textbook that seems pretty comprehensive)
Again, I’m really looking for some assistance on this one. Any tips and/or recommendation would be greatly appreciated.
The MNR, POR, and the Bolivian Revolution of 1952
To prove that I haven’t been slacking off entirely, I decided to post my latest history paper, titled The MNR, POR, and the Bolivian Revolution of 1952. Although I’m pretty sure this paper will have a niche audience, it brings to mind some pretty uniform lessons of Latin American politics and their shortcomings to date. Also, as this website also acts as an online portfolio of sorts: it may get me hired by the Bolivian government.
I have been additionally blogging over at the PSEN blog (Penn State Entrepreneurs Network), where I provide musings on entrepreneurship. I assume that this blog will continue to promote whatever ideas spring into my mind in the long-form style that I’ve posted with so far. Hang in there.
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The MNR, POR, and the Bolivian Revolution of 1952
Had Engels and Marx designed the state themselves, it is unlikely that they could have created a more archetypal case study for the prerequisites for a socialist revolution than Bolivia in the 40’s and 50’s. Originally a Spanish colony, Bolivia suffered from political and economic instability for more than 100 years, since its independence in 1842. As a result of its instability, Bolivia was an agrarian society, with 72% of its population working as “campesinos,” or farming peasants. The campesinos were subjected to severely inadequate land distribution, low wages, and unfair treatment, working within the Bolivian “hacienda” system, resembling feudal systems of the Middle Ages. The deplorable condition of the hacienda system met the qualifications for Marxist “super-exploitation,” meaning that the campesinos were paid less than the value of their own subsistence. The peasantry was caught in a state of perpetual oppression, as landowners had no incentive to modernize their means of production due to the abundance of cheap labor available to them.
Despite the predominance of Bolivian agriculture proportionally, profits from the sector only made up 1/3 of the country’s total GDP. The other 2/3 was almost entirely due to tin exports, employing a sizable proletariat class of miners. The interests of the mines were in the hands of the few: a rosca, or oligarchy, was responsible for reaping the profits of the miner’s efforts. Tin, Bolivia’s sole source of export production, was innately tied to the international economy. As such, following the market crashes of the 1930’s, Tin prices fell exponentially, never again reaching their 1929-level prices. The proletarian miners found their wages decreasing more and more each year, as global market demand for the low-quality tin decreased.
The Bolivian population was subject to the ills of capitalism and the class struggle, two of socialism’s most notorious enemies. Leftist political parties began to spring up during the early periods of military rule. These parties quickly grew in popularity, providing an alternative to the bourgeois Conservative and Liberal parties that dominated Bolivian politics in prior periods of democracy. These new parties espoused the virtues of socialism, focusing on the literature of the great communist minds, namely Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, and Engels.
Of the left-leaning political parties, the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) assumed the role of vanguard revolutionary power in Bolivia. Starting in September 1949, the MNR, echoing the need for Marx and Engels’ “smashing” of the state, organized and armed the civilian population, forming urban and rural militias. After initially attempting to seek power through democratic means and being discredited, the MNR soon realized that an armed revolution was the singular solution.
The Bolivian Revolution of 1952, despite containing the requisites of a socialist revolution, was a failure from its inception, ultimately straying significantly from a socialist revolution. The nationalist MNR party found itself falling into the traps implicitly forewarned by the forefathers of the socialist movement in their most infamous texts. By acquiescing to every demand of the proletariat and peasant classes following its rise to power, the MNR and its allies assumed the role of “yes-man,” creating a society strife with bureaucracy, greed, and economic ineptitude, while the ideologically-slanted Revolutionary Worker’s Party (POR) stood idly by; “a revolution betrayed.”
One of the most significant shortcomings of the Bolivian revolution can be directly ascribed to the role of the POR. The POR was initially founded in the mid-30’s, ascertaining to follow a hard-line “Trotsky-ist” stance. During most of the early 40’s, the POR maintained a strong support base among Bolivia’s mining community, proving instrumental in the formation of the Miner’s Federation, henceforth referred to as the FSTMB. As the FSTMB grew steadily in numbers, so did their influence in Bolivian politics. In response to the short-lived military coup of Gualberto Villarroel, the FSTMB met collectively in the city of Puyacayo, establishing the “Thesis of Puyacayo.” The thesis was an overtly Trotsky-ist document, calling for a “worker’s revolution,” no doubt a result of the heavy influence of the POR party within the union ranks. However, as the elections of 1951 approached, the POR-dominated FSTMB and the POR itself took a backseat to the MNR, rallying instead around their candidate for President and writing his speeches. This paradigm continued through the Revolution of 1952, when armed miners marched on Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, overtaking the “mestizo” rosca and bringing the MNR to power.
Following the Trotsky-ist agenda laid out in Results & Prospects, the MNR began its tenure as the vanguard party of the revolution by taking up the struggle for “bourgeois issues,” such as campesino rights, and the nationalization of the mines. These “bread and butter issues” were a direct result of the demands of their proletariat and peasant constituency, building off the POR-penned Thesis of Puyacayo written more than 10 years prior. Its first official action as ruling party was an edict of universal suffrage, abolishing the previous literacy requirement which prevented most campesinos from voting, expanding the voting base from 200,000 to 1,000,000 and guaranteeing themselves a support base for future elections. The MNR proceeded to gut the army, yet never disbanding it entirely. Again, this paralleled the POR’s Trotsky-ist vision of revolution, clearly outlined in Trotsky’s Results and Prospects: “[the revolution's] first task will have to be the dismissal from the army and administration of all those who are stained with the blood of the people, and the cashiering or disbandment of the regiments which have most sullied themselves with crimes against the people.” [5] However, the overt Trotsky-ist agenda that characterized the MNR’s initial actions in power quickly disappeared, as months passed without any action.
Since its inception, the MNR had been a strictly nationalist party, with nationalist issues at the forefront of their agenda. The MNR carried with it no ideological or independent vision of political and economic development. As such, the POR always acted as the ideological backbone of the party, writing the MNR’s campaign speeches and forming its platforms. The bourgeois leadership of the MNR juggled the popular sentiment of two primary, yet separate, constituent groups – the proletariat class and the peasant class. As Arganaras aptly puts it in his paper Bolivia’s Transformist Revolution, “the revolutionary alliance was led by two forces endowed with divergent state wills.” [3] Before long, this led to fractioned fighting within the party itself, swaying left and right with each gust of revolutionary demand.
One of the MNR’s first decisions as acting party was to consolidate the labor unions of Bolivia into a singular entity, known as the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB.) The FSTMB took up a large portion of the newly formed union, bringing along the POR’s Trotsky-ist influence, carrying with it FSTMB’s figurehead, Juan Lechín. Per José Villa: “the POR was the most important and influential party within the COB, which was itself the dominant power in the country.” [1] The POR saw the election of the MNR as a “transition” step; they were in a perfect position to create significant progress towards an eventual dictatorship of the proletariat. Villa explains: “…the POR considered that the left wing elements of the governing party would ‘proceed to their logical conclusion, that is to say, evolve towards forming a workers and peasants government’.” [1] The logical transition, according to Villa, would be the transformation of the COB into a soviet, a relatively simple task relative to the POR’s influence within the Union. Despite this “opportunity,” the POR and its leader, Guillermo Lora, listlessly obliged with the MNR, continuing their unbridled support of the MNR leadership with the utopian assumption that the revolution would run its natural course. By postponing their agenda for the future, the POR blatantly failed to heed the warnings of Lenin in The State and Revolution, in which he describes the “transition” step as “a surrender to opportunism; for at present the opportunists ask nothing better than to “safely leave to the future” all fundamental questions of the tasks of the proletarian revolution.” [2]
As the months progressed, the miners grew increasingly inpatient. They and their COB coalition pressed the MNR to follow through with one of its primary platforms: the nationalization of Bolivia’s primary export factor, tin. The MNR, caving to COB pressure, established the Comibol in August 31st, 1952 as the nationalized mining corporation of Bolivia. The formation of the Comibol brought 2/3 of Bolivia’s mines under national control, leaving 1/3 of the remaining mines in private hands. Coincidentally, the remaining private mines all had a similar quality: they were foreign owned, primarily direct trusts of the United States. This represents an obvious fractioning within the MNR party: while leftists of the party clearly opposed the decision and sought out more government control over the economy, the right wing of the MNR hoped to solve the nation’s problems with aid from the United States. The POR offered little resistance to these measures, clearly enacted far from Lenin’s presumed role of government (“…watching over the true interests of society.”) [2] Villa explains “The POR called for the nationalization of the land, mines, and railways, but did not call upon the workers and peasants to carry it out themselves, merely requesting and pressuring the government to do it.” [1] The MNR chose to appease its western partners in capitalism over its proletariat base. To mollify this obvious encroachment of trust between the bourgeois MNR and proletariat COB, the MNR government granted members of the COB elite directorship positions within the Comibol, dubbing the arrangement “co-government.”
The MNR continued to utilize the power and wealth associated with the bureaucratization of government to its advantage, creating and maintaining a cabinet as a reward-based function. Juan Lechín, leader of both the Comibol and COB, was awarded the position of Minister of Mining and Petroleum. Lechín profited immensely from his new-founded arrangement, taking up residence at the Hotel Crillon, the most luxurious hotel in La Paz. As Villa ironically points out: “the workers who had made him their irreplaceable leader lived in the most degraded conditions of squalor” [1] Rather than balk at the incessant bureaucracy of the MNR, the POR readily joined in, reaping the benefits of the newly-actualized MNR, a bureaucratic machine. According to Villa: “the POR is accepting posts in the government machinery,” and continues on to rattle off the names of the POR’s elite, assuming prominent (and no doubt, highly rewarding) positions within the MNR regime. Contrary to Leninist philosophy (“that public functions will lose their political character and be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society”), [2] public functions took on an increased political character, becoming a vital aspect of MNR political strategy.
By the early part of 1953, the MNR government had yet to act on the promises it had made to its peasant constituency. Across the Bolivian countryside, the peasantry had begun to act out against the feudal hacienda institution, attacking the landlords of the estates, in addition to the land itself. In an obvious show of desperation, the MNR, appearing powerless in lieu of the violence, enacted the Agrarian Reforms of 1953. The reforms contained a redistribution of the haciendas to peasant communities (dubbed “syndicatos.”) The alliance of the peasants, relying so heavily on nationalist sentiment, fell back into historic ethnic feuds of the Quechua and Aymara indigenous peoples. The peasants, who had lived for hundreds of years within a feudal system of poverty and indentured servitude, suddenly received the right to their own land. The newly founded syndicatos became a “conservative force” within the MNR, seeking the bourgeois reforms of capitalist governments. By caving in to the unlawfulness of the peasant class, the MNR created a brand new social class resembling the petit bourgeois of Russia! This outcome directly parallels Trotsky’s historical and notorious distrust of the peasantry, degrading their role in the revolutionary movement throughout Results and Prospects.
Following the Agrarian Reforms of 1953 and the subsequent actions taken on by the syndicatos, a nationalist alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry in Bolivia was no longer a foregone conclusion. The Bolivian economy, with dramatic tremors to its centuries-old institutions, soon fell into chaos. In addition, Comibol management, no doubt spurred by the actions of Lechín and the Comibol leadership, increased the now-guaranteed salaries of the work force by nearly 50 percent, abetting the dismal situation further. The Bolivian Peso fell into a state of hyperinflation, causing the national currency to become devalued by nearly 900%. The right wing of the MNR, with its continued drive for US aid, won out in the ongoing conflict within the MNR. As the decade ended, US aid took on an increasingly prominent role within the Bolivia political and economic framework, an acknowledgment of the failure of the MNR-led government and their once-socialist platform.
Trotsky clearly describes the role of socialist revolutions in relation to the Permanent Revolution in his concise account, What is the Permanent Revolution? He states: “the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a newer and broader sense of the word; it attains completely, only in the final victory of the new society of our entire planet.” [4] However, by ceding to the bourgeois traps of bureaucracy and capitalism, the Bolivian Revolution never reached a Trotsky-ist state of permanent revolution. Instead, it became nothing more than a failed attempt, seemingly content to contain itself within “unthinkable” national limits. [4] Had the POR stepped in to provide the ideological framework necessary for the perpetuation of the socialist revolution, and not merely rode the coattails of the success and popularity of the MNR, the Bolivian Revolution of 1952 may have resulted in a dramatically different conclusion. Instead, the “divergent state wills” [3] of the proletariat and peasantry were unsuccessfully managed by the MNR leadership, eventually crumbling into a state beyond repair. As Villa describes with clear disgust, the co-government of the revolution became nothing more than “a bourgeois government with a decoration of ‘Trotskyist’ ministers,” [1]
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[1] Villa. A Revolution Betrayed
[2] Lenin. State and Revolution
[3] Arganaras, Fernando Garcia. “Bolivia’s Transformist Revolution.” Latin American Perspectives 19.2 (1992): 44-71. Print.
[4] Trotsky. “What is the Permanent Revolution?”
[5] Trotsky. “Results and Prospects”
The Classics
People read Kafka. and Twain. and Dickens. These are facts of life, like the sun rising and setting with each coming day. Their collective body of work will be read, taught, written on, and scrutinized until the end of time.
These “classics” are (rightly) presumed to have a vast influence on western culture, its authors, and its artists, and as such, are vehemently read.
Despite the fact that the oeuvre of these three individuals are a world’s apart, their work is often categorized within the singular, “classics” section: Huck Finn’s ephebian adventures rests comfortably next to Tolstoy’s complex War and Peace at big box retailers across the US. Obviously, these books do not pertain to the ordinary methods of classification, and deservedly so.
Reading Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, I couldn’t help but delve deeper into this notion of “the classic,” its influence, and its prevalency across various mediums of art.
The Trial itself was a pleasure to read: a good, well-written book with a poignant message. Kafka systematically guides the reader through protagonist Joseph K’s initial clear-headedness and rationality through various stages of baseless paranoia, concluding with the insane psyche of the once-sharp-witted bank clerk.
Obviously, Kafka’s talent lends a serious cause for reverence toward the author himself. Kafka’s prevalent theme, the obfuscation of the modern day man and the society in which he lives, characterize Kafka’s two most famous works, The Trial and The Metamorphosis, and has, in turn, manifested itself into an free-standing adjective.
The sheer quality of literary “classics” allows them to stand the test of time, and in turn, they are continually consumed to this day. This trend carries itself over various mediums, as impressionist painters and classical composers have remained household names as their work is perpetually digested and debated. Their oeuvre, like that of the authors mentioned at the beginning of this post, are not going anywhere soon.
Upon further analysis, I think it’s safe to conclude that film does not follow the “classics” paradigm. Although most people may be able to recycle American titles such as Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, few people could aptly tell you who directed these films, let alone have actually viewed them themselves. Even more disconcerting is the relative anonymity of foreign films and their filmmakers, true artists who have managed to convey overarching themes and ideas through a camera lens. However ironic, George Lucas’ Star Wars trilogy, one movie which could be considered an exception to the “rule,” draws distinct plot parallels with Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, a fact acknowledged openly by Lucas himself.
Watching Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Godard’s Breathless, or Kubrick’s 2001, one cannot help but deduce the influence of these “godfathers of film” on modern day directors. It is difficult to conceive why film takes on such a dramatically different cultural role within contemporary society without discounting movie-going today as a largely passive experience. The rabid popularity of ultra-violent, substance-lacking films like 300 and Saw further illustrate this point, without even touching on the current vampire craze.
The open-ended conclusion of No Country for Old Men was almost universally panned, despite the fact the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel strayed minimally from the book (this review describes it as “an unusually tight adaptation.”) No doubt, the two different mediums placed similar expectations towards the two audiences, to differing reactions. Movie viewers obviously wanted an open-and-close two-hour experience, while readers expressed little uproar, as open-ended conclusions subject to debate and discussion are the norm within literary canon.
While one may have no sympathy for my cultural snobbery, the fact remains: movie making is a business. It’s a business that has seen less and less creativity as high-budget, high-risk films have failed to meet their bottom line. In lieu of the recent success of low budget thrillers like Paranormal Activity and Taken, creative ventures like James Cameron’s mega-blockbuster Avatar, which the New York Times jokes has audience expectations comparable to “the arrival of technicolor,” are likely a dying breed. Going forward, creative blockbusters like Avatar, Watchmen, and the less-recent Forrest Gump will likely be glossed over in favor of more economically feasible, audience-friendly viewing. (Edit: looks like it’s already begun)
Crush It!, and Getting Things Done
Those of you who know me personally know that I like to read a balance of “business” books and literature. In the past month, I have read two business books that have provided me with differentiating levels of call-to-action inspiration.
Above all, the two have substantiated the claim that with most business books, value exists in the expediency in which they are read relative to their date of publication[1]. As such, one of the tangible calls-to-action that I can take away from this experience is the importance of keeping up-to-date with the most recent business books. If anything, this goes almost directly against the commonly-held adage of reading the “classics” of literature, a statement that I plan on following up on in an ensuing post. Two of this year’s blockbusters, Jeff Jarvis‘ What Would Google Do? and Chris Anderson’s Free created seismic tremors across the blogosphere around their publication dates, complete with comments and followups by the authors themselves. While reading these books today would still enable you a wealth of additional resources, reviews, and discussions online, the ability to promote your opinions within the public forum has more or less disappeared as the enthusiasm of book’s release and subsequent press dissipates [2].
Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It! reads as a veritable account of one man’s rise to success leveraging the world of social media through passion and hustle. The book reads more like a long blog post than a book: complete with tons of links and references to online tools. This is by no means an insult: Gary Vee will be the first person to tell you that writing is far from his forte, and I’ve gained plenty from my daily Google Reader visits. Obviously, there is no way to currently account for the disparity between the current print market and the ability to hyperlink, an issue that I think is universally acknowledged as something that will be addressed as technology progresses.
Vaynerchuk begins the book by offering readers a history of his entrepreneurial exploits: shoveling snows in his preteen years progressed into selling baseball cards at trade markets, which flourished as he matured into an adult through his undying passion and love for the family business: wine. In doing this, Vaynerchuk has created a legitimacy to his grandiose claims: he truly walks the walk. Gary Vee has an almost intuitive sense of the webspace, providing readers with an elementary blueprint of the world of social media while referencing countless bloggers, whom I imagine have no relationship with the author himself, to bolster his thesis. From the beginning of the book, Gary admits that the purpose of his now infamous website, Winelibrary.tv, was never about selling wine, rather about building brand equity around his love for wine. Crush It! does almost the same thing for social media by exposing the virtues of WordPress, Tumblr, Flickr, and Twitter to unfamiliar readers, giving them the tools to crush it themselves. Amazingly, discussing this book with fellow cohorts, I got the sense that the average college student has no conception of these tools, despite the fact that our generation should theoretically be most in tune with the technology.
Vaynerchuk is a strong proponent of the “death of the résumé,” explaining that your online body of work presents itself as a much greater case for employment than any “tidy list of where you’ve worked and for how long.” I think Gary hits the nail on the head with this assertion. He continues “developing your personal brand is the same thing as living and breathing your résumé every second that you’re working.” Unfortunately, the powers that be within the undergraduate business curriculum continue to exult the virtues of the résumé: they are just as out of touch as the corporate recruiters scrutinizing a stack of uniform CVs [3]. Every potential internship I’m pursuing requires a resume. However, as Gary Vee himself preaches, patience pays, and I will continue to produce content on my blog and elsewhere to bolster my virtual portfolio.
David Allen’s Getting Things Done has long been considered “the” productivity method by respected bloggers and friends alike. Although I consider myself to be a fairly productive individual, I was intrigued enough to pick up a copy of the manual. Allen slowly builds the reader up to implementing his system, encouraging readers to only execute the portions of his method that work for the individual.
The book itself was written in 2001, and shows heavy sign of age as a result. Had Allen written an updated version, I have no doubt that he would update his process to create a more seamless, technology-based system incorporating scanners and one of the many task managing web apps available today [4]. Obviously, neither of these things were fiscally available for the average reader in 2001, and as such, were omitted from the book.
I cannot wholly recommend this book to my generation, as I think that Allen himself would retort that the book is not intended for younger people. One aspect that I took especially to heart, however, dealt with managing long term goals with more dynamic, day-to-day requirements of a student. At one portion of the book, Allen suggests his readers devote a single piece of paper for each “project” you’d like to develop further (whether it be tomorrow, next week, or next year.) After hitting a road block early on, I ended up with somewhere around 50 different, individuals goals and projects on 50 different pieces of paper, all of which I’d like to complete. Allen goes on to provide the reader with a method to categorize the projects, as well as a system for keeping up with them. Obviously, it’s too early to tell if the aspects of Allen’s system I’ve incorporated into my own routine will prove fruitful, but if my frequency of posts suddenly increases exponentially, you’ll know something is working.
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[1] Obviously, there are some notable exceptions: books that have managed to permeate the overarching ethos of business. Of the top of my head, Liar’s Poker, The Black Swan, and The Tipping Point are three examples of this.
[2] A word to the wise: keep abreast of the waiting lists for new books at your local library.
[3] Albeit in different shades of white
[4] Google Tasks does the trick for me, although I’ve heard good things about Remember the Milk.
I’ve Been Busy
My absence from this blog for the past few weeks has been due to real-life school obligations and activities. Apologies aside, I have been busy. The type of busy that has more or less uprooted my daily routine, including my running and reading regimens. Needless to say, blogging has also fallen by the wayside.
Despite my recent busyness, I can’t say I’m particularly unhappy, or even the least bit stressed. My whirlwind weeks have given me little time to ponder, leaving me focused and goal oriented: truly living in the moment.
I recently spoke with a friend who has expressed feelings of stress, unhappiness, and depression, largely due to existential, “What am I doing with my life?”-type issues. I have received similar calls from many friends over the course of this past semester. All of them are currently attending college, and none of them have found it particularly taxing to this point: they’ve been relatively free to enjoy themselves at their own discretion. As such, they have created new friends and experienced new things: lived life. Bringing these facts to their attention, they were largely dismissive, casting their issues as “more fundamental,” more big picture.
Although I didn’t say this to her (or for that matter, any of them), I automatically assumed that she was bored. The novelty of college parties has largely worn off, and her lack of a daily grind has left her with too much time to ponder exactly what she’s doing with her life, taking classes hundreds of miles away from home.
Busyness is a fundamental aspect in the lives of successful people. Ben Casnocha has recently blogged about two individuals (James Ellroy and Cormac McCarthy) who have taken the notion of being busy to an obsessive level. As such, they have remained productive and creative, and their output has been consistently well-received.
When Daily Routines stopped posting, I was crushed. The blog was littered with tales of the world’s foremost artists crafting daily routines with zen-like proficiency: making the most out of every one of their waking hours. Although my daily routine isn’t quite as static as the featured icons, I took solace in their strict attention to a busy regimen, keeping their body and minds active in order to achieve their lofty goals.
Serendipity
Life as a college student isn’t always as easy as it’s cracked up to be. Take today, for example.
Class started at 8am, necessitating a 7:24 wake-up. Class continued until 11am, at which time I proceeded to continue studying for my Business Ethics test over a medium coffee and an everything bagel. The test itself was conveniently scheduled for 1pm, allowing for 2 hours of unadulterated study. Post-test, I had docketed a half-hour between test time and my next class, set for 2:30, for an important phone call.
The test concluded, finishing a half-hour early, and I sought out a quiet spot for my phone call. Although my mind was swimming with the tenets of Friedman(s) and Erber, I attempted to clear my head, placing my ear to the phone’s receiver in preparation for Ethan-centric discourse.
I soon came to the realization that the person on the other end of the line was not going to pick up: an oversized monkey-wrench thrown into my fragile plans. Setting my phone aside, I realized that it was a beautiful day outside. I sought out the New York Times, provided for free to all University students here on campus. I soon deduced that it was Tuesday, and cast Sections A and B of the newspaper aside on a park bench, seeking out the Tuesday Crossword.
***Brief disclaimer: Since my senior year of high school, I have been attempting the Will Shortz-edited New York Times’ Crossword Puzzle almost every Monday and Tuesday. To most Crossword snobs (including myself) the New York Times Crossword Puzzle is the only crossword puzzle worth solving. The Times’ Crossword increases in difficulty each day: starting with the (relatively) innocuous Monday puzzle to the vaunted Sunday puzzle. Of the weekly output, I can consistently complete ~50% of Monday and Tuesday’s offerings. To this date, I’ve fully completed 3 crosswords (1 Monday and 2 Tuesdays, strangely enough.) While one might scoff at this extremely low success percentage (something like .0001), I am extremely proud of my un-abetted puzzle mastery.
Reaching The Arts (Section C) of the Times, two articles on the front pages immediately caught my attention before I could begin to perform the ceremonious “crossword fold.” The first was a review of Malcolm Gladwell’s “newest” book, What the Dog Saw, a compilation of articles written for the New Yorker (a la Consider the Lobster.) I remembered that coincidentally, I was planning on giving a presentation on Gladwell next Monday, as cast the article aside in my memory bank for later reference. The second article was a discussion of the relevancy of Political Science, a field that I just so happen to major in here at college. Again, coincidentally, I was tapped for a meeting with a university Political Science professor just the next day, and made an additional mental note of this article, no doubt planning on referencing it within tomorrow’s conversation.
Finally, I set out to delve into Tuesday’s crossword puzzle. Alas, it was 2:27, and accounting, my next class, was in 3 minutes! Sitting on a bench outside the lecture hall, I found myself hard-pressed to skip a class I was literally sitting outside of. Disappointed, I tucked the Arts section under my arm and headed into class, preparing my already-exhausted mental state for rote accounting-related acumen.
I sat down as the teacher was beginning his lecture, sitting in the same seat I religiously occupy each Tuesday from 2:30 to 3:45. On my lap sat the empty crossword, begging further inspection. I conceded, and decided to dedicate the rest of the class period to the crossword. The result is available below: my fourth completed crossword of my life. Another Tuesday, too.
Normally, I don’t submit to superstition, luck, or any other forces of chance. However, the serendipity stemming from one phone call, or the lack of one, is remarkable.
Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays
Yes, another post about David Foster Wallace. I preface this post by emphatically promising that this will be my last DFW-related post for a while (maybe.)
David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays, is a collection of essays written over a ten year period. Like Infinite Jest, the essays are not in chronological order, rather, they are deliberately ordered for maximum effect and efficiency. Similar to Chuck Klosterman’s IV, publications as varied as Harper’s, The Village Voice, and Gourmet hired the services of David Foster Wallace as a freelance journalist, seeking a DFW-esque touch on their magazine through his book reviews, events, and essays.
Consider the Lobster was my second exposure to David Foster Wallace, after a lengthy experience reading DFW’s Infinite Jest. Attributes of DFW’s writing have become increasingly clear as I continue to work my way through his oeuvre: transparency between his life and his work, literary segues in the form of lengthy footnotes, and an incredible attention to grammatical precision. However, one resounding difference I was surprised to find was that I learned much more about David Foster Wallace in Consider the Lobster, a collection of nonlinear essays, than Infinite Jest, seemingly a personalized piece of fiction.
First and foremost, David Foster Wallace was a firmly entrenched, anti-establishment provocateur. This is more than apparent from his finished products, shown pre-publication in their unedited and unadulterated form throughout Consider the Lobster. In 2004, the now-defunct Gourmet magazine hired DFW to cover the Maine Lobster Festival, one of the largest regional culinary festivals in the United States. Very little coverage ensued surrounding the actual festival. Instead, DFW filled 7 full, text-laden magazine pages (19 in its Consider the Lobster’s pre-edited form) providing his personal views on mass tourism [1], before wrestling with the ethics of killing lobsters, going so far as to reference the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA.) Gourmet’s readers, whom I imagine enjoy their lobster, as well as other ethically-questionable culinary vices from time-to-time, were met with a literary “punch-in-the-gut,” so effective in its argument that I, a carnivore, will be hard pressed to enjoy the crustacean in the near future. Rolling Stone tapped DFW to cover John McCain’s 2000 Presidential campaign, hoping for (I imagine) a finished product similar to Hunter S. Thompson’s coverage of George McGovern’s 1972 bid for Democratic nomination [2]. Instead, what Rolling Stone received was a staggering account, in which Wallace manages to extol his reverence towards the “techs” of the various network news outfits, while purposely distancing himself from the rest of the mainstream media covering the campaign. In fact, the draft which DFW submitted to Rolling Stone would, by his own admission, “take up most of Rolling Stone’s text-space and might even cut into the percentage of the magazine reserved for advertisements,” In both instances, I chuckle at the thought of the editors of their respective magazines receiving drafts from DFW, hoping for an inspired piece of journalism on the topic-in-question, obviously aghast when receiving something that so obviously strayed from their initial intentions.
Secondly, David Foster Wallace casts himself as an everyman: a champion of the blue-collar American. At several points in the book, DFW goes out of his way to poke fun at aristocracy, old money, and “yachty” culture, while espousing the virtues of the working class. From “his anything-but-New York-intellectual author photo” on, DFW makes no attempt to shield his readers from his own political, philosophical, and societal beliefs [4.] The most profound example of this is found in the longest essay of the book, a 67-page “review” of a dictionary, Bryan A. Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern America. During this essay, DFW manages to cast a dichotomy between the different dialects found within the English language, including (but not limited to,) “Black English, Latino English, Rural Southern, Urban Southern, Standard Upper-Midwest, Maine Yankee, East-Texas Bayou, [and] Boston Blue-Collar [5].” DFW then segues to his personal experience as a professor, in which he recounts a speech he’s often given to black students who were ” (a) bright and inquisitive as hell and (b) deficient in what US higher education considers written English facility [5].” The speech itself is inherently incendiary: he begins by explaining the dichotomy of American dialects seen above, before informing the student-in-question the difference between Standard Black English (SBE,) their “native” dialect, and Standard Written English (SWE), the dialect used in college English classes. Professor Wallace proceeds to concede that while SWE could be interpreted as Standard White English (still, SWE), as it was developed and largely enforced by educated white people, “anybody of any race, ethnicity, religion, or gender who wants to succeed in American culture has got to be able to use SWE.” By no means is this recounted dialogue remotely PC, and DFW cedes that he’s received an official university complaint as a result of his diatribe. However, DFW makes a point to include these personal experiences on his readers, in turn imparting his personal societal philosophies upon them concurrently. Remember this all stemmed from a book review, of a dictionary, no less.
I’ve made no secret of my personal feelings towards David Foster Wallace as a full-blown literary genius. In past posts, I’ve additionally explored the nature of genius, before concluding there is no resolute definition of genius. DFW and I seemingly shared this extended interest in the nature of genius, a nature that David Foster Wallace explicitly explores in the form of several character studies during Consider the Lobster. Out of the ten essays that collectively compile Consider the Lobster, at least three of these essays directly deal with individuals that DFW himself to be geniuses [6]: Tracy Austin’s prodigious techné in the sport of Tennis, Bryan A. Garner’s comprehensive grammatical prowess, and Dostoevsky’s unrivaled literary mastery. For those of you keeping score at home, the three individuals DFW coins as geniuses overlap with three major themes of DFW’s life: Tennis, grammar, and literature. Again, DFW makes no attempt to hide this transparency from his readers.
I believe that there is, and will never be, any need for a biographical account of David Foster Wallace, as his literary style is such that reading his body of work chronologically would prove more telling than any author’s attempt to chronicle DFW’s life. Witness DFW’s 1996 essay, Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky, a review of Stanford professor and Dostoevsky scholar Joseph Frank’s collection of Dostoevsky biographies, an account of 60 years (1821-1881) in the life of Dostoevsky, split amongst five seperate books, totalling 2,507 pages. Dostoevsky, of course, is the author of notoriously long-winded, unapproachable masterpieces such as The Idiot, The Brothers’ Karamazov, and Crime & Punishment [7]. Putting the implied effort of completeing this comprehensive body of work aside, DFW literally gushes his affection for Dostoevsky across the landscape of this essay. DFW marvels at Dostoevsky’s ability to create real-life characters and juicy stories, explaining to his readers that “Dostoevsky wrote fiction about the stuff that’s really important.” He proceeds to lament the current state of the literary world, ceding that emotionally powerful literature is no longer possible due to “certain cultural experctations that severely constrain our own novelists’ ability to be “serious.” [8]” DFW concludes
“So he – we, fiction writhers won’t (can’t) dare try to use serious art to advance idealologies. The project would be like Menard’s Quixote. People would either laugh or be embarassed for us. Given this (and this is a given), who is to blame for the unseriousness of our serious fiction? But they wouldn’t (could not) laugh if a piece of morally passionate, passionate moral fiction was also ingenious and radiantly human fiction. But how to make it that? How – for a writer today, even a talented writer today – to get up the guts to even try? There are no formulas or guarantees.”
Again, for those of you keeping score at home, this essay was written in 1996, the same year Infinite Jest, another notoriously long-winded, unapproachable masterpiece, was published.
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[1] No surprise here. Wallace informs the reader that in his eyes, mass tourism “is to impose yourself on places that in all non-economic ways would be better, realer, without you,” and compares being a tourist to “becom[ing] economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.”
[2] Initially serialized in Rolling Stone in 1972, and later released as a book in early 1973 as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72.
[3] “Up, Simba.” Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
[4] The first essay of the book, Big Red Son, is an account of his experience at the Adult Video News, or AVN Awards. The 50-page essay chronicles the pornography industry’s biggest night and the surrounding fanfare which accompanies it in vividly vulgar detail, and is certainly not for anyone who places family values anywhere near the forefront of their consciousness.
[5] “Authority and American Usage.” Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
[6] Albeit, in different lights
[7] I’m merely sticking these links in here as reference points. As I’ve never read Dostoevsky, I cannot submit to the efficacy of the links’ translations. Russian, as I’ve been made to understand, is a exceedingly difficult language to translate to English.
[8] “Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky” Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
Disaster Strikes
This is my first post since my MacBook Pro’s startup disk failure, a failure which resulted in the installation of an entirely new hard drive. Roughly 500 dollars later, I am now starting from scratch. All my book-notes, papers, photos, and applications have disappeared, replaced by empty folders and the barren fuchsia galaxy that graces all default Macs’ background.
My computer has long been a harbinger of personal knowledge, communication, and reflection. Without its memory, my laptop has become a become a vestige of its former self, staring back at me with the blankness of an amnesia victim.
A common exercise in humility involves decision-making in the event of a natural disaster: “In the event of a fire/hurricane, what item(s) you bring along with you before you left?” The impending logic behind this hypothetical is the revealing of what is truly important in your life. One who places his memories above all would most likely save family photos, while the knowledge-driven would most likely rush for their most prized pieces of literature.
I’d guess that the most typical answer would involve some form of a personal computer. The current generation of computers has attempted to commodify themselves as “personal media centers.” Apple goes so far as to coin its’ all-in-one media program “iLife,” a testament to the reliance contemporary society has placed upon their computers. Photographs, album, papers, and films, likely fire-saving entities prior to the PC, have been replaced by .jpegs, .docs, .mp3s, and .avis, all easily aggregated and accessible.
Had I been asked this question yesterday, I’d have most likely ceded with the majority. However, upon finding out that my hard drive was past the point of information retrieval, I was largely unaffected. To my surprise, the notion that years of collected media was completely erased was met with indifference, a zen-like calm which I’ve maintained since I picked up my computer.
While I’m certainly not ready to rid myself of material vices entirely, I’ve taken solace in the fact that I truly took everything in stride. While my book-notes and old papers may have gone by the wayside, the digressions, epiphanies, and opinions acquired as a result still reside comfortably in my consciousness. Despite my material losses, I am the still the same freethinking, healthy individual as I was yesterday.
Disclaimer: I certainly don’t want to stress that this experience is for everyone. If the reader gains anything from this post, learn from my misfortune. Backup, backup, backup.
Infinite Jest
It’s ironic that my first blog review will be for a book that, for all intents and purposes, I have no right to review. David Foster Wallace’s behemoth of a novel, Infinite Jest, is certainly several wrungs above me intellectually, so utterly layered and complex that I imagine no one will truly ever fully pick apart the gamut of motifs, motives, and shrewd references that make up his opus[1].
I would preface this review by emphatically stressing that IJ is not for everyone: even a large portion of the minority who deem themselves exempt from this statement will quickly deduce that it’s not for them either. In order to save the reader from the obligatory digressions w/r/t the size and length of IJ (both of the novel + subsequent footnotes), I will merely point out that while I consider myself to be a reader of voracious appetite, the novel still took me ~3 months to complete[2].
That isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy reading Infinite Jest. I loved it. Infinite Jest managed to procure emotional response like no book I’ve read before. I laughed[3] and cried, all the while empathizing with the characters’ struggles with acceptance, achievement, and addiction.
My interest in conquering the opus was largely platonic, and I could have easily put down the book for good at any time, as many before me have. Unlike many whom I’ve spoken to in relation to the book, at no point did I experience a “crisis of faith” requiring perseverance, although I will concede that the book picks up dramatically following page 200. The novel spent 3 months at my side, and amassed a bevy of nicks, coffee stains, and page rips in the process that I will loving remember in future years. Finishing the novel, as I did last week, was an extremely barren feeling which I’ve only experienced several times in my life, traditionally at the end of a beloved series[4]. I immediately began conducting extensive research[5] on Infinite Jest and David Foster Wallace, as any fan of mine on delicious is all too aware.
While Infinite Jest is coined a “postmodern novel” by literary scholars, I find it exponentially more cohesive than many other renowned contemporary novels. My experience reading the work of DFW’s postmodern contemporary, Roberto Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives, was a much more disjointed and difficult experience, despite the fact that it checks in almost 300 pages fewer than IJ. Incidentally, both novels manage to freely travel back and forth through time, utilizing and incorporating a small army of main characters, narrators, and settings across each time period.
The largely inescapable fact is that Infinite Jest is inherently experience driven. Self indulgence permeates both the overarching themes and minute details[6] of the book. In Kottke’s guide for reading Infinite Jest, he suggests creating a dichotomy between the fiction of Infinite Jest and the life of David Foster Wallace. He argues that despite the obvious parallels between the two, correlating one with another would do a “disservice to its [IJ's] thematic richness.” The question I’ve been struggling with deals with Infinite Jest as a self-indulgent piece of literature, and whether or not there’s anything wrong with that.
Infinite Jest-detractors contend that Infinite Jest’s self indulgence created an extremely uninviting novel. This self-indulgence, they argue, makes the barrage of seemingly unimportant events, digressions, and N.B.s that make up a significant portion of the novel “unreadable.” In turn, the readers develop no emotional attachment for the characters whom lend these tidbits to the reader. In fact, DFW detractors often hold more contempt for David Foster Wallace’s editor than for DFW himself.
Infinite Jest would lose a significant portion of its humor and charm without DFW’s unadulterated transparency. In reading Infinite Jest, I feel as if DFW has personally invited me into the inner sanctum of his brain, the cerebrum of a genius, no less. DFW’s depiction of addiction throughout the novel presents itself as some of the most affecting and visceral prose in the novel, prose that, had DFW not actually experienced first person, would not be as effective.
My admiration for David Foster Wallace is certainly no secret. In my eyes, DFW was truly a monster at his craft, reaching a truly “zen-like” synergy with the pen, as Hendrix with his guitar or Michael Jordan with a basketball. While I am often reticent to shell out the title of genius, I have no doubt that DFW fits the bill. I liken DFW’s penultimate decision of suicide with that of tortured geniuses such as Poe and Beethoven: men struggling to hone immense potential and talent. DFW’s obsessive tendencies of grammar, attention to detail, and perfecting his craft, coupled with life-long depression and a buffet of powerful antidepressants, created an equation with a linear solution, one that led to his early and untimely demise.
David Foster Wallace is certainly not the first artist to impart his collective experience, to the point of self-indulgence, in his work[7]. Federico Fellini’s 8 ½, a film almost universally acknowledged as one of the greatest films of all time, is about a “fictional” internationally-renowned director and his struggle to cope with his creativity. The film often segues into dream-like sequences of the director’s childhood, which effectively acts as transparent catharticism for Fellini. While critical analysis of 8½ often spurs similar criticism, Fellini’s legacy lives on.
While the impact of Infinite Jest on contemporary American literature is subject to debate [8], I can unequivocally state that the novel created a personal, complex, and enriching three month experience. As I graduate onto DFW’s essays and non-fiction, I do so with the omnipresent knowledge that “DFW called himself a novelist, wanted to be remembered as a novelist, corresponded with novelists about the craft, labored for years over the 2.75 novels he managed to finish.” Though only 36.4%[9] through his fictional oeuvre, I can see why.
[1] Don’t believe me? Check out this interview with DFW done by Michael Silverblatt, in which DFW divulges that IJ was structured as a Sierpinski Gasket, which he goes on to explain is “very primitive kind of pyramidical fractal. a “
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[2] My reading habits only allow me to read one “novel” at a time. Blogs, Op-eds, and articles are exempt from Hirsch’s Law. (i.e. for three months, the only non-curricula, bound piece of literature I carried around with me was Infinite Jest.)
[3] Explaining my oft-leered-upon chuckles and spontaneous laughter reading alone at many a coffee shop. If I distracted you, I’m sorry.
[4] Harry Potter and The Wire (which apparently, DFW loved) automatically come to mind.
[5] No book reviews, however, which I’ve found cloud my judgment as time passes.
[6] Some of which are still being periodically unearthed as I continue my research. For example, Avril “the Moms” Incandenza of Infinite Jest, is the founder of the “Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts,” while DFW’s mother, a composition professor, was coined “a SNOOT a of the most rabid and intractable sort.” b
a SNOOT = “Grammar Nazi, Usage Nerd, Syntax Snobs, the Grammar Battalion, the Language Police”
b “Authority and American Usage.” Consider the Lobster, and Other Essays. New York: Little, Brown, 2005. Print.
[7] Chinese Democracy? Maybe another time.
[8] One, of many, criticisms of Infinite Jest. I chose this one because it’s one of the few that manages to create an argument without mentioning the book’s length.
[9] (1 / 2.75)
The Decline of the English Department
In response to my previous post on the rise of undergraduate business schools, I came across an excellent article in American Scholar, written by William M. Chace, an English Professor in of 40 years. The article analyzes on the decline of humanities within higher education, and the subsequent rise of the undergraduate business degrees. Mr. Chace’s analysis of the Humanities’ decline breaks down into three parts: the rise of public institutions, student anxiety, and the need for a dramatic revamping of Humanities’ curriculum.
During the most recent period for which good figures are available (from 1972 to 2005), more young people entered the world of higher education than at any time in American history. Where did they go? Increasingly into public, not private, schools. In the space of that one generation, public colleges and universities wound up with more than 13 million students in their classrooms while private institutions enrolled about 4.5 million. Students in public schools tended toward majors in managerial, technical, and pre-professional fields while students in private schools pursued more traditional and less practical academic subjects. With their ascendancy, the presiding ethos of public institutions—fortified by the numbers of majors and faculty, and by the amounts of money involved—has come to exert a more and more powerful thrust in American higher education. The result? The humanities, losing the national numbers game, find themselves moving to the periphery of American higher education.
Mr. Chace correctly creates this dichotomy, a dichotomy that I am all too familiar with as an enrolled student at a public university. I’d surmise that students within public universities are exposed to the insecurities of the job market and their vocational future at a much higher frequency than private institutions. Sprawling career centers, omnipresent career fairs, and suit-and-tie clad cohorts are regular occurrences on public campuses. A good friend at a California private institution (majoring in Cognitive Science) recently remarked to the degree to which “he lives in a bubble.” That is to say, his peers are surrounded by tenured professors who place little emphasis on the importance of co-ops, resumes, and internships.
With the cost of a college degree surging upward during the last quarter century—tuition itself increasing far beyond any measure of inflation—and with consequent growth in loan debt after graduation, parents have become anxious about the relative earning power of a humanities degree. Their college-age children doubtless share such anxiety. When college costs were lower, anxiety could be kept at bay. (Berkeley in the early ’60s cost me about $100 a year, about $700 in today’s dollars.) Alexander W. Astin’s research tells us that in the mid-1960s, more than 80 percent of entering college freshmen reported that nothing was more important than “developing a meaningful philosophy of life.” Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, reports that “being very well off financially” was only an afterthought, one that fewer than 45 percent of those freshmen thought to be an essential goal. As the years went on, however, and as tuition shot up, the two traded places; by 1977, financial goals had surged past philosophical ones, and by the year 2001 more than 70 percent of undergraduate students had their eyes trained on financial realities, while only 40 percent were still wrestling with meaningful philosophies.
Mr. Chace couldn’t be more closer to the truth, and pulls out telling statistics to further bolster his point. The dramatic shift in college-aged students’ importance placed upon gaining “life philosophies” explains why many of today’s collegians are so frequently finding themselves “half-listening” to the advice of our parents generation.
Studying English taught us how to write and think better, and to make articulate many of the inchoate impulses and confusions of our post-adolescent minds. We began to see, as we had not before, how such books could shape and refine our thinking. We began to understand why generations of people coming before us had kept them in libraries and bookstores and in classes such as ours. There was, we got to know, a tradition, a historical culture, that had been assembled around these books. Shakespeare had indeed made a difference—to people before us, now to us, and forever to the language of English-speaking people.
Finding pleasure in such reading, and indeed in majoring in English, was a declaration at the time that education was not at all about getting a job or securing one’s future. In comparison with the pre-professional ambitions that dominate the lives of American undergraduates today, the psychological condition of students of the time was defined by self-reflection, innocence, and a casual irresponsibility about what was coming next.
I lament this paradigm shift, and appreciate that others are noticing it. While I find myself perpetually reading outside of the curriculum, I’ve witnessed an increasingly whittling minority of students sharing my zeal for extra-curricular refinement through reading. As the state of the international job market and the importance placed upon financial security becomes increasingly transparent, I fear that Universities will truly never return to their platonic state.
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