Really Bad Coverage of the MLA (Error-Ridden Edition)

Nick Gillespie | January 5, 2006

I'm second to none in my enjoyment and praise of the Washington Times, which is not only inexpensive (like $20 a year for home delivery) but always filled with offbeat, under-reported, and interesting stories. When it's not putting gay marriage in scare quotes and running crap like this.

And this post-Modern Language Association annual conference piece by columnist Suzanne Fields, who gulpingly (her concept, not mine) confesses to having earned a literature Ph.D. in a previous life, and then delivers a remarkably inane and under-informed gloss on the MLA and literary studies more generally. What's most interesting is that Fields' ostensibly conservative critique is no different than the one pushed by the ostensibly liberal New York Times. Both share a superficial familiarity with literary studies that borders on the anti-intellectual.

Apparently keying off my TCSDaily coverage and a few other sources, Dr. Fields runs through any number of cliches about the MLA (did you hear the one about "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl"?!?!) and outright mistakes (Reason is "a publication of the Cato Institute"). But what's really annoying is the lack of familiarity with literary history, especially coming from a Ph.D.

So Fields bitches and moans about the "queering" of, among others, good old-fashioned Amurican authors such as Willa Cather. Here's a news flash: During her college days at Univ. of Nebraska, Cather dressed as a man for a while and even took to calling herself "William"; she also had several long-time intimate relationships with women. That sort of long-suppressed biography makes Cather a particularly strong candidate for reappraisal from a queer studies perspective. As important, Cather's treatment by queer studies critics represents the best hope that she will continue to be read.

Fields, like most conservatives, also sniffs at the politicization of literary studies. There's no question that can be overdone to death, but the insistence of Literature and its study as a politics-free zone leads to summations of John Milton like this one: "Anyone who reads John Milton quickly discovers that a mix of ideas engages and provokes the intellect toward wisdom." What the hell does that mean? God, is there any way to make poor Milton more boring and uninteresting than by invoking such blandishments? If Milton is staging a comeback (as Fields says--and I agree with her), it's precisely because critics over the past decade or so have been stressing his politics. This is a guy who not only wrote one of the earliest defenses of an unlicensed press, he was a regicide who wrote in favor of beheading Charles I; and he later served in Cromwell's government as Secretary of Foreign Tongues. His work becomes infinitely more interesting when read in light of his political activity and thought. Paradise Lost works better--or at least equally well--as a meditation on Cromwell's thirst for power as on Christ's redeeming power.

Then there's Fields' defense of William Faulkner. The campus PC clerics "all but evicted" the worst postal worker in the pre-David Berkowitz era from the college campus, she says:

Sneering at the white man fell particularly hard on William Faulkner, who was all but evicted from campus. When Faulkner accepted his Nobel Prize for literature in 1950, he spoke of the importance of "the old verities and truths of the heart . . . love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." Such qualities have since been strangers at MLA sessions. When the Faulkner Journal called for scholarly papers, they asked authors to consider "the whiteness of Faulkner himself." One paper was entitled, "Why Are You So Black? Faulkner's White-face Minstrels Primitivism and Perversion."

Yeah, it's really nuts to puzzle over Faulkner's "whiteness"--it's not like he never wrote about the South, the Civil War, the legacy of slavery, and race relations (just for starters, Fields might want to thumb through Light in August sometime). Btw, for those interested in "whiteness studies"--or the social construction of race and ethnicity, a topic of no small interest to the history of these United States--I can heartily recommend two books that Fields would no doubt proactively dismiss: A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic and Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White.

As important, she might want to recall that Faulkner's books had famously gone out of print by the mid-'40s and it was our oldest enemy the French who revived his reputation and put him on the path to the Nobel Prize. Half a century before he was "evicted" from campus (a statement belied by the absolutely mammoth bibliography of critical work on him), the American reading public had already told him to the corn cob from Sanctuary and stick it where the sun don't shine. So if you're a Faulkner fan, kiss a frog today.

Fields' whole col is here. Again, what's most interesting to me is how her critique mirrors that of many liberals.

Help Reason celebrate its next 40 years. Donate Now!

Try Reason's award-winning print edition today! Your first issue is FREE if you are not completely satisfied.

|1.5.06 @ 3:41PM|#

...what's most interesting to me is how her critique mirrors that of many liberals.

I have long maintainted that once you get past the rhetoric, style-wise there is truly very little difference between extreme liberals and extreme conservatives.

And when all is said and done...they both suck like hell.

|1.5.06 @ 3:44PM|#

The problem with both liberal and conservative extremists is their philosophically absurd desire to reduce literary works to simple platitudes. Milton is interesting not because of he leads us to "wisdom," nor because he is a document to some political crusade to other. He is interesting because his work confounds our expectations. Politics, theology, mythology, and literature are not separate for Milton and his work advances on a complex, often self-contradicory, front that rewards continued engagement.

Walter Benjamin's famous phrase "there is no document of civillization that is not also a document of barbarism" is true and is the reason why we read literature. I wonder, Mr. Gillespie, if you know of any books that analyze literature from a capitialist-materialist perspective rather than a marxist-materialist one?

|1.5.06 @ 3:55PM|#

The campus PC clerics "all but evicted" the worst postal worker

I thought that honor went to Charles Bukowski.

|1.5.06 @ 4:02PM|#

Many liberals? You've pointed to one NYT column, which stood out for its counter-intuitive adherence to platitudes that conservatives have been churning out for decades.

I do not agree that "many liberals" have bought into the anti-intellectualism you denounce.

|1.5.06 @ 4:46PM|#

holy fucking shit, she didn't know willa cather was gay? who's next? truman capote?

joe: you live in a nice world. liberals are human; humans are frightened of their own shadows; [insert pithy latin phrase here]

|1.5.06 @ 4:49PM|#

Nick,

I think academic literary and cultural studies, deserve most of the "disdain, derision, and dismissiveness" it gets from both directions.

And I think a certain amount of anti-intellectualism is probably healthy. I still regret the fact I ever read Helene Cixous. When I hear the word �phallocentric�, I see red and start looking around for an old French woman to strangle

I think hatred for the academy often goes hand in hand with how much you actually love literature. In the process of getting an MA/PHD in English, most seem to spend all their time murdering it. Maybe I�m overgeneralizing based on a small sample, but I think until the academy starts producing a lot of books that more people actually want to read, they should probably expect a little sneering contempt from people I think you are just getting touchy about the criticism because, well, maybe you�re kind of a geek, and probably liked reading Helene Cixous.

JG

|1.5.06 @ 4:54PM|#

Cather would be read even if they came up with Paris Hilton vids of her with three farmboys back in the day.

Heck, even Faulkner approved.

|1.5.06 @ 5:05PM|#

A posting that involves both lesbians and the Secretary of Foreign Tongues. Good stuff, man!

I tend to beware of any academic pursuit with the word "studies" in it. I guess that makes me a conservatarian.

|1.5.06 @ 5:21PM|#

"always filled with offbeat, under-reported, and interesting stories. When it's not putting gay marriage in scare quotes"always filled with offbeat, under-reported, and interesting stories. When it's not putting gay marriage in scare quotes"

I had the same impression of it. And while I've yet to find a publication with which I always agree, there're some disagreements which bug me more than others. While I think Reason can severely over-champion the consumerist culture (not to mention the fanatical faith in genetically modified food), these things are not enough to detract from my enjoyment of the magazine. With the WT, however, their disdain for "non-traditional" lifestyles and their printing of the mega-dipshit-cartoon "Mallard Fillmore" (as well as their ceaseless fawning over GWB) is enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth that isn't taken away by their otherwise insightful articles.

|1.5.06 @ 5:38PM|#

There is a confusion that continues to exist over the role of politics or race (or economics or what have you) in literature. There's no question that understanding the politics, for example, of an author can help reveal what is going on in the literary work. But to reverse that, and use the literary work as a way to understand politics is a stupid mistake.

Understanding Flannery O'Connor's Catholicism is going to help you understand "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" but "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" is no evidence for the truth of Catholicism. Likewise, it helps to know something about Jack London's communism to understand his works, but one needn't be a communist or take up the banner of communism or be politically engaged on behalf of the communist movement to read London, and the fact that London worked it into his novels doesn't mean it is a justified belief.

It doesn't seem that subtle a distinction.

And, as I responded here to a plug for your MLA posts elsewhere - there is no reason that English professors need concern themselves in any way with the political engagement of their students - whether that be left leaning or right leaning. It's not their job, and it shouldn't be their job, and students shouldn't have to waste their credit hours on their professors' aspirations to be something other than literature professors. If literature isn't interesting to those professors, let them get other jobs.

|1.5.06 @ 5:41PM|#

until the academy starts producing a lot of books that more people actually want to read, they should probably expect a little sneering contempt from people

There's also the fact that a lot of these people wouldn't be caught dead reading a modern book that sold more than ten copies (too commercial, too proletarian, whatever), while completely missing the fact that much "classical" literature was the commercialized proletarian stuff of its day.

|1.5.06 @ 6:48PM|#

I'd be more interested in what goes on with the MLA if there wasn't such an air of faddishness to the whole thing. It appears to me that the MLA is dominated by an academic clique that is more interested in trying to dictate taste and prove its own cleverness than it is in actually shedding light on literature and its history.

Wintermute|1.5.06 @ 7:04PM|#

William Faulkner was a great writer.

DaveInBigD|1.5.06 @ 7:39PM|#

[Milton] later served in Cromwell's government as Secretary of Foreign Tongues

It worries me that this prompted me to ruminate on an English ministry tasked with collecting overseas tongues, and an image of a Spaniard at a loss for words being taunted by his companion, "What's the matter, the English got your toungue?"

|1.5.06 @ 8:50PM|#

"until the academy starts producing a lot of books that more people actually want to read, they should probably expect a little sneering contempt from people"

The MLA should be concerned with advancing the field of literary studies, particularly by exploring subjects that haven't already been addressed. And yes, this sometimes can include Jane Austen and masturbating girls, but I disagree that the MLA should worry about producing things you and I would want to read. If anti-intellectuals want to sneer (which I think they do) go ahead, but there are worse things than being intellectual.

Would the fictional MCA or MEA (chemistry and engineering, respectively) be concerned with producing works that appeal to mass audiences? I hope not. Simply because we speak English, we think the MLA's papers are for us. News flash: they're not, nor should they be. If I ever tailgate at an MLA convention in anticipation of hearing my favorite contributor's presentation, that will be the death of the MLA.

|1.5.06 @ 8:51PM|#

"until the academy starts producing a lot of books that more people actually want to read, they should probably expect a little sneering contempt from people"

The MLA should be concerned with advancing the field of literary studies, particularly by exploring subjects that haven't already been addressed. And yes, this sometimes can include Jane Austen and masturbating girls, but I disagree that the MLA should worry about producing things you and I would want to read. If anti-intellectuals-- which includes both liberals and conservatives-- want to sneer (which I think they do) go ahead, but there are worse things than being intellectual.

Would the fictional MCA or MEA (chemistry and engineering, respectively) be concerned with producing works that appeal to mass audiences? I hope not. Simply because we speak English, we think the MLA's papers are for us. News flash: they're not, nor should they be. If I ever tailgate at an MLA convention in anticipation of hearing my favorite contributor's presentation, that will be the death of the MLA.

|1.6.06 @ 1:25AM|#

Where do you get "Washington Times, which is not only inexpensive (like $20 a year for home delivery)"? I checked their subscriptions page at https://secure.washtimes.com/start.htm and the only item under $20 was $16.90 for 13 weeks of Sunday-only delivery.

|1.6.06 @ 8:35AM|#

tim,

"Understanding Flannery O'Connor's Catholicism is going to help you understand "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" but "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" is no evidence for the truth of Catholicism."

It might, however, help you to understand Catholics in that particular time and place.

|1.6.06 @ 9:26AM|#

It might, however, help you to understand Catholics in that particular time and place.

Joe - I'm not sure what your point is, so I'll restate mine again:

Should English professors be in the business of getting their students to be politically engaged (whether or not the professors have some pet ideology to push)?

Responding as directly as I can to what you have offered - do you think the job of a professor in a literature course is to teach you about mid-century southern American Catholics? If so, there are probably better resources than "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" - even if there are insights to take away from that story. So maybe we should excise O'Connor from the course in favor of the catechism, historical documents, social statistics....

|1.6.06 @ 9:30AM|#

Apparently WalMart has been accuse and apologized for the potenially racially offensive random pairing of DVD's.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/05/AR2006010502176.html

Are potentially racially ofensive entre' and wine pairings next (e.g. Rio Negro and fried chicken)?

|1.6.06 @ 9:33AM|#

tim,

I think one of the jobs of a literature professor is to teach students about the relationship between literature and culture it comes out of, and how one can go about reading literature in order to understand culture.

Politics, religion, and economic relations are all subsets of culture, and literature can thus be a tool to understand them. The sources you mention (catechism, historical documents, social statistics...) are also appropriate tools for understanding Catholicism in that time and place, better in many ways.

But literature is a better tool for understanding one aspect of the subject - the personal experience of it. The literary products of that time and place tell you a lot more about what it was like to be a person of that culture than the formal, external sources you mention. And understand that has value.

|1.6.06 @ 9:43AM|#

Would the fictional MCA or MEA (chemistry and engineering, respectively) be concerned with producing works that appeal to mass audiences? I hope not. Simply because we speak English, we think the MLA's papers are for us. News flash: they're not, nor should they be.

Why not? In theory, at least, the study of literature is supposed to be a way for us to connect with people from other times or other worldviews; why shouldn't the MLA make an effort to connect with the people of its own time as well?

Johno|1.6.06 @ 10:01AM|#

why shouldn't the MLA make an effort to connect with the people of its own time as well?

Partly because the MLA isn't necessarily a consumer-end entity. They are literally there to count the angels on the heads of pins.

My own advanced degree is in history, and I can't tell you how many utterly recondite, boring, abstruse, theoretical, and even nonsensical articles undergird the research for the palatable stuff that is worth a read by casual seekers.

I can't even look at the major history journals these days; they bore me beyond tears. But when, say, a major academic historian like Kevin Boyle comes up a book like with "Arc of Justice," an eminently readable, masterfully researched, and narratively compelling story about race relations in Detroit in the 1920s, I'm willing to forgive the endless shelf-feet of incredibly tedious labor history, urban history, African-American history, business history, etc. that goes into the research for a remarkable book like that.

Same goes for the lit-crit folks who make my skin crawl. Why does anyone care if the MLA puts out readable material? That's not their job.

theOneState|1.6.06 @ 10:22AM|#

Guys, I think we should all be thankful that the MLA has NOT tried to "connect" with regular folk. That would be funny, but also very painful.

This year's meeting, which is taking place in Washington, D.C., features almost 800 panels and presentations,

Goodness...did you blog them all, Nick?

|1.6.06 @ 10:28AM|#

Why does anyone care if the MLA puts out readable material? That's not their job.

Then what are they doing other than a literary circle jerk?

|1.6.06 @ 10:49AM|#

Jennifer,

Do you think you could understand 10% of what's said in one of thoreau's academic conferences?

Lit crit goes far beyond teaching normal people about reading. It's a specialized academic field, like any other. Why does the denseness of the prose its conferences produce strike you as uniquely inappropriate, among all the fields out there?

|1.6.06 @ 11:39AM|#

Jennifer, Do you think you could understand 10% of what's said in one of thoreau's academic conferences?

Probably not, but it's to be expected that advanced, specialized scientific concepts will be too difficult for the average layman to understand. More importantly, science produces actual real-world results; I don't have to understand a damned thing about electricity to make use of it and have it enrich my life. But what exactly is the MLA accomplishing, except to give credence to the (generally erroneous) idea that "intellectuals" or just plain "smart people" are incapable of communicating with anybody else?

Why does the denseness of the prose its conferences produce strike you as uniquely inappropriate, among all the fields out there?

Because it is often needlessly dense. Instead of using language to communicate, they're using language to make their work sound more complicated than it is. If Thoreau talks about a "nuclear opto-transfibrulator generating 57 gigawatts of proto-energetic" whatever, chances are that IS the simplest way his thought can be expressed. Whereas the MLA prefers to "masticate" rather than "chew," and their official motto should read "Never use a one-syllable word when there's a five-syllable word that means almost the same thing."

Johno|1.6.06 @ 11:58AM|#

Jennifer, by that same token, doctors ought to use plain English too in all their journals.

Why do you care? Trying to read an MLA conference paper is exactly like trying to read a medical conference paper. The vocabulary is highly speciailized, with the added twist that words mean highly specific and nonintuitive things at the MLA, in order to distinguish them from near-synonyms, and this meaning may have little to do with their everyday use.

But again, why does it matter?

|1.6.06 @ 12:04PM|#

Why do you care?

I don't "care" in the same sense that I "care" about our foreign policy or the economy, but as a former English major myself, I get very annoyed with those who are barely more than caricatures of every bad English-major stereotype out there.

Remember the old Calvin and Hobbes cartoon where he writes a book report titled "The dynamics of interbeing and monological imperatives in Dick and Jane: a study in psychic transrelational gender modes"? Yup--that's the MLA for you.

|1.6.06 @ 12:22PM|#

Jennifer wins.

|1.6.06 @ 12:23PM|#

"But what exactly is the MLA accomplishing..."

They are producing ideas that might add to our understanding of society, our appreciation of literature, and our awareness of who we are. What do the more esoteric branches of mathmatics - the ones that even the scholars themselves claim are wholly inapplicable to the real world - accomplish? They have even less of a chance of producing benefits to humanity, and the output of their researchers are even less comprehensible to you and me. Yet they don't get even a thousandth of the scorn LitCrit scholars do, and I strongly suspect that it's because they are not as easily characterized as "those sort of people" by college graduates who were irritated by political correctness.

Some people assume the Mexican guys in the grocery store are laughing at them whenever they hear them speak Spanish. Other people think that Literature PhDs are laughing at the chumps when they use fifty cent words. I think it's all paranoia. And it's a little mean spirited to take swipes at those who love language, and dedicate their lives to it, for using elevated language when communicating with each other.

|1.6.06 @ 12:27PM|#

joe: there's a lot of stuff in the academic lit world that is just crawling with craziness above and beyond specialization.

|1.6.06 @ 12:31PM|#

"But what exactly is the MLA accomplishing..."
They are producing ideas that might add to our understanding of society, our appreciation of literature, and our awareness of who we are

No, they are not adding to "our" understanding of anything, because they don't feel the need to make themselves understood.

The MLA reminds me of a class on TS Eliot that I took as an undergrad. You can't truly "get" an Eliot poem unless you first have a HUGE knowledge of esoterica. Okay, if Eliot wants to be esoteric that is his prerogative.

But then my professor was talking about all the horrible social trends of Eliot's day, and said "Eliot was making some very important criticisms of his times."

And I asked, "If what he had to say was so important, why didn't he make it more accessible? It's like a guy who won't say 'Everybody run! The building is on fire and it's spreading to this room!' because he'd rather say 'Make haste to flee, good people, for the conflagration of thy doom draweth ever closer to the chamber in which thee doth sit.'

|1.6.06 @ 12:32PM|#

or as i remarked some time ago, some do not love the Word; they love it as a weapon.

|1.6.06 @ 12:35PM|#

now i must digress from the pack:

eliot is esoteric because he was an occultist. and because poetry is not a 1:1 transmission of information.

plus, the version we read is the version that was shaped up by pound. i cannot imagine what the original was like.

|1.6.06 @ 12:39PM|#

Dhex, if Eliot only want to sound pretty, or Deep, or whatever, that's fine. I'm just saying that if he was trying to get across some super-important message, he shouldn't have buried said message under a pile of vague allusions.

|1.6.06 @ 1:07PM|#

Jennifer,

"No, they are not adding to "our" understanding of anything, because they don't feel the need to make themselves understood." Ideas that start off as the preserve of incomprehensible academics often seep down into the public consciousness, generate important changes in understanding. Look at chaos theory, or existentialism.

theOneState|1.6.06 @ 1:17PM|#

joe, did those ideas escape from the preserve of incomprehensible academics at an MLA conference?

|1.6.06 @ 1:36PM|#

Joe, can you give me something we now understand, or know, thanks to the MLA? Just one?

|1.6.06 @ 1:46PM|#

jen: sometimes allusion is the only way to express something deeper. see lyrics, song.

|1.6.06 @ 2:09PM|#

I don't know if Satre, Adorno, Heiddegger, or Foucault actually belonged to the MLA, or its European equivalent, but they were plenty incomprehensible,and they did indeed produce ideas that have been important to society.

|1.6.06 @ 2:19PM|#

|1.6.06 @ 2:23PM|#

just a plug for a favorite professor's book on Milton:
Michael Bryson
"The Tyranny of Heaven"
Places Paradise Lost in both political and theological context and offers brilliant analysis.

|1.6.06 @ 2:34PM|#

Well, a Google search for "MLA contributions to the sum total of human knowledge" came up zero, which is unsurprising in more ways than one.

|1.6.06 @ 2:37PM|#

OK, Jennifer, if you want to take the subject seriously, append, "I don't know, but..." and then you have a serious answer to the question of whether this type of research and thought is important or beneficial.

If you want to score a Hakian victory, go ahead and pat yourself on the back, because I do not know the name of anyone who belongs to the MLA in particular, or whether the people who I can point to in the field whose ideas have proven important are actual, card carrying MLA members.

|1.6.06 @ 2:46PM|#

Joe, Joe, don't get so defensive. I am merely pointing out that a bunch of people debating which exact sex fantasies Jane Austen had when she wrote her novels are less likely to make any useful discoveries than scientists or mathematicians.

And for future reference: if you say that "they" are adding to our knowledge or understanding, you have to expect that someone is going to ask you how exactly "they" did that.

|1.6.06 @ 2:51PM|#

And I did, pointing out a number of examples of people doing exactly what you denounce as useless - writing incomprehensibly about literature, society, and politics - whose ideas did, in fact, add to the sum of human understanding and change society.

Is every MLAer a Michel Foucault? Certainly not, but neither is every physics grad student Einstein.

|1.6.06 @ 2:57PM|#

Joe, my specific question was "What has the MLA contributed to human knowledge," not "what have incomprehensible people contributed to human knowledge." The answer to the latter question may be "quite a bit," but so far the answer to the former is "El Zilcho."

|1.6.06 @ 3:24PM|#

neither foucault nor sartre are incomprehensible.

madness and civilization will certainly align with many a folk on this site. the history of punishment is interesting too.

lacan, on the other hand...he was incomprehensibly retarded.

|1.6.06 @ 3:37PM|#

Like a said, a downright Hakian victory.

Congratulations, you win on a technicality, without even acknowledging that I've rebutted the substance of your argument.

|1.6.06 @ 3:44PM|#

Congratulations, you win on a technicality, without even acknowledging that I've rebutted the substance of your argument.

The substance of my argument was that the MLA hasn't contributed anything useful to the sum of human knowledge; the fact that they haven't is not a "technicality."

What the hell is wrong with you today, anyway? If you're an MLA member yourself I apologize for offending you, but seriously--why are you getting so pissed off about this?

|1.6.06 @ 3:47PM|#

See, here I was thinking that you were saying that people who do what the people at the MLA conference do are not contributing anything useful.

But I guess I got it wrong. It's just actually belonging to the MLA that you objected to, and when I read your complaints about the dense language and the subject matter, I should have understood that these are only shortcomings for people who are fully paid up on the MLA dues. Otherwise, you're perfectly ok with people producing papers in high-falutin' language based on close readings of texts and cultural analyses.

My bad.

|1.6.06 @ 4:03PM|#

Fine, Joe. I formally retract every anti-MLA statement I've made here.

Thank God we have the MLA using ten-dollar words to talk about Willa Cather's sex life, because without them, who knows where our civilization would be now? Furthermore, I think it's wonderful that their "Modern Language" is not used to communicate with ninety-nine percent of the people who speak it. And as an English major, I am thrilled to fucking death that the MLA is what non-English majors think English majors are like.

Did I earlier call them a "literary circle jerk"? I was wrong, so wrong. They are at the very pinnacle of human knowledge and improvement. And the only possible reason anybody could possibly criticize them is because they're just jealous.

|1.6.06 @ 4:13PM|#

The utilization of expansive terminology never obfuscates meaning.

|1.6.06 @ 4:39PM|#

MLA stands for "My Lazy Ass," doesn't it? Note to Guy Fawkes, find out where next year's MLA will be held. Get a haircut, you tools.

|1.6.06 @ 4:45PM|#

If the MLA had a dick I would suck it. That's how much I love that organization.

|1.6.06 @ 4:55PM|#

If I remember properly, the act you name is precisely the yearly dues to the MLA. Yeats called them something like 'respectable old bald heads.' And that's just the women.

|1.6.06 @ 5:25PM|#

Like I said, Jennifer wins.

|1.8.06 @ 4:16PM|#

As a result of Jennifer's comment of January 6, 2006 at 04:45 PM, I am hereby legally changing my name to Michael Lawrence Anderson (MLA).

|1.8.06 @ 6:03PM|#

I suspect that there is an increasing jargon in the humanities and the social sciences. To take an example, I read a book which came out in the 1950s, a collection on philosophy papers in analytic philosophy. I submit that anyone who has an interest in the subject can readily understand that book. Now, it appears that in that discipline, papers are dense, technical, and mainly written for academics who have background knowledge. These social science and libeal arts professors are just bluffing; they want the respectability of math and the natural sciences so they try to make their work difficult. The emperor has no clothes.

|1.8.06 @ 6:06PM|#

I'm sorry, Mr. Anderson, but you are merely an MLA, not the MLA.

The MLA got at least one thing right--articles matter.

|1.8.06 @ 6:45PM|#

Damn!

Then I'm changing back.

|1.9.06 @ 11:51AM|#

Another seemingly flawless scheme gone unforeseeably awry!

Damn!

Reason Magazine

Get Reason E-mail Updates!

Site comments/questions:

Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:

Editorial & Production Offices:

advertisements