For those fcrp readers who aren’t regular readers of the Chronicle of Higher Education—c’mon, I know you’re out there—I bring you this story from the groves of academe. Pop quiz: Where is Drake University? Why, it’s located “at the northeast edge of Des Moines,” the web page tells us, with no apparent sense of irony [...]
Not surprisingly—no surprise to me, anyway—discussions last night of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read with our first-year students were very animated and very smart. Each year we assign one common book for all of our incoming students to read, ostensibly as a kind of community-building exercise: All of our first-year [...]
I’m going to write today’s posts in two parts: the pre-freshman portion and the post-freshman portion. (We don’t really use the word “freshman” anymore, of course, but the phrase “pre-first-year students” just doesn’t work. The eye is offended.) Tonight (Sunday night), along with a couple dozen of my colleagues at Pomona College, I’ll be leading [...]
Thanks to fcrp reader Emily, who suggested the first video in today’s post—which led me, old guy that I am, to think of a couple of earlier examples of this kind of thing. So to begin at the beginning: here’s the video that Emily pointed me to, a subtle but instructive piece of performance art. [...]
OK, so this has been building up for a while; and rather than lurking around all snippy and defensive in the Comments section, really I need to mount a more thoughtful, and measured, response to this whole topic. And the topic, of course, is the charge that I “over-analyze” things. I’d like to begin by [...]
On Friday, discussing the public service announcement “Moms With Guns,” I trailed off by talking about the dangers of irony for conveying important political or social content. I’m a big fan of irony, as colleagues and friends know; but it’s a notoriously unreliable weapon—the Saturday-night special of rhetorical devices—and if you come packin’, you’d better [...]
Sometimes my own naiveté catches me by surprise and sends me staggering. How did I survive lo these five decades without knowing there’s an entire genre of photography, both still and moving, dedicated to “moms” fondling “guns”? Just look at the videos that crop up in the right margin of today’s YouTube selection: “Mom Shooting [...]
Long after any- and everyone else interested had seen it, Robyn & I got the 2003 movie My Architect: A Son’s Journey from Netflix last week and gave it a look. Based on a (for me) outstanding premise—we’re going to learn more about the architect Louis Kahn and his famous friends!—the movie proceeds to disappoint [...]
So, after yesterday’s stunning setup, today I shall deliver the coup de grâce, establishing forever the artistic and affective poverty of the Steely Dan oeuvre. Ahem. I can’t think of any way to get where I’m going, but obliquely. Here’s a first attempt: a few days ago I mentioned, in a different context, the “title” [...]
So as promised/threatened yesterday, three songs that operate roughly along the lines of the songs suggested by [correction!] faithful fcrp reader Steve: Songs that seem to be moving in one direction, carrying us merrily along, only to dart suddenly in another direction. Or in which a single word or phrase has an undue amount of [...]