- Thorpe, Peter.
Why Literature Is Bad for You.
Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers, 1980.
ISBN 0-88229-745-7.
-
Techies like myself often have little patience with students of
the humanities, particularly those argumentative types ill-informed
in anything outside their speciality often found around university
campuses. After escaping from an encounter with one of these
creatures, a common reaction is to shrug one's shoulders and
mutter “English majors…”. I'd always assumed it
was a selection effect: a career which involves
reading made-up stories and then arguing vociferously about
small details in them just naturally appeals to dopey people who
those more engaged in the real world inevitably find
tedious and irritating. But here's a book written by
a professor of English Literature who argues that immersion
in the humanities manufactures such people, wrecking
the minds and often the lives of those who would have otherwise made
well-balanced and successful accountants, scientists, physicians,
engineers, or members of other productive professions.
This is either one of the most astonishing exemplars of academic
apostasy ever written, or such a dry satire (which, it should be
noted, is one of the author's fields of professional interest) that
it slips beneath the radar of almost everybody who reads it.
Peter Thorpe was a tenured (to be sure, otherwise this book would
have been career suicide) associate professor of English at the
University of Colorado when, around 1980, he went through what must
have been a king-Hell existential mid-life crisis and penned this
book which, for all its heresies, didn't wreck his career: here's a
recent
biography.
In any case, the message is incendiary. A professor of English
Literature steps up to the podium to argue that intensive exposure to
the Great Books which undergraduate and graduate students in English
and their professors consider their “day job” is highly destructive
to their psyches, as can be observed by the dysfunctional behaviour
manifest in the denizens of a university department of humanities. So
dubious is Thorpe that such departments have anything to do with
human values, that he consistently encloses “humanities” in scare
quotes.
Rather than attempting to recapitulate the arguments of this short and
immensely entertaining polemic, I will simply cite the titles of the
five parts and list the ways in which Thorpe
deems the study of literature pernicious in each.
- Seven Types of Immaturity
“Outgrowing” loved ones; addiction to and fomenting crises;
refusal to co-operate deemed a virtue; fatalism as an
excuse; self-centredness instead of self-knowledge; lust for
revenge; hatred and disrespect for elders and authority.
- Seven Avenues to Unawareness
Imputing “motivation” where it doesn't exist; pigeonholing people
into categories; projecting one's own feelings onto others;
replacement of one's own feelings with those of others;
encouragement of laziness—it's easier to read than to do;
excessive tolerance for incompetence; encouraging hostility and
aggression.
- Five Avenues to Unhappiness
Clinically or borderline paranoia, obsession with the past,
materialism or irrational anti-materialism, expectation of
gratitude when none is due, and being so worry-prone as to risk
stomach ulcers (lighten up—this book was published two years
before the discovery of
H.
pylori).
- Four Ways to Decrease Our Mental Powers
Misuse of opinion, faulty and false memories,
dishonest use of evidence, and belief that ideas
do not have consequences.
- Four Ways to Failing to Communicate
Distorting the language, writing poorly, gossipping and
invading the privacy of others, and advocating or
tolerating censorship.
That's a pretty damning bill of particulars, isn't it?
Most of these indictments of the rôle of literature in inducing
these dysfunctions are illustrated by fictionalised
anecdotes based on individuals the author has encountered
in English departments during his career. Some of the stories
and arguments for how devotion to literature is the
root cause of the pathology of the people who study it seem a
tad over the top to this engineer, but then I haven't spent
my whole adult life in an English Lit. department! The writing is
entertaining and the author remains true to his profession in
invoking a multitude of literary allusions to bolster his
points. Whatever, it's comforting to believe that when you
took advantage of
Cliff's Notes
to survive those soporific equation-free requirements for graduation
you weren't (entirely) being lazy but also protecting your sanity and
moral compass!
The book is out of print, but used copies are readily available
and inexpensive. Special thanks to the visitor who
recommended this book.
November 2005 