A Commentary on the Passing Scene by
Robert Paul Wolff
rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
THE WHORE OF MENSA
If there is anyone out there who has never read this classic short short story by Woody Allen, just click on this and enjoy. When he was young, he was to die for.
What strikes me is the Anglo-centric nature of the discussion. All the authors mentioned but two, Kant and Dante, wrote in English. And yet the madame holds a Comp. Lit. degree, which is a telling datum in a piece written in '74, more or less midway between the appearance of Paul de Man's first two books, Blindness and Insight (1971) and Allegories of Reading (1979).
I got an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1970. Almost everything we read was originally written in English. I took a graduate seminar in Contemporary Literary Criticism and we read a lot of French stuff and even some Lukacs, but it would have been possible to get the degree without reading anything written originally in any language besides English.
Dean, S . Wallerstein, get a grip!! It is a joke, a witty light comic piece, it is not a dissertation on the state of literary studies in the mid-seventies!
My comment was mildly tongue in cheek. It even performed the same pseudo-intellectual baloney that Woody mocked! But I still kinda think his targeting of Comp. Lit. was a function of the academic times in which he wrote the piece.
Favorite scene from an old Woody Allen movie ("Bananas"): Allen's stressed-out character in the film is driving a Volkswagon, "bug" somewhere in Latin America in deep philosophical conversation with himself about the loss of dignity in modern Man's conception of himself. He parks his car at last on the side of a busy urban street, gets out, and plunges abruptly down the length of an open sewer manhole!
That's hilarious. He is indeed very talented.
ReplyDeleteWhat strikes me is the Anglo-centric nature of the discussion. All the authors mentioned but two, Kant and Dante, wrote in English. And yet the madame holds a Comp. Lit. degree, which is a telling datum in a piece written in '74, more or less midway between the appearance of Paul de Man's first two books, Blindness and Insight (1971) and Allegories of Reading (1979).
ReplyDeleteMaybe I'm reading too much into it.
I got an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 1970. Almost everything we read was originally written in English. I took a graduate seminar in Contemporary Literary Criticism and we read a lot of French stuff and even some Lukacs, but it would have been possible to get the degree without reading anything written originally in any language besides English.
ReplyDeleteDean, S . Wallerstein, get a grip!! It is a joke, a witty light comic piece, it is not a dissertation on the state of literary studies in the mid-seventies!
ReplyDeleteSheesh!
My comment was mildly tongue in cheek. It even performed the same pseudo-intellectual baloney that Woody mocked! But I still kinda think his targeting of Comp. Lit. was a function of the academic times in which he wrote the piece.
ReplyDeleteFavorite scene from an old Woody Allen movie ("Bananas"): Allen's stressed-out character in the film is driving a Volkswagon, "bug" somewhere in Latin America in deep philosophical conversation with himself about the loss of dignity in modern Man's conception of himself. He parks his car at last on the side of a busy urban street, gets out, and plunges abruptly down the length of an open sewer manhole!
ReplyDelete