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Sincere or Not?

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Clarissa

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It’s possible that this person is being a DEI poseur in the statement. It’s also possible that these words are sincere.

I have no problem whatsoever with recognizing when a book is too hard for me to read. But Beloved? I found a copy of this novel back in Ukraine in 1994. That was before I ever lived in an English-speaking country. It’s a good novel. I enjoyed it. I remember I chose it as the text for a presentation I did in one of my college courses. A nice novel, but difficult to read? For anybody who never read anything beyond airport fiction, yes, but for a person who has read actual literature, it makes no sense. A tenured full professor of English literature at Harvard finds Beloved an impossibly difficult text that requires several readings for even a basic understanding?

It’s Oprah’s favorite novel, for Pete’s sake. How hard can it be?

We read Morrison in class when I was in graduate school. Once again, I don’t remember anybody among the students, let alone the professor, expressing any difficulty with the reading.

I believe that Morrison is very talented, a great writer, but extremely complex? What else is this Harvard professor reading if Morrison is such a challenge?

The author of this quote is hamming it up for ideological reasons, right?

7 responses to “Sincere or Not?”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Prof Clarissa, the things that you have been showing us about what is going on inside academia are truly shocking. I wish I could accuse you of lying, because it is hard to believe that things have gotten this bad. Regrettably though, I actually can believe that we now have barely literate English professors. What bothers me the most is how many people would have had to indulge in decades of cowardice and self-righteous posturing for things to have come to such a pass.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      This excerpt was published in a book. This person willingly disclosed it about themselves. It has become fashionable to be ignorant and dumb, even among professors

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    It’s the standard academic airs of, “You are a simpleton if you don’t see the complexity, layers, and artistry in this seemingly straightforward thing.”

    No DEI is required. Scholars who studied Twain and Hemingway were doing it 40 years ago.

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    1. Random reader Avatar
      Random reader

      I read it the same way at first. The text is very easy to comprehend – on the surface. But it takes three readings by a highly educated Harvard professor to uncover the rich complexities of this (seemingly simple) work.
      But that is not exactly what the excerpt says – the professor does say that they did not comprehend the text even at the basic level before reading it three times, which brings us back to that they are either not very smart or are deliberately pretending not to be…

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        Of course, it’s not unusual but completely normal to do multiple readings as a literary critic to advance your understanding of a work of literature. I’m going to speak in Salamanca at the end of the month, and I’m currently on my fifth reading of the book that I will be talking about. That’s what we do. That’s completely normal. But this person claims he couldn’t understand the novel on a basic level. I can absolutely imagine undergraduate students not being able to understand the plot on the first reading because Morrison is not trying to be straightforwardly realistic in the book. But if you’ve read Faulkner, Garcia Marquez, or Rulfo, as a Harvard professor of literature is supposed to have done, then Morrison’s writing should not present much difficulty for you. What she does in the novel is not a radical innovation. Morrison is building on the work of many writers who came before. What this Harvard professor claims is that he’s utterly unfamiliar with all of these precursors and isn’t capable of placing a very famous American writer within a literary genealogy.

        I don’t specialize in American literature, but I could go into the classroom right now and teach a course on Morrison’s literary precursors.

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    2. cliff arroyo Avatar
      cliff arroyo

      “You are a simpleton if you don’t see the complexity, layers, and artistry in this seemingly straightforward thing.””

      That was my assumption… it’s not about the language per se but about some super-hidden, subtle and exquisitely profound sub-text that only a few can discern…. Emperor’s New Clothes.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        It is possible that this professor uses the word “basic” in the way that pre-teen TikTokers do it. This doesn’t make the situation any less disturbing. 😆😆

        This quote is clearly from a book. This got published. I haven’t checked, but is the name of the author Jason Arday?

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