Barack Obama, Gossip Girl

On Beauty was boring not only because it took place at a highly ranked liberal arts college

Some British lit mag held a short story competition and Zadie Smith was the judge. After reviewing hundreds of entries she decided to give the 5000 pound prize to charity instead. She explained why in an open letter.

[W]e could not find the greatness we'd hoped for. [...]

We have only one principle here: MAKE IT GOOD.

The publishing industry discourages writers all the time and in a lot of ways. Usually it seems pragmatic: editors want to control the volume of submissions they receive. A rich novelist putting amateur writers down in the pursuit of the GOOD, on the other hand, is just snobbery. Smith should have followed the damn rules and picked the BEST. (Note: I didn't enter this contest. I swear! I found the story through VQR's blog because I was thinking of submitting to lit mags. But now I feel too sad to.)

Almost everyone trying to break into an industry faces this kind of cattiness-- its own version of passing a certain Cambridge alum's personal coolness test. You can't be a law professor unless you cite check an obscure journal for two years; you can't be a vet unless you ace scantron biology tests when you're 18; you can't lead a Roman Catholic community unless you are an overweight man. Sometimes I figure these barriers are fair enough and developed for a reason.

But sometimes an established professional discourages her less established peers in all caps. That makes me suspicious of the establishment. Hey friends-- maybe we should kill all the successful people and start shit over again.

even the Times Style section knows I shouldn't take the bar

The Times has a piece on how much it is starting to suck to be a doctor or lawyer. Those professions offer less autonomy than others, relatively shrinking pay, and the substantive work is becoming more rote. The article argues all of these points persuasively. Then for its conclusion it shifts into generational warfare mode:

This star-system mentality is particularly attractive to college students, many of whom were reared with the ’80s philosophy that every child was a potential superstar, Mr. Coleman said. And they want immediate rewards — not exactly the mentality that will fuel a student through years of medical school, a residency and additional training for a specialty.

“Their attention span, everything, is instant feedback: quick, quick, quick,” Mr. Coleman said. “Apprenticeship, these kids don’t want to do it.”

It sounds like he is talking about the young's proclivity for heroin but in fact it is just banking. Wanting rewards is unique to Kids Today? I don't think so, motherfucker. Law and medicine used to be better, not the human race. Sorry old guy.

I'm just picturing how my next job interviewer will react to my explanation for why I am leaving the legal profession. "Ah, yes, you adhere to the 80s philosophy that you are a superstar."

you guys they're going to pander to us!

Young people like Obama (some of them are called "Barack stars"). Young Republicans hate Romney. Clinton was most popular among old married ladies. Though I can't find stats on it yet, one might guess that younger adults actually voted today. We are the new Soccer Moms!

What will the consultants call us-- Pod-Cast Kids? Tivo Savvy Students? They usually like to incorporate gender though... Guess it will be Camera Phone Co-Eds and Playstation Sons.

"Text should appear on one side of a page ONLY."

--Instructions to my copyright exam, which is to be submitted electronically.

NYU should charge me double

"You're going to have to decide which is more important to you: not practicing law or being employed."

--Office of Career Services for the Downwardly Mobile (aka PILC)

Take that, non-lawyers. America has finally reached the point where all people do is sue each other. Office buildings have shriveled up and every potential employer is camped outside of a courthouse. Anyway, I think that might be funnier than what the Office of Career Services for the Upwardly Mobile (aka OCS) said to me last summer, regarding my fear that young lawyer jobs were miserable:

"It's called a job, you know. They pay you."

Besides the dialogue, the most depressing part about these meetings is when they edit my resume. They always make me delete the parts of which I'm most proud and elaborate on the stupid parts. Now if anyone asks, fighting an honor system is not the best (judging by resume space) professional experience of my life. I did not theorize about supreme court justices' personalities or defend undergraduates against charges of sexual misconduct. I did, however, call ex-cons at their homes to find out whether they enjoyed their custodial jobs.

Guess which one I should submit as a writing sample:

• The first sensical theory of Everson v. Board of Education since it was decided in 1947, as part of an argument that the supreme court ended segregation because they hated catholics.
• An essay against rational argument in favor of emotionalism.
• Research about the difference between legal and illegal touching of genitals, in New York County.

kids today are bad at milking cows

Interesting article about whether kids today should learn the canon all the time again. Here's a particularly misguided passage:

“What Americans yearn for in literature is self-recognition,” said Mark Lilla, a professor of political philosophy and religion who just left the University of Chicago for Columbia. “That’s where the conservatives went wrong. The case for the canon itself isn’t a case for book camp and becoming a citizen in the West.” Wrestling with difficult, often inaccessible works is “the most alienating experience possible,” he continued. “When you read Toni Morrison, there’s no alienation. It affirms your Americanism.”

Where to start?!

Reading, for everyone, at every stage in history, has always been about self-recognition. 19th century American students recognized themselves in stuff written by other primitive white males. Abe Lincoln lived in a log cabin, his neighbors owned slaves, and then he started a war. His life was a lot more similar to an Ancient Roman's than to a gay Rhode Islander's.

Lincoln was actually gay. But if he read my gay, American, only 150-years-removed from him blog, he'd feel a lot more alienated than he did around Plato.

Next. The Toni Morrison book I read in college was about ex-slaves in Utah. I did not immediately recognize myself in it. Oh, except for in the gender of the main characters. Should they have been male, to alienate me more and deny my Americanism?

Lilla's insanity lies in his overvaluation of "American" identity. This American identity is so strong that it gives us alternate motives for reading books than French and Chinese people have. We read for self-recognition; French people read in order to achieve orgasm. Considering ourselves American also psychologically connects us to every other person who is American. When we read about Lincoln walking 20 miles to borrow a book or MLK doing the kind of stuff that gets you assassinated, we think, "I am like that, too. Because I am American."

Oh no, some people probably do think that! Moving on...

I understand the temptation, if you are old, to glorify old people. But the truth is that yesterday's students read mostly powerful white guys because they were mostly powerful white guys. Now a wider range of people are being educated--and paying for it-- so the curriculum's mirroring that. It's got nothing to do with my generation being lazy or other people's generations liking hard things.

Plus, at this point in history it makes sense to cut certain things out of the curriculum. Technology's changing our lifestyles at a faster rate than ever before, rendering larger swaths of old writings obsolete. Reading about how to treat your slaves is like the third amendment. It's interesting to note that in colonial America you had to quarter soldiers in your house, but even a law professor isn't going to make you argue about it for a week.

And finally, a word from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: "The literature of the past is a bore."

a class I dropped

I signed up for a class taught by David Richards and Carol Gilligan because David Richards and Carol Gilligan were teaching it. Gilligan is a famous feminist psychologist; Richards was my crim prof who acted like a cartoon character, screaming, jumping, and teaching in a falsetto.

For the first class we were assigned one book each of theirs. For the second class, Gilligan's husband's book. Later on, two other of Richards' books. And for each class of the semester, a chapter of their joint unpublished manuscript, on which they encouraged us to give feedback.

Richards spoke the majority of the time and interrupted Gilligan most of the times she spoke. He was not a cartoon character, perhaps because this class was more serious than criminal law. A student mentioned he'd enjoyed Richards' teaching style in crim and Richards replied, "oh, you wanted more of that... Theatrics."

We were encouraged to find our voice, especially via the weekly writing assignments. For the next class the readings were a chapter of the professors' about Roman patriarchy and Gilligan's husband's book, Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic. The writing assignment was: is Roman patriarchy alive in Violence? I feared that if I answered the question I might accidentally speak in someone else's voice. Like the professors'.

Gilligan is a straight woman and mother of three sons; Richards is a gay man. Although they agreed that masculinity was--to some extent-- artificially constructed, they also romanticized masculinity. Gilligan told us that it's more difficult for men to live in a patriarchy. Not "also difficult." More. As in higher quantity of bad feelings? Richards told us that all of the five great men he wrote about in an assigned book Disarming Manhood had strong, independent mothers. Strength and independence... with which gender are those traits associated? These were bold generalizations (aka "stereotypes") and I couldn't help but feel they'd be more credible coming from a neutral party, someone neither manly nor predisposed toward orgasming nearby manliness. I call not it.

The Gilligan book assigned for the first class was The Birth of Pleasure. Five minutes before the end of class Gilligan asked us to free write. The prompt: "While reading The Birth of Pleasure I..."

Never take a class because the professor is famous unless you go to Harvard.

Professors are the worst kind of authority figure because they're impotent and their uniforms are boring and they know it. Let's talk about my property professor. He's not evil except insofar as he is absolutely unselfaware, and tries to infect future lawyers with absolute unselfawareness of the type that will enable us all to pity poor people while buying and selling them.

First of all, know that he is a friend of the common man. You can tell because he voted for Kerry, went to college in the 60's, and lives in New York. Plus he tells us several times per class that he is an "unreconstructed new dealer" and declared the property rights movement "racist."

He's also a friend of his students. You can tell because he doesn't cold call us, doesn't make us buy a textbook, and says things like "of course everyone here agrees with... [insert friend-of-the-common-man boilerplate]." He cannot imagine that we are not friends of the common man. Because we are his friends.

He has told us that the party with the better, higher-priced lawyer always wins in litigation. Presumably he's sorry for this, since he is a friend of the common man. But he jokes constantly about us, his friends, all joining major law firms. The kind that win all the time.

He does not believe that his students are common men. He contrasts us with the poor destitute kids who join the military because they have no choice and get blown up in Iraq. He called us the winners and soldiers, losers.

The economic class you're born into matters. But there are non-luck factors at play too. The people I know who joined the military aren't the poorest people I know. And you can join a branch of the military that's not headed to Iraq. There are choices every step of the way. A young adult can make a living as a waiter or a fisherman or a mechanic in my hometown. People blow that off for Iraq because they want respect.

Meanwhile, an NYU law student could make a living at any of a hundred other occupations-- teaching, social work, owning a business. It's not a secret that we're on the road to unhappiness here, and possibly to hell too if you're into that kind of thing. But we choose law over those hundred other occupations. Why? Because law is more interesting.

Oops, I meant to say because we want respect. Way more than our share. Paid in the form of envy, resentment, and sexual favors from economic "losers."

So my prof seems to think people go to NYU Law and Iraq for exact opposite reasons: because they either have status or they don't. I think we're all doing it for the same reason: we need status. We're all losers.

He's the most status-whoring of all. He wants the status of subscribing to a retro ideology, the status of being friends with 25-year olds, and the status of being down with the common man. Good thing you don't need mental coherency to get the status of tenure.