LEAVING US OUT
As an independent scholar publishing for some four decades now, I find myself
persistently annoyed at how academics tend to neglect our work. Two recent books on
the composer Lou Harrison, both by professors, don’t acknowledge at all my articles
about him or the extended interview published in a periodical no less visible than the
Musical Quarterly. Several professors’ books about John Cage omit me entirely, even
though I’ve been publishing books and articles about him, including some in the New
York Times, since 1967.
Professor Arnold Rampersad’s Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois (1990) does not
acknowledge my Fictions for a Negro Politics: The Neglected Novels of W.E.B. Du Bois,
initially published in July 1968 in Xavier University Studies and then reprinted in William
L. Andrews’ anthology of Critical Essays on W.E.B. Du Bois (G.K. Hall, 1985) and my
own Politics in the African-American Novel (Greenwood, 1990).
Even though individual entries on me appear in Contemporary Poets, Contemporary
Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, A Reader’s
Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature,
Webster’s Dictionary of American Authors, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of
American Literature, NNDB.com, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, among other
distinguished directories, what counts most for academics is not where you publish,
but what titles can be attached to your name. In this, academics come to resemble
royalty predisposed to acknowledge only other royalty.
More egregiously, my critique of The New York Literary Mob, which occupied a
prominent place in my The End of Intelligent Writing (1974), is not acknowledged in
any of the subsequent books wholly about "NY Intellectuals”—not in Critical
Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America (1991) by Professor Neil
Jumonville (U. of Florida), not in The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of
the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (1987) by Professor Alan Wald (U.
of Michigan), not in Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (1986)
by Alexander Bloom (Wheaton College) or in The Rise of the New York Intellectuals
Partisan Review and Its Circle, 1934--1945 (1986) by Terry A. Cooney (U. of Puget
Sound) or in Renewing the Left: Politics, Imagination, and the New York Intellectuals
(1996) by Harvey Teres (Syracuse U.). Need I go on?
Why not? Am I incorrigibly second-class, even though individual entries on my work in
several fields appear in various editions of elite distinguished directories, some of
which, including the last, explicitly acknowledge books that the professors neglect. Are
these guys as thick and insensitive as they inadvertently portray themselves to be?
No, they simply reflect the policy established at the National Endowment for the
Humanities, a federal agency that recognizes only professors with university doctorates
as legitimate scholars. Nearly all recipients of federal cultural money are academics or
those who pay academic advisors to lend their names to their work. That’s why they
appear, invariably illuminated solemnly, in all documentaries funded by the NEH. (Think
most familiarly of those by Ken Burns.)
I’ve compared our NEH to the cultural agencies of the former Eastern Bloc because
they rewarded primarily members of the Correct Party—in their case, the Communist
Party; in our federal culture, the Academic Party. As nothing done by the federal
culture agencies remains so insidiously influential, I remain surprised that pious critics
of the companion National Endowment for the Arts don’t know why the NEH is far
more objectionable.
What should be done? For independents not to acknowledge professors (until they
“get it”) would jeopardize the quality of our work, much as their chronic neglect of us
finally undermines theirs. Perhaps the surest move is never to miss an opportunity to
expose their limitations, along with those at the NEH, as I am doing now.
As we know from American history, people who treat first-class others as second class
citizens voluntary diminish themselves. Only a cracker mentality would express surprise
when the underclass complains, as I am doing now.
As an independent scholar publishing for some four decades now, I find myself
persistently annoyed at how academics tend to neglect our work. Two recent books on
the composer Lou Harrison, both by professors, don’t acknowledge at all my articles
about him or the extended interview published in a periodical no less visible than the
Musical Quarterly. Several professors’ books about John Cage omit me entirely, even
though I’ve been publishing books and articles about him, including some in the New
York Times, since 1967.
Professor Arnold Rampersad’s Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois (1990) does not
acknowledge my Fictions for a Negro Politics: The Neglected Novels of W.E.B. Du Bois,
initially published in July 1968 in Xavier University Studies and then reprinted in William
L. Andrews’ anthology of Critical Essays on W.E.B. Du Bois (G.K. Hall, 1985) and my
own Politics in the African-American Novel (Greenwood, 1990).
Even though individual entries on me appear in Contemporary Poets, Contemporary
Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, A Reader’s
Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature,
Webster’s Dictionary of American Authors, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of
American Literature, NNDB.com, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, among other
distinguished directories, what counts most for academics is not where you publish,
but what titles can be attached to your name. In this, academics come to resemble
royalty predisposed to acknowledge only other royalty.
More egregiously, my critique of The New York Literary Mob, which occupied a
prominent place in my The End of Intelligent Writing (1974), is not acknowledged in
any of the subsequent books wholly about "NY Intellectuals”—not in Critical
Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America (1991) by Professor Neil
Jumonville (U. of Florida), not in The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of
the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (1987) by Professor Alan Wald (U.
of Michigan), not in Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (1986)
by Alexander Bloom (Wheaton College) or in The Rise of the New York Intellectuals
Partisan Review and Its Circle, 1934--1945 (1986) by Terry A. Cooney (U. of Puget
Sound) or in Renewing the Left: Politics, Imagination, and the New York Intellectuals
(1996) by Harvey Teres (Syracuse U.). Need I go on?
Why not? Am I incorrigibly second-class, even though individual entries on my work in
several fields appear in various editions of elite distinguished directories, some of
which, including the last, explicitly acknowledge books that the professors neglect. Are
these guys as thick and insensitive as they inadvertently portray themselves to be?
No, they simply reflect the policy established at the National Endowment for the
Humanities, a federal agency that recognizes only professors with university doctorates
as legitimate scholars. Nearly all recipients of federal cultural money are academics or
those who pay academic advisors to lend their names to their work. That’s why they
appear, invariably illuminated solemnly, in all documentaries funded by the NEH. (Think
most familiarly of those by Ken Burns.)
I’ve compared our NEH to the cultural agencies of the former Eastern Bloc because
they rewarded primarily members of the Correct Party—in their case, the Communist
Party; in our federal culture, the Academic Party. As nothing done by the federal
culture agencies remains so insidiously influential, I remain surprised that pious critics
of the companion National Endowment for the Arts don’t know why the NEH is far
more objectionable.
What should be done? For independents not to acknowledge professors (until they
“get it”) would jeopardize the quality of our work, much as their chronic neglect of us
finally undermines theirs. Perhaps the surest move is never to miss an opportunity to
expose their limitations, along with those at the NEH, as I am doing now.
As we know from American history, people who treat first-class others as second class
citizens voluntary diminish themselves. Only a cracker mentality would express surprise
when the underclass complains, as I am doing now.
r.kv.r.y. quarterly literary journal
summer-fall 2007 rants and raves
by
Richard Kostelanetz
summer-fall 2007 rants and raves
by
Richard Kostelanetz
photo from and link to the unnews
article: british academic boycott
targeted to thwart colonialism
article: british academic boycott
targeted to thwart colonialism