J. H. Prynne

[sus]

The reading list for Jane Austen alone—and we must assume that if he is recommending the wheat, he has read at least double or triple in chaffe, otherwise the list is pointless—is the work of a lifetime for a Jane Austen scholar. Several editions of all her novels plus dozens of secondary books, biographies, and companions.

I do not think that is a reasonable guide for an undergraduate, again, it is a lifetime of deep scholarship.

There are dozens of authors who he gives similar lists for.

I do not think he has done twenty professional literary scholars worth of careful reading, in addition to all the other non-canon, non-English literature and poetry he's certainly read (from modernism to world lit to non-literature e.g. cybernetics or philosophy)

 

[sus]

The entire point of curating a list is to provide a Pareto-efficient sampling of the whole, which allows others to get a handle on the whole without actually having to slog through the whole.

When you throw the entire bibliography of an author on a curated recommendations list, and then repeat it several times with different editions, and then have multiple titles named "Jane Austen: A Life," you haven't really done that, have you?

 

[Benny Bunter]

I'm no scholar and I mostly fucked around at university, but I remember the reading lists they handed out being very long with many books you couldn't even get hold of in the library. You weren't expected to read them all, that would be unrealistic.

 

[sus]

I don't understand what "tyrannically modernist engineering culture" is though and why you think Prynne was mocking it.

I read "Die A Millionaire" as making the usual (fr Pynchon to Adam Curtis) connection between control systems and imperialism. Perhaps that isn't a fair reading; I only read it over once and got a "vibe," as they say

 

[sus]

I'm no scholar and I mostly fucked around at university, but I remember the reading lists they handed out being very long with many books you couldn't even get hold of in the library. You weren't expected to read them all, that would be unrealistic.

This seems very very very silly to me. This never happened in my program. They told you what texts were important for the class; all those texts had been ordered by the professor to be available (in quantities appropriate for class size) in the university bookstore + library; all those texts were discussed in seminar.

Maybe there's a good reason for how Cambridge (and other UK perhaps?) liberal arts programs do it. I'm open to the possibility and happy to be enlightened. But I can't understand it at present.

 

[sus]

I don't know why you'd put out-of-print, unobtainable books on an undergraduate reading list. What is the purpose?? I am being very sincere, this isn't rhetorical. Why???

I don't know why you wouldn't at least emphasize which texts, on this enormous and unwieldy list, were more important for the course. Clearly some are. Why would you provide an undifferentiated list without any guides or triage?? I am being very sincere, this isn't rhetorical. Why???

 

[Benny Bunter]

I get the impression students are a lot thicker/lazier and less well read nowadays than they were and maybe needed less hand holding. Also, like I said, it seems unlikely you would be expected to read them all.

This seems to have touched a nerve with you for some reason, what does it bother you so much?

 

[woops]

he explains it himself in his tips on reading lists, but you have to read it

Study the
layout of any list that you intend to make use of, and the general information
provided at the start or end of the list, so that you can determine how it may
contribute to your own personal needs. Many synoptic lists on big topics are
impossibly long; keep in mind that you are not expected to read everything
(which would be uncritical), and an extended list offers you a basis for making
your own choices.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Prynne was a ridiculously thorough researcher - in his correspondence with Charles Olson, Olson asked him about shipping records as research for his Maximus poems and he responded with this:

 

[Benny Bunter]

And that's probably not even the half of it. Olson must have thought he was fucking insane.

 

[woops]

i want to write a poem about the hardcore continuum @version can you consult the archive, see what you can dig up.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Olson and I exchanged comments about all sorts of things, including the linguistics of poetic composition. It was clear to me that he’d been a very *influential and powerful teacher. It was also clear, at one point, that Olson was thinking that if I’d been on the scene ten or fifteen years earlier, he would’ve invited me to join him on the Black Mountain team. Having read enough and heard enough about the way things were done there, I asked *myself if I would have accepted such an invitation. I was quite clear that I would not have done so. It was not an institution that I could have willingly associated myself with, partly because they were such bullies. Olson and the others practised ascendency over the students and dominated their development, and offered themselves as exemplary models to be followed, not as choices to be made. Partly, too, because their knowledge of scholarship, and their understanding of things outside the ambience of personal interest and behaviour, was extremely casual. There were papers in the Black Mountain Review by Creeley that were grossly erroneous with regard to basic information. There was an absurd discussion about someone called Putnam, as I recall. It was meant to be George Puttenham. Creeley had heard the name spoken and he propagated this absurd misidentification. I was incensed by the absurdity. Didn’t they have a library? Weren’t they able to check up on information? No, they weren’t interested in any sort of reliable connection with the data of literary practise. I wouldn’t have wanted to do that. I remember thinking, rather priggishly I may say, that it was something I wouldn’t have done. For I was at a serious institute, and I’d been surrounded by serious scholars who had serious habits. And even though I used these habits in my own interest, and explored them in my own way, it was a very stabilising framework.

 

[Benny Bunter]

There's the difference between the American and English poets at the time - "serious scholars who had serious habits"

The Prynne/Oliver letters confirm this and Douglas Oliver didn't even go to university until he was older, but the range of stuff they've read and discuss in depth is amazing

 

[sus]

I am well-acquainted with the cargocult practice of extreme technical "rigor" as a substitute for engagement with matters of substance

 

[woops]

I am well-acquainted with the cargocult practice of extreme technical "rigor" as a substitute for engagement with matters of substance

sounds like the same thing to me

 

[sus]

sounds like the same thing to me

Evan iff aye misspel evry woard inh thiz sentance, mai poyunt remaynes vahlid

 

[woops]

u wat

 

[Benny Bunter]

You've read one of his poems and glanced at a few university reading lists lol

 

[sus]

Which is significantly more than those who have dismissed Annie Baker or Peli Grietzer, in my own threads, have encountered

 

[sus]

Quit pretending Dissensus is a remotely rigorous place! "lol"