My Quartets

Initial outline and plan for successful and awe inducing poetry

- Scribble poetic verse as it appears in my head or as I recognize it in the conversations around me
- Collect verse in organized areas predetermined to maximize the emotional purpose of the poetry
- Sort verse into rhythmic patterns determined by the writing
- Sculpt work with defined religious and classical metaphors and insert relevant popular media references
- Edit ruthlessly

My purposeful predetermined organization of my four quartets is the following:

1. This section will focus upon the world we think we know. The discovery will be made that this is in fact not the world where we live. We live in something far different. The lie before our eyes is revealed as a lie.
   
2. Now that we know something we did not know, in an attempt to understand it, we are knocked off of our pedestal of safety and launched into a world in which we understand nothing. The lie now revealed shows the truth behind it which leads into the third quartet.
   
3. The unveiling, the apocalypse, the truth is revealed. This will be dark and horrible to a degree that I don't want everyone in the class able to read through this section. This is out of necessity for historical accuracy.
4. Ascent out of hell and into heaven. Balance is restored and then more than restored. In the ordinary, a level of beauty exists which would otherwise not be known were it not contrasted with hell from the previous quartet.

Religious and classical and popular metaphors to parallel these for separate sections.

1. Mountain (Mt. Olympus and where Moses goes for burning bush/commandments). A location and constant presence by which we find direction when we reach the given location. Inverting the mountain will be necessary because of the negative connotations in this section. The mountain is our culture of relaxed morals and general apathy towards our involvement in the welfare of others. Think of the open pit mine in Butte. If you get to the bottom of it, that's where it's most poisonous. That's where I'm headed with this.
2. Cave. (Plato's allegory of the cave) Once we've reached the bottom of our inverted mountain, we are now in a cave. We can't see the light or what it reaches. The shadows on the wall are only an indication. The light we think we see is actually false. There is no light, there is only...
3. Furnace. Hell. This is as bad as it gets and trust me when I tell you that YOU DO NOT KNOW JUST HOW BAD THIS IS! The worst things you've experienced in your life pales in comparison to this. That's not me being insensitive just realistic. Less classical metaphor in this section will create more room for a realistic approach to the writing. More dialectic and less rhetoric than the other sections.
4. Ladder to the Garden. Ascent out of hell and into paradise. This is the band aid placed upon the soul to heal the experience of the third quartet. Think of a happy ending to a disney movie. The contrast with the previous quartet should make the both of them more powerful.

Extremely smart advice from my dad for creating art.

First, take the puzzle pieces with which you'll work and put them on index cards. Use a very large amount of floor space to rearrange your index cards and find the correct flow with them. As a musician, he used the word rhythm and I think that's applicable to our writing also. While this editing process is possible in a word processor, index cards will be superior.

Second, when in the editing process, we need to know when we are done (hopefully not determined by a deadline). When we start changing details such as the word "of" to the word "the", then it's time to move on to something else.

Third, art is basically theft so steal quality from quality sources. An exceptional level of theft is necessary for an exceptional level of art. This is best summed up in a Jim Jarmusch quote from The golden rules of filming:

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to.”

Words with Power

Northrop Frye is probably the smartest literary critic from last century. In a previous class, Dr. Sexson assigned this book, Words with Power, and it has wowed me ever since. I was very surprised to read out a random quote in class and find it not immediately relevant. Here are some better quotes which are more applicable to our class.

• Words can never directly transmit to our minds anything that is not verbal.
• Literature is an art of words.
• Anything that sounds anti-intellectual always becomes popular.
• Ideologies, like other human organisms, are mortal: they come to birth, decay and die, or are metamorphosed into other forms.
• Those in power, and perhaps a large part of society also, regard flexibility and tolerance as dangerous social forces. The twentieth century has seen many poets and novelists exiled, silenced, isolated, imprisoned, murdered, or driven to suicide by ideology-obsessed governments.
• It is a function of poetry to keep the metaphorical habit of thought alive.

Words with Power is quote riddled and loaded with shockingly well worded "ahh hahs!" It basically reads as a cliffs notes on biblical and classical metaphor and imagery. Interesting but not surprisingly, Frye touches on Eliot's Four Quartets. Frye mentions Eliot's use of intersecting the ordinary with the divine and many other authors with similar fascinations are also touched upon. Frye says that the importance isn't this same group of images which the poets are interested in which is important. What's important is why the poets were all interested in the same images.

In answer to that, Frye makes an argument, which seems to appear a few times through different representations, that religious metaphor is tied to illogical belief of the real where as classical metaphor can be used as a highlight or accent to a story without the unnecessary and problematic concern of being truthful. It is unfortunate that religion argues it's own position as real and "the truth" because this ultimately weakens it and prevents a more expanded use of it's imagery (compared to classical imagery and it's diverse use). Believe me when I say that there are a great many more points which Frye makes and the book is totally worth looking at for reference if you are writing anything to do with myth, identity and metaphor, or the metaphors of the mountain, garden, cave, or furnace.

Connecting the Dots

We've all talked a good deal about the dots which represent important things and about the space between those dots. Eliot is artistic when illuminating these dots and the space between them because he illustrates them in a way which requires us first to make the leap of understanding before truly "knowing" what he tells us. It's all very lovely but it can be somewhat difficult in execution when we examine our own lives. Well, I've done quite a bit of thinking about my college experience (yes, that post we were supposed to blog about almost a month ago) and I understand something about it which has made me feel rather odd.

I inhale books like no one else I've ever met. I can read 16 hours a day for a week (or more) when I'm into them. You name the genre and, if I'm interested, it's all but finished. Popular fiction, especially in the form of a nice big series, stands no chance. As an example, I sunk my fangs into that nice big vampire series by Charlaine Harris during the holiday break and toasted 9 books in 5 1/5 days. Now I've never driven to another city for the sole purpose of visiting a book store as Ronald describes but I'd guess that's because I'm more than willing to reread my favorite books of which I frequently have several copies. Thrift stores provide me with my 50 cent compulsion book-buys. It's basically a fix.

I've never been keen on my text books while in class. 6 months to a year later, oh hell yeah I love them. While there is the occasional text I enjoy immensely in class, these are the overwhelming minority. It's strange that I tend to enjoy these books long after class is concluded and then give them my first serious read. I've noticed a pattern.

I never give these books a serious read until I'm temporarily away from classes. It takes a holiday break for me to browse my book, shelf and pick up a read which I feel has no present bearing for me. Without pressure, either academic or self imposed, I can read an enjoy. Yet each one of these books on my book shelf arrived there for a reason and remains on my bookshelf for a reason. The very purpose these books have held for my professors is something I've denied subconsciously applying to the reading until it no longer felt valid. I simply want to open the cover to Virginia Woolfs 'To The Lighthouse' for myself, in my own time, and not when I am expected to dissect deep and powerful thoughts from the writing for examination in the classroom microscope. This is the THIRD class I've had 'To The Lighthouse' as a text and I have yet to read the book deeply and introspectively. I skimmed it the other times for bare necessities.

I feel a sort of smothering feeling when trying to discuss books in class. Maybe it's selfish, but I want to have more than 20 or 30 seconds of Q and A with whoever is teaching the class. I feel like being that student who sits near the front and takes up half the class time with reiterating the same opinion until the students in the back of the class are giggling. Remember those annoying students? They always seemed to be present in the lower level English classes but not in the upper division ones. I guess I just want to be greedy and bogart the discussion for my own purposes. Invariably, shutting up and listening proves to be at least almost as interesting (and sometimes more so) than yacking up a storm. I'd say there's a switch inside my head and the default position is ON. With everything in my life from playing with my evil cat to reading to traveling to cooking (and everything else including all the spaces in between) I'm thinking critically. Except for when I'm in a classroom full of students and my ability to give input is set to a minimal level. I feel like that pushes my critical thinking switch to the "OFF" position. I guess that's where the smothered feeling comes into play.

I think there's a second reason behind my hesitation to read text books. I have a hard enough time getting through the day on campus and off campus being who I am. I don't listen the way most other people do and I don't seem to think the way most other people do either. I'm concerned about different things. I do different things. In a town of diverse backgrounds, I don't feel as though I fit in at all (the beard is mostly a camouflage mechanism). Walking around with my critical thinking switch in the default ON position is already uncomfortable. Fully embracing the critical thinking necessary to do the many text books which deserve it justice is doubly frustrating. It's as if the volume of thinking (both quantity and quality) in my head is turned up on high and, coupled with the default ON switch, it makes it much harder for me to have a normal conversation. Someone wants to tell me about some normal common thing they did earlier that day and I'm thinking about the connection between epiphanies experienced and epiphanies caused. I'll make some comment and then my friend looks at me like I'm an alien but they're going to forgive me for my strangeness anyway. I can't tell you how many times I've experienced this.

This really sucks. I understand why people become hermits. The life of a recluse is becoming more and more appealing to me. Some of it might be ego but mostly I think this is just brutal honesty; the thoughts that go through my head during my idle down time (like showering) seem to be more complex and more interesting than anything most of my friends have ever shared with me. Every text book I read closely takes me further and further away from reality as experienced by my friends. While I'm kind of resentful of this, the only possible solution would be to stop reading and that's not possible. I'm completely and totally addicted to reading. This is a vicious circle and, rather than spiraling regularly around, I think my circle is spiraling ever closer into a center. My circle is building critical mass.

I might turn into one of those crazies you read about in the Chronicle.

The Bird

"Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush?"

This makes a few things very clear to us. First, we the audience are in the garden. Second, the bird is in the garden with us. Third, there are echos in the garden with us and the bird and the bird encourages us to follow these echos. From these facts, we can draw several conclusions about what the bird represents.

The bird gives us readers an agency we do not posses ourselves. This is accented by the fact that the bird is a thrush. Thrushes are known for eating rose petals (commonly found in gardens) and for having one of the most beautiful singing voices of song birds (wiki). This is not coincidence. Several lines later, Eliot tells us

"the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at."

LOTS of things are going on here and I hope I don't miss any of the big things. First, to conclude the agency granted to us by the bird, the bird can hear a music which we cannot. The music in the shrubbery is unheard by us and so the thrush is a conduit between us and a beauty we cannot perceive. We already understand the connection Eliot makes between music and epiphany so this is an important achievement for the thrush to act as our ears to another world. This is a great reason for the thrush to be in the garden with us but there is another terrific reason as well.

Remember, this is "our first world" and the thrush lead us to it. We were already in the garden and so were the roses which are now seen as having been looked at and with a music we can't hear. The roses would never have "had the look of flowers that are looked at" without us being present as a witness (and arguably as a voyeur). The bird gives us direction and leads us into an awareness of another world.

The roses which have "the look of flowers that are looked at" is another key line. Roses hold a metaphorical relationship with purity, beauty and virginity. Yet in the garden we can't understand their music. I think this line can be viewed as a veiled analogy for sex and sin. Flowers are meant to be enjoyed just as apples are meant to be eaten. Remember, the thrush is known for eating rose petals. I think this line ties into "the deception of the thrush".

"The deception of the thrush" is interesting to google but the results are confusing enough not to discuss. I think on the surface the relationship with the christian creation story is clear. The snake(bird) and apple(rose) come off as parallel with each other. The snake describes the apple as being a thing not experienced and the thrush allows us to understand a beauty (music) we otherwise would not know existed. Both the snake and the bird lead us out of the garden into another world.

So the thrush acts as a traditional trickster figure to cause such radical change in our reality (wiki and wiki). This push is urgent, permanent and apparently justified. "Go, go, go said the bird: human kind / Cannot bear very much reality." The understanding of reality is a total awareness equal to an epiphany and an ongoing state of this would be related to the garden or heaven. The bird says we can't bear this state of reality so maybe that's the justification for leading us out of the garden. Or maybe we can't hear the music in the garden but we can hear the music made from roses once we're out of the garden. Either way, we have two dots. We have the dot of the garden and it's rose music and then we have the dot of us outside the garden and what music we can then hear. The space between these two clearly established locations (dots) is where Eliot's poetry attempts to take us as we see evidenced in several methods throughout the rest of the poems, namely the pairing of opposites which seems to frustrate and delight the class.

God and Creation

^^^ Open picture in a separate tab to reference for this post^^^

Religious reference is all over Burnt Norton and the rest of the poem as well. It's fairly easy to open up a page, scan it, then point to several. However, the context ("context seems to be my theme tonight") in which we view these is somewhat more complex. I chose this image from the Sistine chapel because I feel it encompasses two very important points.

First, examine the fingers nearly touching. These are the two points which Eliot hounds us with artistically while trying to get us to focus upon the space in between. One represents man, one represents god, yet without either we cannot understand the act of creation etc. Creation is exactly what Eliot is talking about when he says that time past makes time present and time future. The past and the future are making the present; we have nothing at all to do with creating the present. We have everything to do with experiencing it. This separation between experience and creation is something Eliot utilizes in the next point I make.

Second, look at the picture and determine who is trying to touch the other. Is man trying to touch god? Is god trying to touch man? Are they both trying to touch each other? Look at the angle of the wrists. To me, it seems fairly clear that god is reaching towards Adam with more vigor (note the lines in the fabric and hair) than Adam is trying to make towards reaching god (casual position of elbows and reclining away). Now, we know for Eliot's imagery experience and creation are exclusive. Everything in the passage with religious reference removes experience. "At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless" should be more than clear enough to argue this sufficiently. So here's a little more of how Eliot removes experience from creation. "at the still point, there the dance is, / But neither arrest nor movement." "Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, / There would be no dance, and there is only the dance." This is the epiphanic moment in which the creation of the epiphany exists. Everything else fades away leaving leaving us incapable of experiencing anything because our entire consciousness is on lock down from an overload of experience. Now look at Michelangelo's painting again. Does Adam look like he's drowning in epiphany from touching the space between himself and god? I think so. It's in the eyes. I think he's drowning in experience and that's why he looks in a state of such total relaxation, incapable of experiencing anything else.

This space between the fingers, this is where there is the dance, and where there is no dance, but where there is only the dance. This exists in the space between any two points yet we rarely posses the observational and deductive skill to recognize it.

Man and War

At the start of section 2 in Burnt Norton, Eliot introduces us to war by describing it as though with remembrance. He doesn't go into full detail though as he does later in the other poems. He describes War in reference to time past. It's a little easier to put this brief reference to war into context with the end of the first section. "Time past and time future / What might have been and what has been / Point to one end, which is always present." This is the end of the first section. The second section with imagery of the broken down machine of society.

War is presented not in detail but as an example of how the past recreates the present. The imagery ends with reconciliation "among the stars". Is this reconciliation on a religious level where now the boarhound and the boar are reconciled with god? Is this simply reconciliation on the physical level? Is this reconciliation a false reconciliation? I think it is false. "Pursue their pattern as before" makes me see the war imagery as a repetitive cycle which supports Eliot's argument that the past simply reforms into the present. I think the only reconciliation which occurs according to the poem is internal reconciliation.

If people find reconciliation "among the stars" (religious interpretation or not) then room for justification exists for perpetuating the war of the past. This was incredible for Eliot to comment upon. He wrote it in 1936 while in Europe a second world war was brewing. The historical context and commentary of this poetry becomes pretty powerful stuff. I didn't give it enough notice upon my first few read throughs.

Imagination and Understanding

"Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
..
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind."

Eliot starts the poem with these words and he accomplishes a crap ton with them. I'll probably miss most of it but we've learned that this is because I haven't yet read it several hundred times. (In time I may overcome this. Was that a pun just now?)

The artfully crafted ideas on time with lofty words are better described by you, my classmates. I am convinced of this as I have heard so in numerous presentations thus far. These concepts of time are the very first thing presented in the poem and their presentation is summarized with the image of The Garden. This is an answer before the question is asked. How do we get to The Garden? We get to The Garden through our minds. In both the religious (heaven) and the philosophical/spiritual sense (the ongoing sublime/nirvana) we arrive through awareness and awareness requires thinking with imagination to occur.

Time is a concept which overcomes all barriers including itself. It is first presented with the annoying-yet-sublime "duality contrast" which Eliot uses constantly as a means of description. When we the readers are bombarded by these seemingly opposite and contrasting words, the point of intersection between them is where Eliot is purposefully leading us. Imagination is our bridge to these dots and then again our bridge between them. When we reach these spots in between we are left with two things: first, we have successfully connected his dots thus recognizing his surface patterns and second, we have gained an exceptional understanding about what is in between these points and this largely exceeds the expected limitations of conventional poetry! I think this is why Four Quartets won a Nobel Prize for Literature among other notable distinctions. I have a good example about this which might mean something to you movie buffs.

In The Matrix Reloaded, Neo sits on a park bench with the Oracle. Neo asks the Oracle if he needs to chose whether Trinity lives or dies and the Oracle responds with "You've already made the choice. Now you have to understand it." That line has always bothered me. I felt like more was going with it than I've fully understood, until now. The duality between life and death is really the same thing because of time. Time is the only thing separating life and death yet it's also the only thing which successfully argues life and death can be the same thing (I just won't take it on "faith"). Trinity's life and death are really the same thing according to Eliot and his time arguments. Neo knows these dots and then he needs to understand what's in between them. The Oracle can't just tell him this information for the same reason that Eliot can't just tell us what's in between the dots. It's not about the dots and it's not even about what's in between, it's about UNDERSTANDING the dots and what's between them! This awareness can only occur internally and cannot be passed directly from one person to another. What does that sound like? It sounds like an epiphany.

Garden and Flowers

'The Garden' is the final big image of Burnt Norton. It comes after a very clear reference to love, which is already identified as God, as existing everywhere on the planes of both the physical and the metaphysical in reality and intention. ("Love is itself unmoving; / Only the cause and end of movement, / Timeless, and undesiring") The Garden is described as extended and unending. This garden also has children in it. The previous animal metaphor with the boarhound and the boar implies a generational aspect to creatures in the poem. However, in this garden, the implication is that there are only children. This adds to the endless and timeless note upon which the section finishes. I'm sure an image of the flower children of the 60's is pertinent to this but I think one image is enough.

The lead up to this religious image is also somewhat religious. "Fingers of yew be curled / Down on us? After the kingfishers wing" is the beginning of a passage following the sections describing war and several other images. The yew tree (Link 1 and Link 2, excellent links btw) represents both the tree of life and the tree of death. Found often in graveyards throughout the British Isles, it symbolizes both death in life and life in death as I described in my presentation. "Kingfisher", in my opinion, also happens to be the name of a bird. By saying "Kingfisher", I think what Eliot is really talking about is Jesus performing the act of baptism. Connected with the yew tree, we have the symbol for the simultaneity of death/life as a lead in for the means to achieve eternal life (according to this belief). Following these images, Eliot expands upon the concept of eternal life and his answer to it is to finish the section with his reference to The Garden.

Here are some links regarding the flowers mention in the poem. Rose and Sunflower, Clematis

Abandoned Puppy and Diamond Mining

A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere. But we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day.

I was thinking about what diamond to mine from The Dead and debating between the power of love and the ability of the past to strangle the present when an abandoned puppy walked right up to me, whined, and then found herself snuggled in my arms. This puppy was abandoned sometime early this weekend with no collar and I will update as to the status of a microchip though I'm willing to be there isn't one. After class, this puppy goes to Heart of the Valley. Let me first be upfront and honest about my near blinding rage. It's best to vent and get that out of the way.

Under no circumstance should pets ever exist as accessories (even though that's exactly the system we have) or be taken in by people who think puppies and kittens are “cute” only to find themselves incapable of achieving the level of responsibility that puppies and kittens require. Puppies and kittens and babies of all species require a level of responsibility that greatly exceeds what the average idiot anticipates. When that level of responsibility is not reached, inevitably neglect sets in. Neglect is abuse and abuse is illegal. When an idiot who takes in a puppy or kitten learns they cannot adequately provide the care needed, that idiot should take the puppy or kitten to the animal shelter. Even though their failed care is wrong, surrendering the animal to the shelter is the correct thing to do when it's a no kill shelter. Heart of the Valley only euthanizes feral cats which they deem unadoptable. That's a separate blog post. This is the second time I've found a pet (1 kitten and now 1 puppy) on campus outside of the sub. People dump pets in highly populated areas thinking that someone else will take the pet. No, these pets were not “lost”. No one claimed either of them after I contacted the campus police, KGLT, put up fliers etc. If I ever catch someone dumping a pet, I will more likely than not execute some vigilante justice on the spot. I lay better than 50/50 odds on this. Here in Montana, it takes no effort at all to round up a truck with an ATV, big garbage bags, a shovel and a working gun.

End rant.

So, naturally, there should be a follow up addressing “why does Mick think this way”. Unnecessary cruelty is wrong it's as simple as that. I have an analogy for this which can further expand upon my view. The traditional out-of-control-train is headed towards a split in the track and a group of people are divided onto both tracks after the split. Some people will take move the train to take out the group containing older people leaving the younger ones more opportunity to live life. Others will aim towards the smaller group enabling the larger group to survive. Still others will go after the group of predominately men or women (either to save them or kill them) and the list of possibilities goes on ad nauseum. But wouldn't it just be plain wrong purposefully to jump the train off the tracks and completely take out both groups of people? The I-hate-all-people argument doesn't fly either. In this instance, not all death is imminent and therefor some death is unnecessary. When something which is not only unnecessary but is also preventable occurs and causes significant suffering, I get furious. A much shorter analogy would be to say that someone sees a building burning with random people trapped inside and then makes no effort to call 911. That's unnecessary cruelty in a nutshell.

Here' are more examples and interesting observations on how my view towards unnecessary suffering applies. I've yelled at screaming parents unloading on a crying child completely unaware of why the yelling is happening in an effort to make them stop. There's a wild and tiny bit insane look in the eyes of a person under blind rage. Maybe that will be me when I catch a companion animal abandoning bastard. I don't know. I do know that that the laws which exist to protect children greatly exceed the laws which exist to protect companion animals. We don't go to the mall and buy a kid. This disconnect between the two creates a giant empty chasm in which it becomes easy for people to ignore common decency and then apply their lost decency to both groups. Most serial killers abuse and kill animals before they move on to doing the exact same thing to people. Notice, in that sentence there is a grammatical separation between people and nonhuman animals which touches on the common misconception that humans aren't animals (even though we are). In an exact parallel, most people who have little patience for companion animals have little patience for regular people in regular situations.

Now to tie this in with James Joyce while anyone who's actually managed to make it this far is probably wondering how the hell I could relate them. Gabriel delivers my selected quotation at a group event. The social atmosphere in which the quote was delivered and where it originally applied I feel also matches the current social atmosphere in which humans relate to each other and also to their companion animals. The new generation, our generation, does have new ideas and new principles. Mainly, they're about communication, socialization, ethics, the environment and money. As for that which is “misdirected”, that's generally how our generations actions are described by previous generations. We are leading social change movements simultaneously for the environment and for animal rights and critical mass is building. While fringe activism involving the words “direct action” are titled as “extreme”, and by Joyce as “misdirected”, is simply a response to something equally “extreme” or “misdirected”. A.L.F. wouldn't break into medical testing labs to free the monkeys that have holes drilled into their skulls just so that the addictive qualities of nicotine can be tested even though we already know that nicotine is addictive. E.L.F. wouldn't destroy machinery which destroys the environment if the machinery wasn't being used. I've never participated in anything like that but how anyone from a previous generation doesn't understand this is simply cause and effect is beyond me. This is especially frustrating because the previous generations already had access to this thinking in their literature! Peter Singer wrote his pivotal book Animal Liberation published in 1973 and Edward Abbey wrote an equally pivotal book The Monkey Wrench Gang published in 1975. If you have not read these books, put them on your must read list. This isn't propaganda designed to convince you; it's a terrific lesson in how absurd it is for a previous generation which applauded these books, even if they didn't agree with them, not to understand why a new generation of people doing that stuff today is following in the footsteps of people who did it 30 years ago.

Discussing the educated and the hypereducated while in my very last class as a college undergraduate is kind of weird. The commonality of college degrees today really does give zero value to my literature degree. Maybe a bank will loan me money to buy a house at some point. But wait, I took on debt just to get that benefit? Oddities aside, I don't believe our education causes us to miss out on “humanity”, “hospitality” and “kindly humor”. In fact, I don't think that a single person in our class would have passed over this puppy and left her to go shivering off into to the late-night freezing cold of Montana in January. I think this is because our academic efforts have instilled in us a certain level critical analysis and we know that abandoned babies die in the cold. Landlord policies be damned, that soon-to-die animal needs to get rescued. I sincerely doubt anyone in the class would've acted differently. I may not understand why I don't sit down in a classroom filled mainly with vegans but I know that I don't sit in a classroom filled with apathy towards cute and helpless puppies. So I think our education lends us a greater disposition towards having “humanity”, “hospitality” and “kindly humor”, and certainly when puppies are in the picture.

These qualities didn't exist in greater quantity in generations of ye olde contrary to the typical romantic view. I think each new generation continues to grasp at ways to understand and exemplify those qualities while simultaneously coming up with new ways to ignore them and overturn them. The same sort of thing is going on with Babe Ruth, which I previously mentioned. There's that funny application of selective memory which makes Babe Ruth better at baseball the more years that pass since he played. I think the same is true with manners. If you go back far enough to public dueling when people could and would kill each other over trivial insults, I doubt people were more polite then. They just had craftier and more subtle ways of being rude. I cite the beginning of Romeo and Juliet and all of it's thumb biting glory. People have always been uncouth and only a good healthy dose of education or experience (not necessarily of the academic type) will bring out the best in us.

Now that I think about it, was Gabriel using irony as means of subtly insulting Ms. Ivors, even though she wasn't present, when he finishes my selected quote with “those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humor which belonged to an older day”? Right before the quote he narrates that Ms. Ivors had “gone away discourteously”.