A reader of this site has emailed me to point out a post at Criminaljusticedegreesguide.com.  The post, available here, is titled, “10 Literary Lawyers We Wish Were Real.”  Here’s the list:

1.  Atticus Finch

2.  Rudy Baylor

3.  Perry Mason

4.  Portia as Balthazar

5.  Joel Litvinoff

6.  Horace Rumpole

7.  The Man of Law

8.  Wallace Stevens (a strange selection indeed, since Stevens was real, but the author has put an interesting twist on Stevens)

9.  Henry Drummond

10.  Jake Brigance

Readers should view the article to see why the (unnamed) author believes that these figures “should be real.”

The following essay originally appeared here at The Legendary (July 2010).

I am, at this writing, looking over a spider’s corpse, the little thing having spooked me into murder. It hurried across my papers at an alarming speed for so small a creature and then halted suddenly when I flinched and pushed my chair back from the desk. At this the miniature monster reared himself aloft, his front legs and chelicerae raised and ready for attack, his size strangely exaggerated. “This is ugly,” I gasped to no one in particular.

I’ve heard that spiders have thousands of eyes so it’s no wonder that the thing supposed me threatening. Heck, I was threatening, whether I was one or a thousand. I reached for my newspaper and, foregoing reflection, swatted the brittle beast over and over until its yellow guts, an oozy snot-like substance, spattered all over an otherwise unblemished copy of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain. “Ugh,” I sighed, relieved and rubbing my sticky hands together, “that was ugly.”

Sometimes I short-circuit reflection, especially when, as then, an unusual thing startles me or otherwise makes me want to tell somebody something. What do I mean? I’m not sure exactly. I think I mean to say I’m a talker. It’s a terrible habit, this talking. And a nervous one too. Although Freud might disagree, today’s psychologists suggest that babble is a sign of egomania or a warped sense of prerogative. Folks back home simply refer to this as “diarrhea of the mouth.”

What a yucky, demented feeling I get when at dinner parties people glance around the room while I’m talking to them. They’re hoping, I know, that somebody will pass by and relieve them of their duties. “Oh, say, have you met Jonathan?” they’ll interject, grabbing poor Jonathan by the arm and stationing him in front of me. “Jonathan also went to law school. Y’all have something in common.”

I might have been relating the story of my religious conversion or of my struggle with cancer but my now-retreating listener wouldn’t even know. Why? Because I’ve chattered him out of caring. Now I’m standing there staring at an obviously uncomfortable Jonathan whose eyes scan the room for the nearest and next substitute. He seems ugly to me, and I to him.

I used to enjoy social intercourse. Without much effort I could swap thoughts and information with people. At some point, though, I grew boring. My interests—literature, history, philosophy—didn’t interest anyone else. I’m told that a good conversationalist seeks out mutual associations with others, balancing what he has to say with what others have to say. Having few things in common with others and even fewer reasons to bond, I tend to either criticize or gossip.

I’m loud and ugly, although not when I’m apart from humanity. I’m quiet then, and peaceful. Is it really so difficult to sit, silent, and to contemplate with lively joy the joys we cannot share? I’ve tried to train myself into silence. Often I’ve succeeded. But the minute a person materializes I’m like a hee-hawing donkey. I grow ugly—ugly looking and ugly acting. I speak and speak and cannot stop.

I’m different when I walk and wander and wonder in nature. I take to the woods and trails alone. Rather than speak I listen: to the loud, long rattles of the woodpecker—chrr, chrr, chrr—and to the nasal calls of the chickadee—so-fee, so-fay, dee-day-dee. I listen to the rush of water in the river and think of the salmon and trout and their endless struggle against the southward currents and also of the fly-fishermen, all very old now, who frequent these secluded spaces as would young boys.

Some fifteen minutes from my house the trails begin. Choked with dirt and dust, they wind northwest and terminate at a quiet cathedral of longleaf pines at the base of a small mountain, the name of which I’ve never bothered to learn. At this spot a prudent stroller would turn around, what with the dense foliage. But I always chance the elements for thirty-minutes or so, straying off course to where no one, save, perhaps, a ranger, could find me. I seem to remember coming here as a child, though I couldn’t say why or with whom. I seem to remember a cemetery, too, with quaint wooden gravestones, but if such things existed they’ve rotted away, or else I’ve imagined them, perhaps in a dream. Not infrequently the trees in these parts begin to shudder as if annoyed or worried at my presence. On their branches some birds, watching me stumble through briars and brush, huddle in committee and chirp quietly among themselves. “Go, go, go,” the wind seems to whisper or whistle. And sometimes I answer, “No, no, no.”

Nature is that liminal space between heaven and here. Maybe it’s reflection, maybe it’s liberation, but something about a walk through these trails makes me feel beautiful.

What is reflection if not a welcome inconvenience? It forces you to stop when everything about America tells you to go. Lately I was driving to a job interview with a fancy Atlanta law firm, which I knew didn’t want to hire me, when an unexpected breeze swept in with a familiar fragrance: not perfume but something like it—only better. The whiff of freshly cut grass. It’s strange how smells allow you to traverse space and time. Me, I travel back to my university campus and more specifically to the quad, a green and gray geometry of benches and sidewalks bristling with students frittering away their afternoons with talk of fraternities and professors and recent sexual exploits. Or perhaps this exercise in transposition leads to my front lawn in Marietta, Georgia, where I’m young again and holding a baseball bat and taking pitches from my father, a man who never aged a day in his life and whose love for the outdoors somehow went away when the rich folks—Yankees mostly—migrated to town. These folks bought up all of the local farmland and little quaint stores, urged retail and restaurant chains upon us, and informed us, quite happily, that we were now better off.

And they were right: we were better off. Things were cheaper. Faster. More convenient. But there was an ancient suspicion, still with us at that time and place, that money was the root of all evil, as the Good Book says, and that humans were depraved by nature and not to be trusted with riches or power or even fast-food. Our capital was mostly emotional and intellectual because we didn’t have cash or luxury. Cash and luxury came later—when I was a teenager—and then went away fast.

Teenagers are ugly. They’ll never be more beautiful than they are at present, and therefore they are ugly. Their bodies, once beyond that pubescent stage, are firmer and faster than ever. You’ll hear people say it all the time: “He’s becoming a man.” And this is supposed to be a good thing? Do they mean that he, whoever he is, is growing a pot-belly and gray hair and having back aches? Of course not. So why do they say “he’s becoming a man” when really they mean “he’s a healthy young boy and I hope he stays that way for a long time.” Very rarely do they mean “he’s becoming one of us,” unless, of course, the boy is already so ugly that his only chance, for want of a better word, is in adulthood. No, what they mean is that they’re sad and envious: they can’t be young again, can’t enjoy the body in its fullest, freshest capacity.

When I say teenagers are ugly, I don’t mean this boy who is becoming one of us, who already is, more or less, one of us. I mean ugly in a broader sense. I mean mood-swingin’, attitude-gettin’, middle-finger-flippin’ ugliness. Here I must mention the teenager I saw last month. He was crossing a swell of grassy ground en route, I suppose, to the local high school, when he looked at me and began laughing. I hadn’t provoked this outburst, so I didn’t (and don’t) know what he was laughing at. His jeans hung so low on his waist—or, rather, his legs—that I myself had a laugh at the sideways smile of his rear-end. Sadly, though, he’ll be on a “who’s who” list in the coming weeks and I’ll be on a “who’s that?” list, if I’m on a list at all.

At any rate, this teenager was probably laughing at my Roman nose. I used to joke about my nose until one spring, while vacationing in Mexico and wading in the wet bar waters, when a squawking bird swooped down from a palm tree, clasping my nose in his claws, apparently mistaking his target for a loaf of bread. After this I decided my nose wasn’t funny so much as grotesque. It’s possible that this bird wanted to perch there, on the tip of my protuberance, to survey other tables for abandoned cheeseburgers and nachos. His purpose notwithstanding, I felt rather silly when my nose began to bleed. “Don’t get blood in the pool,” was all that the man sitting next to me said before walking away. He, too, was embarrassed—and for himself, not me.

Even after that experience I didn’t realize how ugly I’d become. It took a restroom mishap for me to truly understand. I had what in polite parlance is called an “emergency” at the Atlanta airport. Pushing through crowds and skipping over lines I made it just in time. I settled into a handicap unit because all of the “regular” units were taken. Then, suddenly, the door, unlocked, somehow floated open—slowly—and I sat there staring at a room full of strangers who stared back at me. When you’re installed in a handicap unit, which is much bigger than other units, you can’t reach the door handle, no matter the length of your arm. So, panicked, and with people looking on, I stood up, waddled to the door, and closed it with a loud thud. In my hurry I neglected to pull up my jeans and boxers, still loosed around my ankles. Everyone saw, well, too much. And all of this after one guy—perhaps sympathizing with me or perhaps just disgusted—offered to shut the door for me. When I got to the loading ramp to board the plane, I slipped and fell on the wet floor. It had rained all night before and apparently nobody bothered to dry the area. I heard someone behind me whisper, “That’s the guy from the bathroom.” And I knew then that I was very ugly.

After the encounter with this vile and nasty spider, now a corpse rotting on my desk, something doesn’t seem right. I feel guilty. As if I’ve done something wrong. I had never, not even for a moment, intended to take a life, but merely to rid myself of an awful visitor. This spider, pitiful sight, as the minutes since his murder pass, becomes to me more like a monument than a mush-pile. For in his final moments he managed to arrange himself into a claw-like position, palm up to the sky. He looks like the statue of a hand. You should see him. He’s beautiful. And because of my ugliness. Maybe we should all go out like this spider: quickly and without knowing it. No more ugliness or constant chatter. Just sudden peace and silence. How very, very beautiful. Imagine: somewhere, underground, we’ll be like the statue of a hand, palm up to the sky—then after a few years, nothing at all.

It was customary practice in my family to gather at my grandparents’ house for Sunday dinner after church.  Loyal to our Southern traditions, we would, after eating, divide company: men into the living room, women into the kitchen or den.  My brother and I, still children, would sit silently, for the most part, while my grandfather, father and uncles bandied about the names of politicians and discussed the day’s sermon or newspaper headlines. 

I first learned of William F. Buckley Jr. during these Sunday afternoons, as he was often the topic of conversation.  I was too young to know much, but young enough to learn a lot quickly, so I began to follow this man, this Buckley, to the extent that I could, from those days until the day that he died in February 2008.  

Overcommitted to supposedly universal political ideals and to the spread of American liberal democracy throughout the world, Buckley was not my kind of conservative.  He could be tactless and cruel, as when he violated the ancient maxim de mortuis nil nisi bonum (“Of the dead, speak no evil”) in an obituary to Murray Rothbard wherein he wrote that “Rothbard had defective judgment” and “couldn’t handle moral priorities.”  Buckley then trumpeted some unflattering anecdotes about Rothbard before likening Rothbard to David Koresh. 

Despite such tantrums and vendettas, I always liked Buckley.  Something in the way he conducted himself—his showy decorum, flaunted manners and sophisticated rhetoric—appealed to me.

Carl T. Bogus, an American law professor and author of the biography Buckley, seems to share my qualified respect for Buckley, despite disagreeing with Buckley on important political and theoretical issues.  “I should tell the reader up front,” Bogus warns, “that I am a liberal and thus critical—in some instances, highly critical—of Buckley’s ideology.”  Yet, adds Bogus, “I admire William F. Buckley Jr. enormously.”     

Unlike bobble-headed television personalities and think tank sycophants, Bogus does justice to his subject, treating Buckley’s ideas evenhandedly on the grounds that he (Bogus) is “disheartened by the present state of partisan animosity,” one solution to which, he says, “is to take opposing ideas seriously.”  Bogus not only takes Buckley’s ideas seriously, but credits them for changing America’s political realities.   

The book focuses on what Bogus deems the “creation of the modern conservative movement”—namely, the years between 1955 and 1968—but attends as well to events before 1955 that served as formative influences upon Buckley.  On that score, Bogus spends a great deal of time explaining the characteristics of the conservative movement before the rise of the National Review in order to suggest that Buckley transformed the movement into something new and dynamic. 

We read, then, several synoptic accounts about William Howard Taft and Senator Robert Taft, about publications such as The American Mercury, and about rabblerousing wordsmiths such as H.L. Mencken.  All of this is good by way of introduction, if a little tiresome for those already familiar with it.

At points Bogus recites clichés, as when he declares, “Conservatism today is a three-legged stool…based upon libertarianism, religious conservatism, and neoconservatism.”  This worn take on fusionism, though accurate in a very broad sense, lacks both nuance and precision even as it begs tremendous questions about definitions: what exactly is meant by “libertarian,” “religious conservative,” and “neoconservative”?  The average American, educated by the likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, will, as a matter of course, have odd notions about who represents which category in this triad.  In other words, Bogus does little to clarify terms whose meanings are fraught and highly contested—he simply tosses around multifaceted words as if their signification were abundantly clear.

Bogus’s claim that “Buckley was himself a libertarian, a religious conservative, and a neoconservative” will come as news to libertarians and Buckleyites alike.  And how can one man be all three at once?  If it were possible, there would be a word to represent this union.  But there is no such word, because there is no such union.  These terms may overlap, but the political beliefs they represent consist in too many ideas that are mutually exclusive.    

Conservatives with an historical sense will be surprised and perhaps annoyed by Bogus’s frequent grandiose claims—for example, that James Burnham was “the first neoconservative.”  The first, really?  Or that the “conservative movement was born on November 19, 1955.”  That remark, besides being silly, would seem to undermine the very meaning of the word “conservative,” for the genesis of a political philosophy does not entail preservation or restoration.   

To make matters worse, Bogus overstates the friction between Buckley and Russell Kirk.  “Though Buckley admired Kirk,” explains Bogus, “Kirk surely understood that he could never prevail within the councils of National Review for the simple reason that Buckley was a libertarian.”  This opinion is repeated elsewhere: “Kirk championed a form of conservatism that Buckley quite distinctly did not favor.  Buckley was himself a libertarian, even if he had not yet so described himself.” 

Buckley was hardly a libertarian, however liberally that word is defined.  He most certainly was not, as Bogus submits, an advocate for “hard-edged libertarianism.”  It turns out that Bogus bases his claim upon the title of Buckley’s recklessly named book Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist (1993). 

Buckley did, it’s true, have trouble recruiting Kirk to National Review, in part because, as Bogus points out, Buckley wrote an unfavorable review of Kirk’s Academic Freedom.  Buckley and Kirk also disagreed, often vehemently, about matters of public policy.  Yet these men got along not just because their relationship was “symbiotic,” the adjective Bogus uses to suggest that these men benefited financially from an association with the other.  In fact, these men respected each other; they appreciated a cultivated intellect: something they both possessed.  Whatever differences these men had were not so extreme as to harden into insurmountable disdain or contempt. 

Without Kirk, no conservative canon, no intellectual inheritance for the conservative movement; without Buckley, no animated spokesman for conservatism.  Without the threat of communism and the Cold War, no motive for collective action for any who might have considered themselves champions or defenders of conservatism. 

That’s the standard narrative of the so-called modern conservative movement, and that’s the one that Bogus more or less sticks to.  The notable exception is the attention paid to Buckley’s obsessive purges, his relentless attempts to narrow the scope of conservatism to fit his own constricted definition.  Bogus discusses at length the concerted efforts of National Review editors to stigmatize Ayn Rand and the Objectivists, Robert Welch and the Birchers, and, of course, Rothbard and other libertarian purists.  Bogus ignores the paleoconservatives altogether.    

Although fair in its treatment of an ideological rival, Buckley is neither original nor instructive.  It could have readers wondering when a better biography of Buckley will come out.  What ultimately saves the book is Buckley himself. 

Buckley is a delightful and intriguing figure—sometimes a blowhard, sometimes a dandy—who makes up in charisma what Bogus lacks in meticulousness.  As one of the first books to synthesize a wealth of material about Buckley into a book-length project, Buckley no doubt ushers in a coming trend. 

In anticipation of this trend, readers ought to declare: we want more Buckley, less biographer; more anecdotes and facts, less opinion.  Indeed, this book is best when Bogus steps aside to let Buckley be Buckley.  

Be that as it may, the book deserves an audience; the uninitiated—those whose understanding of conservatism comes from Republican politicians and the media—require simple biographies.  This book is for them.

This review originally appeared here at the Southern Literary Review.

Good histories don’t just tell stories; they make arguments.  Robert Morgan’s arguments in Lions of the West, subtle though they are, run as follows: historians and storytellers cannot help but view dramatic shifts of history as products of the actions of famous individuals; nevertheless, what happens in the course of history is attributable to numerous common folk acting independently and with disparate motivations.  Even the most comprehensive history cannot tell the stories of all these individuals, each of whom, in the narrative of the American West, could be numbered among the great “lions.” 

“While it is understandable,” Morgan explains, “that we see history mostly in terms of the deeds of a few, our grasp of what actually happened will be flawed and limited if we do not consider the story of the almost invisible many who made the notable deeds possible, even inevitable.”  Despite this claim, Morgan seems taken by the Great Man theory of history, and one of the epigrams to his book, which gets repeated in the Prologue, is Emerson’s remark that there is “properly no history; only biography.”

Morgan’s stated purpose is to “create a living sense of the westward expansion of the United States through brief biographies of some of the men involved.”  In realizing this goal, he offers a nod to other popular historians and storytellers such as Joseph J. Ellis, Gordon S. Wood, and David McCullough.  Each of these men writes histories free of the monotony and tendentious urgency of academic historians, yet each is also committed to facts and small details as indicia of greater narrative patterns. 

Morgan admits, as he must, that Lions of the West is, at best, “only a partial story.”  That’s not a shortcoming peculiar to Morgan’s narrative but a reality of human experience: all histories, like all memories, are partial.  Morgan himself submits that “written history is distortion through selection,” and that by its nature “narrative can represent only by implication, explicit about some parts, suggesting the many.”  No history could recount all the constituent parts that make up the whole; no history, in other words, could recreate the past.  For that reason, an author’s values and priorities are reflected in the subjects he or she chooses to undertake. 

Morgan’s values and priorities can be gleaned from his decision to profile ten individuals whose lives and toils characterize the American West in all its outlandishness and glory: Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, John Chapman (“Johnny Appleseed”), David (“Davy”) Crockett, Sam Houston, James K. Polk, Winfield Scott, Kit Carson, Nicholas Trist, and John Quincy Adams.  Of these, all but Chapman and Adams maintained significant ties to the South or would have considered themselves, or by others would have been considered, Southerners.

The story of the Western frontier cannot be told apart from the experiences and contributions of Southerners, and to a certain extent, the story of the American West is the story of the American South, which for a long time constituted the West as much as the East.  As celebratory as it is cautionary, this story is fraught with paradox.  Jefferson, for instance, extolled liberty but held slaves and at times promoted imperial power with the phrase “Empire of Liberty.”  Jackson championed the cause of the disenfranchised and the common man yet perhaps did more than anyone else to exploit, disempower, and exile Native Americans.  Crockett’s most lasting legacies come to us in the form of his mistakes, not his triumphs.  And Trist would perform Herculean tasks such as negotiating improbable treaties, but having accomplished these, he would act sheepish and irrational and therefore confuse later biographers with his inconsistent behavior.  In short, the American West, as it is known and loved today, is a bundle of personalities with contradictions that reveal as much about the way we receive history as they do about the historical figures and events themselves.        

The inclusion of Adams—an urbane, cosmopolitan, Harvard elitist who stood at five feet, seven inches high and who was prone to antisocial behavior—among a cast of virile, rough-and-tumble soldiers and frontiersmen, ought to strike readers as odd.  That’s because it is odd.  Perhaps anticipating this criticism, Morgan defends his Adams chapter on the grounds that to “understand almost any controversial issue, it is necessary to study the opposing points of view,” and Adams, the “most passionate, sustained, and effective critic of Jacksonian politics,” sits in contradistinction to the “Great Lion” manner of living and politicking.  That the Adams chapter appears in epilogue suggests something—probably many things—about the privilege Morgan accords Adams in the narrative of Westward expansion.  (Adams is important, but ultimately a minor player.)    

An elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers who has received NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, and who recently was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, Morgan is a literary historian.  The author of eight books of fiction, thirteen books of poetry, and, before Lions of the West, two books of nonfiction, he is a seasoned author whose prose reads like poetry and whose nonfiction reads like novels.  Lions of the West is above all a literary achievement: it is beautiful and engaging and brings a poet’s flair and precision to bear on the writing of history.

Morgan has reminded us that in a frontier democracy cultivated erudition (say, in the person of Jefferson) can be compatible with vulgar bravado (in the person of Carson); that a man’s reputation for military triumph (consider Scott’s conquest of Mexico) can be eclipsed by his subsequent failures at bureaucratic administration; that both aristocrats (like Polk) and ruffians (like Jackson) can rise to occupy the most distinguished offices in America, including the presidency; that often men are great because of their letdowns as much as their successes; and that a preoccupation with the future is not always best for the present.       

Nobody writes history like Morgan.  His books teach and inspire.  He gives the past, with all its heroes and villains, a new life, if not a new purpose.

The following book review originally appeared here in the Fall 2010 issue of The Independent Review.

Humans are not automated and predictable, but beautifully complex and spontaneous. History is not linear. Progress is not inevitable. Our world is strangely intertextual and multivocal. It is irreducible to trite summaries and easy answers, despite what our semiliterate politicians would have us believe. Thinking in terms of free-market economics allows us to appreciate the complicated dynamics of human behavior while making sense of the ambiguities leading to and following from that behavior. With these realities in mind, I applaud Paul Cantor and Stephen Cox for compiling the timely collection Literature and the Economics of Liberty, which places imaginative literature in conversation with Austrian economic theory.

Cantor and Cox celebrate the manifold intricacies of the market, which, contrary to popular opinion, is neither perfect nor evil, but a proven catalyst for social happiness and well-being. They do not recycle tired attacks on Marxist approaches to literature: they reject the “return to aesthetics” slogans of critics such as Allan Bloom, Harold Bloom, and John M. Ellis, and they adopt the principles, insights, and paradigms of the Austrian school of economics. Nor do Cantor and Cox merely invert the privilege of the terms Marxist and capitalist (please excuse my resort to Derridean vocabulary), although they do suggest that one might easily turn “the tables on Marxism” by applying “its technique of ideology critique to socialist authors, questioning whether they have dubious motives for attacking capitalism.” Cantor and Cox are surprisingly the first critics to look to Austrian economics for literary purposes, and their groundbreaking efforts are sure to ruffle a few feathers—but also to reach audiences who otherwise might not have heard of Austrian economics.

Cantor and Cox submit that the Austrian school offers “the most humane form of economics we know, and the most philosophically informed.” They acknowledge that this school is heterodox and wide ranging, which, they say, are good things. By turning to economics in general, the various contributors to this book—five in all—suggest that literature is not created in a vacuum but rather informs and is informed by the so-called real world. By turning to Austrian economics in particular, the contributors seek to secure a place for freedom and liberty in the understanding of culture. The trouble with contemporary literary theory, for them, lies not with economic approaches, but with bad economic approaches. An economic methodology of literary theory is useful and incisive so long as it pivots on sound philosophies and not on obsolete or destructive ideologies. Austrian economics appreciates the complexity and nuance of human behavior. It avoids classifying individuals as cookiecutter caricatures. It champions a humane-economy counter to mechanistic massproduction, central planning, and collectivism. Marxism, in contrast, is collectivist, predictable, monolithic, impersonal, linear, reductive–in short, wholly inadequate as an instrument for good in an age in which, quite frankly, we know better than to reduce the variety of human experience to simplistic formulae. A person’s creative and intellectual energies are never completely products of culture or otherwise culturally underwritten. People are rational agents who choose between different courses of action based on their reason, knowledge, and experience. A person’s choices, for better or worse, affect lives, circumstances, and communities. (“Ideas have consequences,” as Richard Weaver famously remarked.) And communities themselves consist of multiplicities that defy simple labels. It is not insignificant, in light of these principles, that Michel Foucault late in his career instructed his students to read the collected works of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek.

Some critics—including such notables as Fredric Jameson and Terry Eagleton—have struggled to overcome the limitations of Marxist determinism, but they have been strangely unwilling to drop Marxist paradigms altogether. To these critics, Cantor offers the following clarification:

The relationship between literature and economics looks very different when one works from a form of economics, like the Austrian School, that celebrates freedom and the individual, rather than determinism and the collective. In its epistemological foundations, established by Menger and elaborated by Mises and Hayek, the Austrian School explicitly rejects the idea that the natural sciences provide the proper model for economic analysis. In its concern to establish the autonomy of economics as an intellectual discipline, the Austrian School respects the heterogeneity of phenomena and hence of a variety of methods of studying them. The Austrians do not accept the idea of a master science, one method of knowing that providesthe key to understanding all phenomena. Far from being reductionist, Austrian economics refuses to study the human in terms of the non-human. As the title of Mises’s magnum opus indicates, the focus of Austrian economics is on human action, and it places the acting human subject squarely at the center of its concern. The Austrian school distinguishes itself from most other forms of economic thought by the fact that it views economic matters from the perspective of the acting individual and avoids dealing in macroeconomic abstractions like the Gross National Product. In epistemological terms, this is referred to as the “methodological individualism” of the Austrian School, an approach that one would think would be more attractive than the collectivism of Marxism to scholars in the humanities.

I quote at length because this message is best stated in Cantor’s own words. Literary thinkers as diverse as E. M. Forster and Lionel Trilling (liberals), Richard Weaver and Russell Kirk (conservatives), and Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard (postmodernists) would probably delight in Cantor and Cox’s celebration of human complexity, although none of these critics, of course, would have considered themselves Austrian economists. Nevertheless, each of these men believed in the individual’s uniqueness and autonomy. Each distrusted the ever-aspiring motives of those who in the service of grand political narratives denied human agency. Each, therefore, would have listened attentively to Cantor and Cox’s discussions of the Austrian school, which must, then, appeal to a variety of literary traditions.

In ten chapters, this book investigates the works of, among others, Miguel de Cervantes, Ben Johnson, Percy Shelley, Walt Whitman, H. G. Wells, Willa Cather, Joseph Conrad, and Thomas Mann. These writers are like entrepreneurs “constantly anticipating an uncertain future, trying to predict changes in demand and to figure out new economies of production for satisfying it.” No two chapters of this book are alike, although the idea of “spontaneous order” is central to all of them. Relying heavily on Mises and Hayek, the authors do not seek to enlist readers in economic programs but instead to show how presumptuous central planners and anticapitalists assume perfectibility—of economies, people, and groups. No economic system, however, achieves total equilibrium or perfection. To the extent that Austrian economics recognizes this truth, it is an indispensable resource and an ideal, if modest, starting point for any cultural criticism.

Without reading a single page of this book—save, perhaps, for the introductory lines—the usual naysayers in academia will probably dismiss the authors’ astute analyses out of hand. “This is conservative talk,” these simpletons will say, even though the authors specifically refute the positions of the New Critics and other supposedly “conservative” schools. (Cantor and Cox do praise the New Critics for, among other things, their commitment to close reading. In fact, the volume editors’ arguments consistently reflect close readings of texts, in contrast to the anything-goesspeculations of Fredric Jameson, who too often seems to theorize first and only later to force a text to conform to his ideas.) Social conservatives, moreover, will wince at the way Cantor analogizes spontaneous order to Darwinian biology, but the analogy is in fact spot on.

All of the authors spend a great deal of time explaining various ideas and theories of Austrian economics—from the business cycle to inflation to praxeology. Although Austrian economists may grow slightly impatient reading about the history and fundamentals of a movement to which they have devoted their entire careers, they should bear in mind that the book’s audience will include many literary scholars who have little to no training in economic thought.

Having recently completed graduate studies in both law and literature, I am quite aware that what passes as legitimate economic scholarship in English departments would not be given the time of day in law schools (or presumably in economics departments either). I understand and sympathize with Cantor’s frustrations regarding the “oft-noted paradox” that “just when Marxism has lost prestige in the world at large, even in many wings of the academy, it has seemed to triumph in literature departments and the humanities in general.” The future of the humanities, as I see it, may be in our professional schools. For example, nearly every law school in the United States offers a course called “Law and Literature,” and law professors who teach these courses—and who very often hold Ph.D. degrees in literature or other like fields—have a wide perspective on society and the world at large and know better than to succumb to trendy Marxist assumptions. At any rate, if Marxist literary critics deserve credit for at least demonstrating the relevance of economics to literature, then Cantor and Cox deserve a medal for reversing the course of economic literary theory. Indeed, the literary intelligentsia should be infinitely grateful to Cantor and Cox, whose book is a life raft for a drowning profession.

I devoured this book—a valuable corrective to the Marxism (or quasi-Marxism) that has attained monopoly powers in literary circles—as if it were the last I would ever read, and I regret that I did not write it myself. The academy in general and the literati in particular should be ashamed and embarrassed that Cantor and Cox’s ideas are so novel. Yet it is not too late for English professors to save face—redeem themselves, if you will—by seeking out economic theories that are in keeping with, not contrary to, humane learning. Economists, even those in putatively Communist countries such as China, have discredited Marxism of all stripes. But literary specialists continue to employ and celebrate Marxism, and they wonder why the humanities are dying out, why the number of literature majors is dwindling, why graduate programs in the humanities have had to slash jobs and cut budgets. The literati are writing themselves into extinction—committing “suicide,” as Harold Bloom would say. Is this process spontaneous order at work?

J. Neil Schulman is a novelist, actor, filmmaker, journalist, composer, and publisher.  Among his many books are Alongside Night and The Rainbow Cadenza, both of which won the Prometheus Award.  Visit his website at http://jneilschulman.rationalreview.com/.

The following interview originally appeared here at Prometheus Unbound: A Libertarian Review of Fiction and Literature.

AM:  Right off the bat, it strikes me that I don’t know what to call you.  Will Neil work?

JNS:  Sure. It’s J. Neil Schulman in credits, and Neil in person.

AM:  Anyway, thank you for doing this interview, Neil.  You’ve had a fascinating and unique career.  You’ve written novels, short fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, and other works.  Which of your works is your favorite and why?

JNS:  Every artist gets asked this question sooner or later. I asked it of Robert A. Heinlein when I interviewed him in 1973, and his answer was, “The latest one I’ve been working on.”

I’ve only completed one movie so far — Lady Magdalene’s — so it’s a Hobson’s Choice on that one. Ask me again when I’ve made two! But a lot of people also seem to like the script I wrote for The Twilight Zone, “Profile in Silver.”

I’ve written three novels. My first, Alongside Night [editor's note: free in pdf], seems to be my most accessible and popular. I consider my second novel, The Rainbow Cadenza, to be my most layered, literary, and richest in explicit philosophy. My third novel, Escape from Heaven, is my favorite. It may not be as timely as my first novel or literary as my second novel, but it’s the one that’s closest to my heart…both the funniest thing I’ve ever written, and the one which is most deceptively simple. It appears to be a lightweight piece of comic fantasy, but it’s full of ideas that if examined more closely turn both traditional theology and rationalist philosophy on their heads.

Short stories? I’ll pick a few: “The Musician,” “Day of Atonement,” and “When Freemen Shall Stand” — all in my collection Nasty. Brutish, and Short Stories — and my latest short story, “The Laughskeller,” published on my blog, J. Neil Schulman @ Rational Review.

AM:  Your worldview is, in a word, libertarian.  Why is that?  How does libertarianism come across in your writing?

JNS:  In my nonfiction essays it comes across explicitly. In fiction, drama, and comedy, I try to examine libertarian themes without preaching. I was probably most subtle doing this in The Rainbow Cadenza. The utilitarian politics advocated by the chief villain, Burke Filcher, is so self-consistent that a lot of readers have thought this character speaks for the author. In fact, I wrote the novel to attack utilitarianism as a nullification of the natural individual rights I believe in. The novel reduces utilitarianism to absurdity — it’s a formal satire of it.

Alongside Night is less subtle, though I’m probably more successful in the new movie script than the 1970s novel when it comes to letting the audience make up its own mind. I have learned some refinements of my craft in the last three decades.

AM:  I recently noticed that you commented on a post at the Austrian Economics and Literature blog edited by my good friend Troy Camplin.  Tell me about the influence that Austrian economics has had on you.

JNS:  I would say that Austrian economics — and more fundamentally, the analytical tools of praxeology and games theory — have been fundamental to my work for my entire professional career. They’re not the only tools in my kit, but they get shopworn as much as any of them. Austrian economics is most explicit in Alongside Night, projecting the social and political consequences of fiat money hyperinflation — but I used games theory in plotting “Profile in Silver” and applied praxeology to the afterlife in Escape from Heaven.

AM:  What are some of your latest projects?  Is there anything you’re working on that our readers should be anticipating?

JNS:  That’s the easiest question you’ve asked me. I’m in production on the movie I adapted from Alongside Night, and won’t be working on much of anything else until it’s done. I’m the screenwriter, the producer, and the director. I’m even acting in one of the supporting roles. I’ll be supervising every phase of post-production and making the plans and deals for distribution.

AM:  You’ve written in a variety of genres?  Do you prefer one above the others?

JNS:  I never write within a genre. I consider genres to be artificial marketing categories designed to make writers imitate past successes. I use Louis Sullivan’s architectural principle of “form follows function.” So it’s my goal to let the internal logic of characters and story determine “what happens next” — no matter what premises this requires and where it takes me. I have within my unwritten-stories file a multigenerational saga that starts in the past as historical fiction, continues in present day as “mainstream,” and concludes in the future as science fiction. How could I ever write that if I believed in the limits of genre?

AM:  Okay, to end, I want to ask, what are you reading right now?  What does a guy like you read for pleasure on a day-to-day basis?

JNS:  I have tons of news and related text I need to read on a daily basis simply to stay current.

Reading for pleasure? I’ve promised my daughter that I’ll finish the Harry Potter series before I get on to anything else — but I do have a movie to finish first!

AM:  Thank you so much, Neil, for taking the time.  I want to make sure we do this again soon.  There are other things I want to ask, but I’ll have to hold off for another day.

JNS:  My pleasure.

James Banks is a doctoral student studying Renaissance and Restoration English literature at the University of Rochester. He also contributes to the American Interest Online. He has been a Fellow with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute Honors Program; in addition to The Literary Lawyer, he has written for the Intercollegiate Review, First Principles and The Heritage Foundation’s blog The Foundry. A native of Idaho’s panhandle, he lives in upstate New York and serves in the New York Army National Guard.

Agrarianism has been an organized antagonist of American capitalism for longer than Marxism has, and it provides a welcome avenue for those who reject the gospel of a bourgeoisie paradise but are averse to the cosmopolitan and authoritarian tendencies of Marxism. It has occasionally found its way into public policy, such as the Second Bush Administration’s efforts to turn all Americans into property owners (though, by that point, “the family farm” had become a suburban home with a two car garage and white picket fence). Most recently, a debate boiled up in the blogosphere over a comment made by First Things editor Joe Carter arguing that Agrarianism was essentially utopian in nature.

Front Porch Republic—which, from what I can make out, is not explicitly Agrarian but is highly sympathetic to its tenets—was quick to come back with a number of repartees. Nonetheless, these repartees (for this reader anyway) only accentuated some of the problems with the ideology that they sought to defend. Front Porch Republic’s best contribution to the debate is Mark T. Mitchell’s. Professor Mitchell is an author of considerable ability and one who—in as far as I can make out—comes pretty close to living the philosophy that he advocates. I would not question the consistency of his views, just the correctness.

In his discussion of Wendell Berry’s Agrarianism, Mitchell writes:

The agrarian is guided by gratitude. He recognizes the giftedness of creation and accepts the great and awful responsibility to steward it well. Such a recognition “calls for prudence, humility, good work, propriety of scale.”[3] In the use of the land, soil, water, and non-human creatures, the final arbiter, according to Berry, is not human will but nature itself.[4] But this is not to suggest that Berry is some sort of pantheist. Instead, “the agrarian mind is, at bottom, a religious mind.” The agrarian recognizes that the natural world is a gift, and gifts imply a giver. “The agrarian mind begins with the love of fields and ramifies in good farming, good cooking, good eating, and gratitude to God.” By contrast, the “industrial mind “begins with ingratitude, and ramifies in the destruction of farms and forests.”

I can sympathize with the desire to live close to the soil (and would purchase a farm could I afford it). The problem with the argument, though, is that it implies a fundamental distinction between the “agrarian mind” and the “industrial mind”; in truth, the difference between the two is one of degree rather than fundamental difference. Perhaps the agrarian mind “recognizes that the natural world is a gift,” but does it recognize it as such more than does the mind of the hunter/gatherer? And, if not, why should we not go further and work to incorporate elements of the hunter/gatherer’s economy into our postmodern existence?

America’s early agrarian writers did not see themselves as somehow living in harmony with nature. When visiting the writings of J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, one encounters this passage:

Is it not better to contemplate under these humble roofs the rudiments of future wealth and population than to behold the accumulated bundles of litigious papers in the office of a lawyer?  To examine how the world gradually settled, how the howling swamp is converted into a pleasing meadow, the rough ridge into a fine field; and to hear the cheerful whistling, the rural song, where there was no sound heard before, save the yell of the savage, the screech of the owl or the hissing of the snake? Here an European, fatigued with luxury, riches and pleasures, may find a sweet relaxation in a series of interesting scenes, as affecting as they are new.

Crevecoeur certainly prefers the placidity of agrarian life to the cosmopolitanism of the urban lawyer. Nonetheless, he is as enthusiastic to clear the forest for the farm as the “industrial mind” is to clear the forest for the city. It is a mistake to suggest that the agrarian life is natural. The move from the forest to the farm is, in fact, a more revolutionary manipulation of social organization than the move from the farm to the city. It is only through the division of labor provided by agriculture that the city is able to exist.

Agrarianism is larger than this one point, but other weaknesses emerge once its more fundamental premises are cut down from their theoretical moorings and forced to stand on the ground. The agrarian sees the society of the family farm as preferable to the life of bobo living in suburban paradise. Anathema are the financial institutions which distort commerce, the factories which pollute nature and the industrial farms which mass produce the food supply. At a theoretical level, I am able to sympathize, but in practice, I am confronted by the fact that the “industrial mind” produces much more than mere materialistic frivolities which we might do without.

The factory farm is perhaps hideous—images of animals thrown together, forced to breed between the narrow bars of cages, still resonate whenever I hear the term. Nonetheless, the industrialization of the agriculture industry and the genetic alteration of crops has, during the past five decades, led to unprecedented yields, offering us more food and fewer famines. Perhaps something was lost, but it was not billions of lives.

There is value in a life lived close to a particular locale, as in Agrarianism. But the problem that keeps on confounding these ideals is not with our systems of government, our institutions or our society. It is with us. The accentuate folly of the contemporary city-dwelling nomad is that he cannot imagine an ideology which could value anything above his animal urges to seek out food, shelter and sexual relations; the accentuate folly of the locally-anchored brother whom he left behind is that he cannot imagine a life apart from an ideology forged by the customs and assumptions of his home. In other words, the cosmopolitan’s flaw is shallowness, the localist’s is narrowness.

Perhaps many of us could use more time to appreciate the aesthetic value of the local: Visit your city’s farmers’ market; go to the public library book sale; take part in the coffee-shop poetry readings; maybe start a garage band. As one who fell enough in love with the rural villages of upstate New York that I moved from the Beltway to return, I know that a thing of beauty can be a joy forever (or at least as much in the 21^st Century as it was in the 19^th). But it is best appreciated as one element of a more complex life in which it takes a backseat to a religion which is cosmopolitan in nature and a family whose most basic human needs must be fulfilled. It should furthermore not be appreciated because it is familiar, but it should be familiar because it is appreciated. To turn the familiar into a political ideology is to dilute its worth.

The Seventh Annual Meeting of the Property and Freedom Society will take place in Bodrum, Turkey, at the Hotel Karia Princess, from Thursday, September 27, through Monday, October 1, 2012.  Readers of this site may be interested in some of the proposed talks for this event.

Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Stephan Kinsella will speak on Philosophy and Law.  Professor Hoppe’s paper is titled “The Nature of Man: Does Any Such Thing Exist?”  Mr. Kinsella’s paper is titled “The Market for Law.”

Sean Gabb and Benjamin Marks will speak on Literature and Literary Criticism.  Dr. Gabb’s paper is titled ”On Literature and Liberty.”  Mr. Marks’s paper is titled “On H. L. Mencken as a Libertarian Model (and Some Romantic Libertarian Delusions).”

Other literati to speak include Jeffery Tucker, who interviewed me about literature and the economics of liberty and who now is the executive editor for Laissez Faire Books, and Theodore Dalrymple.

Last spring I learned that I had been assigned to teach a freshman writing course on sustainability.  I don’t know much about sustainability, at least not in the currently popular sense of that term, and for many other reasons I was not thrilled about having to teach this course.  So I decided to put a spin on the subject.  What follows is an abridged version of my syllabus.  I owe more than a little gratitude to John Hasnas for the sections called “The Classroom Experience,” “Present and Prepared Policy,” and “Ground Rules for Discussion.”  He created these policies, and, with a few exceptions, the language from these policies is taken from a syllabus he provided during a workshop at a July 2011 Institute for Humane Studies conference on teaching and pedagogy.

Sustainability and American Communities

What is sustainability?  You have registered for this course about sustainability, so presumably you have some notion of what sustainability means.  The Oxford English Dictionary treats “sustainability” as a derivative of “sustainable,” which is defined as

1. Capable of being borne or endured; supportable, bearable.
2. Capable of being upheld or defended; maintainable.
3. Capable of being maintained at a certain rate or level.

Recently, though, sustainability has become associated with ecology and the environment.  The OED dates this development as beginning in 1980 and trending during the 1990s.  The OED also defines “sustainability” in the ecological context as follows: “Of, relating to, or designating forms of human economic activity and culture that do not lead to environmental degradation, esp. avoiding the long-term depletion of natural resources.”  With this definition in mind, we will examine landmark American authors and texts and discuss their relationship to sustainability.  You will read William Bartram, Thomas Jefferson, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Whitman, Mark Twain, and others.  Our readings will address nature, community, place, stewardship, husbandry, and other concepts related to sustainability.  By the end of the course, you will have refined your understanding of sustainability through the study of literary texts. 

Course Objectives

I have designed this course to help you improve your reading, writing, and thinking skills.  In this course, you will learn to write prose for general, academic, and professional audiences.  ENGL 1120 is a writing course, not a lecture course.  Plan to work on your writing every night.  You will have writing assignments every week. 

The basic objectives for this course are as follows:

• to understand writing as a process that involves prewriting, drafting, review, revision, and editing
• to learn to identify and define a rhetorical situation
• to develop and organize essays effectively in terms of both content and format
• to develop, refine, and support claims
• to become proficient in the conventions of standard written English appropriate for an academic audience or educated readers
• to identify and assess the rhetorical effectiveness and appropriateness of various kinds of texts and to make critical judgments about these texts
• to become proficient in writing with some stylistic fluency and to begin to attain a mature understanding of prose style

Attendance.  I expect you to attend every class; however, I realize that certain circumstances may cause you to miss a class.  During the semester, you are permitted three unexcused absences (see Student Guidelines for a description of excused absences).  For each additional unexcused absence, I will lower your final grade one full letter grade.  Note that this policy is entirely separate from the “Present and Prepared” policy below.

Excessive tardiness (i.e., arriving five or more minutes late to class) will affect your attendance records.  If you are late three times, I will count you as absent from one class.  In such a circumstance, your absence will be unexcused.  Unexcused absences may affect your participation grade.  If you miss a class, you are responsible for completing any work or assignments that you missed.   

Grades

 Current Events Presentation       2.5%

Peer Review                                        2.5%

Weekly Quizzes                                  5%

Essay One                                            10%

Essay Two                                            20%

Essay Three                                         25%

Essay Four                                          25%

Final Exam                                          10%

The following distribution applies to each assignment and your overall grade:

A +     = 99 – 100         B+     = 88 – 89            C+     = 77 – 79            D +     = 68 – 69       

A        = 95 – 98           B       = 84 – 87            C       = 74 – 76            D        = 65 – 67

A -      = 90 – 94         B -      = 80 – 83 C -     = 70 – 73          D -      = 60 – 64

F          = 59 and below

Discussing Grades.  If you have any questions or concerns about your grades, please see me during my office hours or make an appointment to see me.  Bring the paper with my comments (and any other relevant materials) to the meeting.  Be aware that my policy is to wait 24 hours before discussing a paper grade. 

Because of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), your grades and progress in the course must remain confidential.  I cannot release information about your attendance, progress, or grades without your written permission.

Late Assignments:  I will reduce your grade on any given assignment by one full letter for every day the assignment is late.  So, I will reduce your grade from an A to a B if the assignment is one day late, or from a B to a C if the assignment is two days late, etc.  If a student turns in two late assignments, I will reduce his or her final grade by half a letter point.  So, I will reduce an A+ to an A, or a B+ to a B, etc.

Weekly quizzes.  On the last class day of each week (Thursdays), we will begin class with a short quiz based on your readings for that week.  At the end of the semester, I’ll drop your lowest quiz grade and average your quiz scores to compute your overall “Weekly Quiz” grade for the course.

Current Events Presentation.  Each student will give a five minute presentation on a current event related to sustainability.  After we have completed two weeks of class, you will be able to sign up for a date to give your presentation.  I will distribute signup sheets during class.  Because the goal of this course is to define “sustainability,” your presentation should consider how your current event illuminates our understanding of sustainability.  

Special Accommodations.  Students needing special accommodations should contact the Office of the Program for Students with Disabilities located in 1244 Haley Center.   

Papers.  You will submit your papers in hard copy.  I reserve the right to request an electronic copy to run through Turnitin.com.  

The Writing Center.  Please note that the Writing Center (https://fp.auburn.edu/writing/writingcenter.aspx) is available to you.

Conferences.  For your first two papers, you are required to meet with me before turning in your assignment.  I will distribute signup sheets during class.  If you earn a B+ or higher on your first two papers, you are not required to meet with me before turning in your third assignment (though you may do so).  If you qualify as one of the individuals mentioned in the previous sentence, you are not required to meet with me before turning in your fourth assignment unless you earned a B or lower on your third assignment, in which case you are required to meet with me.

Peer Review.  For each paper, you will conduct a peer review session in which you proofread at least two of your classmates’ papers.  Your paper must be reviewed by at least two classmates.  You will receive a handout with instructions about the reviews, and you must complete the handout to earn credit for the peer review session.

Midterm.  The midterm date is October 6.  One week before midterm, I will provide you with an evaluation of your course performance up to that date. This evaluation is not a grade per se, but a “ballpark estimate” of your grade at midterm.  Midterm is the last day students are allowed to withdraw from the course with no grade penalty.  The evaluation should help you decide whether to withdraw from the course.  Note, too, that September 7 is the last day to withdraw from a course with no grade assignment.

Class Facebook Page.  After the first class, I will set up a Facebook page for our course.  You may use this page to hold class-related discussions with each other.  This Facebook page is a great forum for voicing questions you have for your classmates and not for me.  I will respond to private Facebook messages just as I will respond to emails, so feel to ask me questions via Facebook.

Paper with the highest grade.  After I have graded a major paper assignment, I will post the paper with the highest grade.  I will remove all personally identifying information from this paper, so you won’t know which student is the author. 

Midterm teaching evaluations.  At midterm, I will distribute teaching evaluations that will allow you to comment on my teaching up to this point.  In these evaluations, you may suggest ways that I can improve the course.  Teaching isn’t an exact science.  Not every aspect of my lesson plan will be equally effective.  The course will therefore benefit from your input.  Please don’t feel that you have to wait until student evaluations at the end of the semester to inform me of what is working and what isn’t.  If you have suggestions for how the course can run more smoothly, bring them to my attention while I still have time to make adjustments. 

Laptop policy.  You may of course bring laptops to class, but you may use them only if I have designated that class period as a “laptop day.”  The Internet can provide great in-class tools and forums for learning, but it can also distract you from classroom discussions.  I will do my best to incorporate technology that will aid and not interfere with your learning.

Cell phone policy.  Unless you are expecting an important call or text message—e.g., to tell you that your wife is going into labor or that your father is going into surgery, and so on—then you may not use your cell phone during class.  If for some reason you need to leave your phone on during class, please let me know before class begins.

The classroom experience and the “Present and Prepared” Policy.  I will teach this class using the Socratic Method; therefore, I will not lecture.  Instead, I’ll ask you questions about the assigned readings as a means of exploring your thoughts and stimulating class discussion.  You will be expected to have read and thought about the readings before class begins.  I will randomly call upon members of the class to discuss the readings and respond to my questions about the readings.  At various points, I will open up the discussion for comments offered on a voluntary basis.  If you are called upon to discuss a reading or answer a question, you should not respond with “I don’t know.”  If you don’t know, explain why you don’t know.  Maybe the author’s prose was too dense, or his reasoning too specious.  If so, say that.  By explaining why you don’t know, you will more often than not answer the question—and your answer may sound better than the answer of someone who is cocksure about his conclusions.

In responding to questions, your job is not to get the “right” answer.  It is to develop your analytical skills.  That happens through trial and error.  You learn by making mistakes.  Therefore, don’t be afraid or ashamed of making mistakes.  I expect you to make errors, just as I will make errors, so don’t fret if you think you’ve given a “bad” answer.

The “Present and Prepared” policy is extremely important.  This policy will make this class different from all your other classes.  This policy also will allow me to adjust your grade for the course based on your performance in class.

When you enter the classroom at the beginning of class, you’ll see a signup sheet on the front desk.  If you are prepared to participate in the class discussion—i.e., if you have read and thought about the assignment for that day—you may come up and place a checkmark next to your name.  If you do so, you’re subject to being called upon that day.  If you don’t, you won’t be called on.  You may not check off your name after class has been in session for five minutes.  If you check off your name for all but four of the class meetings, you will receive a one increment increase in your grade for the course.  (So, your C+ would become a B-, or your B+ would become an A-, etc.)  If you don’t check off your name for at least half of the class meetings, you will receive a one increment decrease in your grade for the course.  (So, your B- would become a C+, or your A- would become a B+.)  In addition, if you check off your name and I call on you and find that you’re not prepared, your overall course grade will drop three points.  (So, your 100 would become a 97, or your 92 would become an 89.)  I reserve the right to unilaterally raise a student’s grade by one increment (regardless of whether the student has already received the “Present and Prepared” bonus) if, in my judgment, that student has consistently made extraordinarily valuable contributions to class discussion.  I will make such an increase only for truly exceptional performances.

Please note that I’m unlikely to make it through the semester without inadvertently calling on a student who has not checked off his or her name.  Should this happen to you, please point out my error, and I will immediately move on.  However, should you wish to respond, please do so, and I will place a check mark next to your name and count the class toward your total for the bonus. 

This is also extremely important:  The “Present and Prepared” bonus and penalty are assigned strictly on the basis of the signup sheets.  If for any reason you do not place a checkmark next to your name on all but four class periods, you do not receive the bonus.  If you do not place a checkmark next to your name for at least half of the class periods, you receive the penalty.  I will not entertain excuses or exceptions to this policy.  The bonus is not awarded for attendance and not awarded for preparation.  It is not designed to reward your efforts or good character.  It’s awarded for providing a service to your classmates: the service of being willing and able to advance thoughts and discussion.  This service is only possible if you are both present and prepared.  That is why I impose a penalty for failing to provide this service—for, in effect, “freeriding” on others’ contributions.  If you’re not present and prepared for half of the classes, you have not provided this service. 

Earning the bonus also requires that you exercise the degree of individual responsibility required to remember to place a checkmark next to your name in a timely manner on the required number of occasions.  Therefore, statements such as “I was present and prepared, but forgot to sign in,” or “I didn’t want to interrupt class,” or anything similar will not allow you to receive credit toward the bonus if you have not signed in within five minutes of the beginning of class.

Nature of class discussion.  I will usually begin our discussions by asking one or two of you to discuss one or more of the assigned readings.  As our conversation proceeds, I often will give other members of the class the opportunity to comment on the specific points being raised.  Eventually, I will either move on to other readings by calling on another student, or open up the discussion for comment to explore the broader ramifications of these points.  If the latter, I will eventually end this discussion by again calling on a specific student. 

I recommend that you have compassion for your fellow students by not raising your hands as soon as the person who has been called on hesitates in giving his or her response.  I will always give the student who has been called on some time to think and to refer to his or her notes before formulating a response.  Raising your hands during this period merely adds to the pressure that individual may experience.  If a student is having difficulty, I will at some point ask whether he or she would like some additional help from classmates.  That would be an appropriate time to volunteer.

I intend to interpret a lack of questions as an indication that you understand the point under consideration and that it is time to move on.  If this isn’t the case, it is your responsibility to indicate otherwise by asking questions.  On the other hand, there will be times when I move on even though several of you have significant unanswered questions.  If you’re wondering why I do that, keep in mind that your primary task is not to amass information, but to develop your problem-solving abilities.  I will often move on without fully resolving a point when I believe the point to be one you should resolve yourselves.

When I direct a question to the class in general rather than to a specific individual, you will notice that I often pause before calling on a volunteer.  This is to give you time to think before formulating a response.  There will also be times when I don’t call on the first person to raise his or her hand.  Although it may appear as though I’m ignoring you, don’t take my decision personally.  The decision merely reflects my efforts to ensure that those who respond less quickly—or who prefer to mull over a problem before trying to resolve it—have an opportunity to participate in the discussion.  In addition, I will usually give those who haven’t spoken preference over those who have already participated.  However, you are free to volunteer as often as you wish, and I will usually be able to get back to you.  Please note that a small number of students can dominate class discussion if these students are the only ones who volunteer.  The only remedy for this problem is for those who are dissatisfied to volunteer more frequently.  I will ensure that the discussion is properly balanced if adequate volunteers are available.

Ground rules for discussion.  In a class of this size, there will likely be diverse moral, political, and ideological opinions.  There aare no restrictions on the content of the opinions that may be expressed during class discussion.  You may advocate any point of view that you honestly believe to be correct as long as you are willing to offer principled reasons in support of it.  The only restrictions on discussion concern the manner in which you express these opinions.  These restrictions are as follows:

1)   As indicated above, if you advocate a position, you have an obligation to provide reasoned support for it.

2)   You may not make ad hominem arguments.  An ad hominem argument is one in which you attack the character or motives of an advocate rather than address the merits of the reasons offered in support of the advocate’s position.

3)   You must treat all members of the class with ordinary politeness.  This means that you may not interrupt or otherwise heckle a speaker and that you must refrain from purely emotive expressions of approval or disapproval of others’ statements.

4)   You may respond to those with whom you disagree only by pointing out the flaws in their arguments.  You may not attempt to silence them in any other way.

In general, we all have the obligation to interpret our peers’ comments in the best possible light.  We must therefore try not to take offense when none was intended, and we must seek an inoffensive interpretation of comments that are offensive.  We should also keep in mind that disagreement with one’s position does not imply disrespect.  On the contrary, verbal disputation should be taken as a sign of respect, since the effort to change another’s mind implies that the other person’s opinion matters. 

Syllabus revisions.  I reserve the right to revise the syllabus, including your assignments, as necessary throughout the course of the semester.

Good luck!  This class will be difficult but fair.  Remember, the goal of this class is to learn.  You probably will read and write more than you ever have before.  Your workload is not punishment but preparation for the world outside the so-called “college bubble.”  By working hard in this class, you will equip yourself with the knowledge and skills to excel in whatever line of work you do. 

Calendar of Assignments

Class One:  Thursday, August 18

Introduction to course, classmates, and syllabus.  “Getting to know you.”

Grammar quiz (not graded)

Class Two:  Tuesday, August 23

Gordon Wood, “Introduction” in The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008) (handout)

Review of grammar quiz

Excerpt from textbook (TBA)

Class Three:  Thursday, August 25

Excerpt from David Shi, The Simple Life (Athens:  University of Georgia Press, 2001) (handout)

Excerpt from William Bartram’s The Travels of William Bartram (handout)

Excerpt from textbook (TBA)

Class Four:  Tuesday, August 30

Excerpt from Shi’s The Simple Life (handout)

Excerpt from Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (handout)

Excerpt from textbook (TBA)

Class Five:  Thursday, September 1

Excerpt from Shi’s The Simple Life (handout)

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Nature” (handout)

Class Six:  Tuesday, September 6

Excerpt from Shi’s The Simple Life (handout)

Emerson’s “Self-Reliance” (handout)

Class Seven:  Thursday, September 8

LIBRARY DAY

Class Eight:  Tuesday, September 13

Excerpts from Shi’s The Simple Life (handout)

Excerpts from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (handout)

END EARLY FOR CONFERENCES

Class Nine:  Thursday, September 15

Peer review workshop

Excerpt from Matthiessen, F. O.  American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (Oxford University Press, 1941) (handout)

Excerpts from Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” (handout)

Poems by Emily Dickinson (TBA) (handout)

Excerpt from textbook (TBA)

Class Ten:  Tuesday, September 20

Excerpts from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of Seven Gables (handout)

          First Paper Due by 5:00 p.m.

Class Eleven:  Thursday, September 22

Poems by Edgar Allan Poe (TBA)

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” (handout)

Class Twelve:  Tuesday, September 27

Excerpts from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (handout)

Excerpts from textbook (TBA)

Class Thirteen:  Thursday, September 29

Excerpts from Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (handout)

Excerpts from textbook (TBA)

Class Fourteen:  Tuesday, October 4

LIBRARY DAY

Class Fifteen:  Thursday, October 6

Excerpts from Herman Melville’s Billy Budd (handout)

END EARLY FOR CONFERENCES

Class Sixteen:  Tuesday, October 11

Peer review workshop

Excerpts from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (handout)

Excerpts from Shi’s The Simple Life (handout)

Class Seventeen:  Thursday, October 13

          Second Paper Due by 5:00 p.m.

Class Eighteen:  Tuesday, October 18

Excerpt from George Santayana’s “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (handout)

Class Nineteen:  Thursday, October 20

Excerpt from George Santayana’s “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy” (handout)

Class Twenty:  Tuesday, October 25

Excerpt from George Santayana’s Character and Opinion in the United States (handout) 

Class Twenty-One:  Thursday, October 27

Excerpt from George Santayana’s Character and Opinion in the United States (handout)

Class Twenty-Two:  Tuesday, November 1

LIBRARY DAY

Class Twenty-Three:  Thursday, November 3

Excerpt from W. E. B. Dubois’s The Souls of Black Folk (handout)

END EARLY FOR CONFERENCES

Class Twenty-Four:  Tuesday, November 8

Peer review workshop

Excerpt from Jack London’s White Fang (handout)

Class Twenty-Five:  Thursday, November 10

E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake” (handout)

          Third Paper Due by 5:00 p.m.

Class Twenty-Six:  Tuesday, November 15

Poems by Robert Frost (TBA) (handout)

Class Twenty-Seven:  Thursday, November 17

Excerpts from Janise Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (handbook)

Excerpt from textbook (TBA)

END EARLY FOR CONFERENCES

THANKSGIVING BREAK

Class Twenty-Eight:  Tuesday, November 29

Peer review workshop

Excerpts from Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It (handout)

Excerpt from textbook (TBA)

Class Twenty-Nine:  Thursday, December 1 (Final Class)

          Final Paper Due by 5:00 p.m.

HONOR STATEMENT FOR ENGLISH 1120 (OPTIONAL)

As a member of the student body of Auburn University, I consider myself bound to develop and abide by high standards of honesty and behavior.  I pledge to uphold the values and reputation of this institution by refraining from academic misconduct, and I acknowledge that I am responsible for the academic integrity of my work.  My signature represents my voluntarycommitment to promoting and maintaining honor and integrity in this course and on this campus.  I will receive nothing in return for signing this statement.  Nor will my decision to sign (or not to sign) affect my grade in this course.

Signed ______________________________________________________

Joyce Corrington, a long-term friend and supporter of this site whose interview with me appeared back in September, recently republished, in e-book format, the four New Orleans mysteries she wrote in a series with her late husband John William Corrington.  The books are available at the following links:

So Small a Carnival

A Project Named Desire

A Civil Death

The White Zone

Joyce’s latest novel, Fear of Dying, the fifth in the series, came out in 2011.