Archives for March 21, 2004

This story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution almost slipped past me, but the Cranky Professor steered me straight:

“Et tu, Brute?”

Not anymore.

“And you too, Brutus?” is what students read in a new genre of study guides that modernize the Elizabethan English found in “Julius Caesar” and other plays by William Shakespeare.

These guides move beyond the plot summaries found in other study aides by providing line-by-line translations in modern-day English.

Once barred from school, the new translations now are being used in classes across metro Atlanta.

But not everyone thinks they belong there. Some educators say the beauty of Shakespeare rests in the writer’s eloquence and poetry — something missing in the translations.

“Shakespeare without language is like a movie without sound,” said Paul Voss, who teaches Shakespeare at Georgia State University.

The translated study guides can be found in a class for struggling readers at one Fayette County high school. Henry County teachers also assigned it to students with lower reading skills. And some DeKalb County high school teachers use it as a supplement.

Shakespeare can intimidate students because of unfamiliar syntax and strange character names. Modernized versions give students the confidence to tackle the work, said Connie Kollias, who had her sophomores at Sandy Creek High in Fayette read a translated “Julius Caesar” aloud in class.

“We’re not dumbing down lessons for these students,” Kollias said. “We are giving them tools that allow them to do the same work as everyone else.”

“Tut, I am in their bosoms, and I know wherefore they do it.” — Act 5, Scene 1.

“I know how they think, and I understand why they’re doing this.” — Same scene, “No Fear Shakespeare” translation….

Read the whole thing here.

This isn’t an open-and-shut case. As I’ve told any number of people whom I took to see their very first Shakespeare plays, the Bard is harder to read than he is to watch. (Which is why the teachers quoted in this piece ought to be showing a Shakespeare film or two–or three–to their kids.) I’m not necessarily opposed to the judicious use of “translations” in a classroom setting. It depends on the circumstances.

What made my hair stand on end were these two words: “Some educators…” Are there really English teachers in Atlanta who don’t think “the beauty of Shakespeare rests in the writer’s eloquence and poetry”? Has it come to this?

Don’t answer that. In the immortal words of me, all slopes are slippery.

I almost forgot to post some of the great mail I’ve been getting in response to what I wrote the other day
about Charlie Chaplin:

– “For the most part, I think your criticism of all kinds is dead-on. In
fact, I have once or twice
asked myself whether you are me when I grow up. But your recent
dismissal of Chaplin
made me very sad. I agree that

Today’s postings are merely an aberration. I wrote until…when? Midnight? Two in the morning? I forget. But I got a whole lot of work done on the Balanchine book yesterday, and I mean to get still more done today. Only I have a guest coming at one o’clock, followed by a matinee at two, and the idea of trying to write between now and then is, shall we say, repellent. Repugnant. Revolting. Maybe even rebarbative. So I decided to post a few quick items instead, knowing that you’ve all been missing me.

Nothing more will be forthcoming today, except for (I hope) the rest of Chapter Four. And yes, I may post a snippet or two of the book, but not while it’s still piping hot. It needs to cool down a bit, and so do I.

(The very next thing I’ll be writing, incidentally, is a character sketch of Jerome Robbins. That ought to be fun.)

Anyway, it’s time for peanut butter and jelly, after which I’ll take a shower and prepare to give my guest a tour of the Teachout Museum. Then we’ll go hear Barbara Cook at Lincoln Center. Then it’s back to work.

See you Monday.

Lileks fisked, of all things, Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker piece
about Times Square:

“It’s not filled by media images that supplant the experience of real things.”

Neither is my back yard or toilet bowl or left kidney; lots of things are not filled by media images that supplant the experience of real things. Folks, let me tell you: when you reach a certain level in an organization, you can write things like that, and the copy desk shrugs and says “whatever.” Because it’s Opinion, it’s Creative, it’s the Star Writer on a tear, and you don’t step in to point out the emperor is not only buck-fargin’ naked, he’s wearing white before Memorial Day….

Bang. Crunch. Thump. Oooh!

Read the whole thing here.

Here’s Rachel Toor, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Not so many years ago writing a trade book would bring accusations of popularizing, an academic sin worse than spending a Sunday night watching the Super Bowl. No more. Now university presses are turning away from cranking out piles of narrow monographs too expensive even for libraries and are actively looking for books that have at least an academic/trade market, books that will cross over to scholars in other disciplines or outside a narrow subfield. At the same time, commercial presses are hungry for serious, well-researched books that will appeal to people who want something more substantial than the next John Grisham. Trade publishers are also willing to pay big advances for the prestige of having heavyweight authors on their list. It isn’t hard to think of powerhouse intellectual scholars who have become rock stars of the scholarly firmament. Hey, I’d line up to get Simon Schama’s autograph.

How do these “popular” academic books happen? Do their authors instinctively know how to write for a broad audience? No stinking way. For the most part, rock-star academics are made, not born. And the people who make them are literary agents….

Read the whole thing here. And before the mud starts to fly, I poached this link–but I don’t know where I got it. I bookmarked it a few days ago, then got immersed in writing, and now I can’t remember where it came from, arrgh.

You know who you are. You know what to do. But please–I beg of you–don’t do it.

I don’t know whether this story from the Chicago Tribune says more about the state of cultural literacy in America today or the tendency of middle-aged politicians (and their speechwriters) to live in the dear departed past. Either way, it tickled me:

The bogeymen of the 2004 presidential campaign just aren’t what they used to be, a nationwide poll indicated Thursday.

When Republican allies of President Bush try to indict Democratic presidential rival Sen. John Kerry for 34-year-old ties to the anti-Vietnam War activities of Jane Fonda, only 20 percent of Americans have any idea what that’s all about.

And when Kerry accuses Bush of being the first president to suffer a net loss of jobs since Herbert Hoover at the outset of the Great Depression, more than half of respondents are left wondering what the Democratic challenger is talking about. Many think Kerry’s referring to a former FBI director, a 69-year-old dam on the Colorado River or a vacuum cleaner.

While one-fifth of those polled in a National Annenberg Election Survey know Fonda as a Vietnam War protester, twice as many think of her as an actress, 9 percent tie her to exercise videos, and 2 percent link her to either father Henry Fonda or ex-husband Ted Turner. Another 11 percent give other answers….

When survey respondents were asked, “Just your best guess, what was Herbert Hoover known for?” fewer than 7 percent tied Hoover to the Great Depression or the 1929 stock market crash–the parallel with Bush that Kerry likes to claim.

Thirty-seven percent cited Hoover as president. Twelve percent confused him with the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Another 4 percent correctly tied Hoover to the towering $48.9 million dam on the Colorado River that bears his name….

Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed had no answer at all when asked about Hoover, while 17 percent had no answer when asked about Fonda.

What I wonder is how many respondents could name any movie in which Jane Fonda starred. Or any specific thing Herbert Hoover did. Or any specific thing, period.

“There is one very good thing to be said of posterity, and this is that it turns a blind eye on the defects of greatness. Contemporary opinion is more concerned with the faults of a writer than with his excellence, but posterity takes him as a whole and very sensibly accepts the faults as the inevitable price that must be paid for the excellence.”

W. Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando

A reader writes:

You and I disagree as often as we agree, but I read you regularly and enjoy your site very much.

If more people would (or could) say things like that to one another in a wider variety of contexts, both cultural and political, the world would be an infinitely more pleasant place. Instead, we talk past each other–when not shooting at one another. I don’t think things were like that when I was young, though perhaps I’m simply remembering the world of my youth through a haze of nostalgia.

At any rate, one of the goals of this site is to be a place where culture and the arts are discussed civilly and amicably. Which isn’t to say that OGIC and I don’t like a bit of snark from time to time: we do. Nor are we afraid to dust it up. But it seems to me that enough people are kicking up enough dust. All things being equal, I’d rather shed light, and maybe even a little sweetness, too.

I know Our Girl agrees, and I hope you do, too–and I also hope that “About Last Night” gives you pleasure even when you don’t.