On the Question of Quality

   I will be the first to admit that, perhaps, I ended this reflection on something of a tangent, but if ever there was a time for grandstanding, this was it. 

On the Question of Quality

            When I sat down to write this, I had the intention of being here all day in order to form a long winded argument about the quality of the University system and about how one would go about answering such questions.  Instead, after a brief consideration, I realized that the answer was both more difficult than I originally believed, and, paradoxically, simpler.  Frankly, I think the journey is equally as important as the destination in an understanding of Quality and how it is evaluated in a University setting, and, therefore, I will not spoil the ending just yet but will bid you to follow me along through my thought process as I address the question of Quality.

            The first question which must be answered (or, rather, addressed) is, “what is Quality?”  Quality judgments are ones that we make every day; from choosing which outfits we wear (a question of quality of appearance) to what we eat (qualities of taste and health) to where we choose to work or go to school (qualities of life and happiness).  These might seem a bit reductive, but the point stands.  Even in these cases, you will notice that each of these things, which are being called into question, are evaluated differently (though there are cross-over in most cases, which is why we are using the reductive model and not a more complex schematic).  By this, I mean, one does not judge an outfit by its quality of taste, or what we eat by the quality of life it produces (thought he inverse is the norm).  Each object must be evaluated by qualities that are within its means.  This leads us to the old adage of Einstein, “if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  If we place this into the University setting we arrive at: If you judge an engineer by his ability to dissect the rhetoric of Tennyson, he will live his entire life believing that he is stupid.  Within the University, there are infinite situations where this expression may be applied.  It is obvious this line of reasoning illuminates the need for a better evaluative system within the university. But where must one start? And how do we evaluate students? Faculty? Departments? Colleges? Universities as a whole?

            Let us, for simplicity’s sake, start with the simplest unit: the student.  How can we possibly evaluate even the students? Do we evaluate the freshman? the seniors? the graduates? everything in between?  And this leads back to how do we evaluate the students of one discipline against those of another?  I think we can agree that to be able to accurately do anything of the sort would be impossible.  It becomes apparent that until students can be made equally ‘rounded’ academically, the question of identifying and measuring quality is void.  Since we have moved away from the trivium and quadrivium, a move for which I am infinitely grateful, we must not attempt to compare the students for that is impossible, instead, we must address the University itself and the overall Quality thereof.  But here, I think we must only be concerned about increasing Quality as opposed to simply measuring it.  By investing in the University (in terms of money, resources, etc.) we can make it of the highest possible quality.  If the focus becomes one of increasing the Quality of our universities, we will not need to worry so much about the Quality of the students because, if the Quality of the University is truly increased, so will the Quality of the students.  A master potter and novice potter may both make pots, but the master potter, who is consistently supplied with the highest quality materials and the latest pot making techniques, will consistently turn out pots which are less likely to leak or to break than is the novice.  By investing in the University, we invest in the students. 

            All in all, I think we must address the Quality of the University before we attempt to evaluate the constituents thereof.  In a country notorious for consistently undervaluing education, we must be willing to put an end to fretting about the outcome of the University.  Instead, we must ensure that the University is consistently supplied with appropriate funds and resources to remain competitive in the fields of technology and science, humanities and arts, business and education.  By ensuring the Quality of the Universities and always striving to increase that Quality, the University will be able to become more self-sustaining by increasing department size and by being able to produce large departments which are capable of creating supervised internships in order to give students firsthand experience while being able to bring in money to the University.  In these larger departments, upper level students would be able to gain teaching experience while lowering the cost of tuition and eliminating student loans.  I believe that, with the proper resources, the University is able to reach a high enough Quality wherein it will not be only a source of higher education, but an intellectual institution and community that betters, not only itself (and therefore increases its quality from the inside), but also increases the quality of the its environs, from local schools (including Elementary/Middle/High Schools operated by the University) to providing the community with jobs both for graduates of the University as well as non-graduates.  By continually striving to increase Quality of the University System, we can effectively increase the Quality of all members of that system and the surrounding community.      

How the Past Possesses the Present in “Night-Sea Journey”

How the Past Possesses the Present in “Night-Sea Journey”

           

            When it comes down to it, John Barth’s “Night-Sea Journey” is little more than a tale of circles; and upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the humble circle and its story is something that has been passed down from generation to generation of literature.  If we take look through a brief survey of literature (and therefore, life) the theme of the circle, (a peculiar phrase, if ever there was one), makes itself amply apparent.

            In “Night-Sea Journey,” we see circles presented in multiple ways. These circles exist from the strikingly literal “gliding sphere” to the metaphorical “cyclic process of incarnation” or “cycles of catastrophes” to the phenomenological fact that, by understanding the text as a whole, the reader realized that this story is only one repetition in a series that continues ad infinitum.  Perhaps what I have developed, here, is nothing more than circular “referential mania.”  By exploring each of these concepts in turn (literal, metaphorical, phenomenological), we can gain a glimpse into the literary history of the circle and see, with little wonder, how the concept of the circle becomes so integral to the story of the “Night-Journey” and literature as a whole.

            Perhaps the simplest place to start is with the physical circle.  Chronologically, the oldest example I arrived at (through no manner of systematic examination) was from the Inferno of Dante.  What are not the levels of the Inferno if not “Circles?”  Led by Virgil, Dante progresses through the nine circles of Hell in which Dante finds rings of swamps, rivers of boiling blood, burning sand, and the eighth circle which is subdivided into eleven separate rings (Bolgias) including a ring wherein horned devils with lashes force its occupants to walk around the circle forever.  The circle also appears multiple times in Coleridge’s “Kubla Kahn.”  In the first stanza, we see “twice five miles of fertile ground/ With walls and towers were girdled round.” Then, in the final stanza, “weave a circle round him thrice.”  Interestingly, both of these circles are concerned with enclosing something.  Perhaps the seeming endless nature of the circle is what makes these barriers so effective.  Within the circle, there are no corners and no weak spots.  Because of the symmetrical and perfect nature of a circle, each point or segment is equal to any other point or segment of equal length and to follow a circle will lead on forever without landing on any end point and continue into infinity.  This idea of continuity of a circle is also seen in Marcel Proust’s À la recherché du temps perdu, Swann’s Way and The Guermantes Way (walking paths) seem to a young Marcel two distinct paths each with its own character and significance; but with age, Marcel learns that these two Ways are simply the same circle taken from two different directions.  The same confusion can be seen in Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” when mysterious caller continues to call the wrong number on the rotary phone.  The circular dialing device leads to confusion because the caller, presumably, can’t seem to get the proper point on the circle.  By confusing the “O” and the zero, (both circles) on the circle of the rotary the caller is lost in the circle.  Within a circle, either direction from any given point is identical and therein lies the terror of the circle: any point is as good as another, but when one finds himself stuck in (or on) a circle and must move, the overwhelming sameness of the circle is awe-inspiring, intimidating, confounding, exhilarating, and capable of devastating the human need for reference.  If one starts in a certain direction, he may travel into infinity before he realizes his mistake.  This potential for failure also makes the circle a symbol of great power, for if one is to start moving around the circle in the correct direction, then also will he travel into infinity in that direction.  We, as the readers, can imagine the island of the “Night-Sea Journey,” and after we realize that the narrator and protagonist is, himself, a sperm, we can see the shape of his counterpart: the round ovum.  In the circle is contained the infinity of life, and therefore, the swimmer’s instincts drive him forward, towards the circle, while his consciousness continues to make arguments against the circle (including the fact that the circle might not exist).  The swimmer attempts to use his limited perspective to understand his place in the cycle of life and death.  This circle of life, and cycle of life and death, falls into the category of the metaphorical circle.

            The following two categories are perhaps two of the most important concepts in literature.  Without them, it is my opinion that literature would not be capable of playing the social role that it does.  The metaphorical circle is a concept which is manifest in all literature, including the “Night-Sea Journey.”  These type of circles may not be as obvious as the literal circles, but can be seen working throughout all stories.  One of the oldest examples of an in-story cycle that is glaringly obvious is the myth of Sisyphus.  King Sisyphus boasted that he was cleverer than Zeus himself; as punishment for his hubris, Zeus condemned Sisyphus to an eternity of pushing a large boulder up a hill, but before he can reach the top, the boulder rolls to the bottom and Sisyphus must start over again.  Here is another example of circular punishment, a motif which was amply apparent in Dante’s work.  The circle works so well for punishment because of its inherent infinity.  This is what is so unsettling about circles, the infinity, the infinite loop.  Another common cycle that presents itself in literature and mythology is the resurrection, the cycle of life and death portrayed on a scale small enough to be employed as a literary device.  Death and rebirth is seen from Homeric epics, to the Christian mythology, to The Ballad of Tim Finnegan, to the Harry Potter story.  In the case of the “Night-Sea Journey,” we see nearly all of the swimmers drown during their quest and, as readers we understand that through a literal birth, the quest (or the swim) will one day start over anew.  This concept of a quest is also a common theme in the romances of the middle ages.  How many times has the “Knight Errant” defeated one foe and immediately set out after another?  Even in parody (e.g., Cervantes’s Don Quixote) the knight will face one task, save one damsel, and immediately pursue another challenge.  Sounds very similar to the concept of the Mario video game, doesn’t it?  No matter what obstacles are overcome, the quest beckons.  In T.S. Eliot’s For Quartets, the idea of cycles and resurrections become strikingly apparent.  From the first and last sentences of “East Coker,” “In my beginning is my end” and “In my end is my beginning,” to, in “Little Gidding,”  

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.  

 

These two passages could both be directly applied to the N.S.J..  The swimmers quest ultimately both begins and ends when he reaches the island.  The island is his beginning and his end.  He arrives, himself, on the island for the first time, but is it the first time?  I think we can say that it certainly is not, and that even though this isn’t the first time, the exploration is just beginning.  Another of the most inherent themes of the Four Quartets involves continued references to the seasons.  What are seasons, if not a continually repeating cycle?  These are all examples of circles that have manifested themselves from the past, through the literature of thousands of years, and both used the N.S.J. to manifest itself, and to continue to move the tradition onwards.

 

            The final cycle of this analysis is what I referred to as the phenomenological circles.  Viewing the text, and the story as a whole, we, the readers, understand that the end of the swimmer’s journey is only the beginning of a second (or a unit in an infinite series of) N.S. J.’s.  One of the most obvious parallels to this concept of phenomenological cycles is Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.  In order to properly finish the novel, one must also read the first sentence again.  And as simple as that, the reader has begun to read the novel for a second time and cycle (theoretically) continues ad infinitum.  This same idea, though not as glaringly obvious, is seen in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman where, at the end of the novel, we, the readers, realize that this story is simply on a loop and we’re not exactly sure what number of the loop we have been privy to in the novel, perhaps one, perhaps all of them.  And to trace this forward through history a little further, we arrive at the film, Dead Man, which, in my opinion is some sort of hybrid of The Third Policeman and Dante’s Inferno.  Is William Blake’s journey simply a journey around one of the rings of Dante’s Hell, fated to begin anew after the viewer (I was half-tempted to write reader) has left the scene?  I think the answer is yes.  Just as the swimmer is on the infinite loop that he suspects, so is William Blake, so is the narrator (whose name we never learn) of The Third Policeman, so is the reader of Finnegans Wake.  The loop, set in motion by these stories, never stops for the reader.

           

            I think it is unfair to consider the past as possessing the present in the “Night-Sea Journey” as a culmination.  It needs to be viewed as a process, a process that existed and took place before, during, and after the story.  It is the circle that is life and literature.  Without these circles, literature would not be possible.  In a universe without circles and cycles, an event might only occur once; every event might only occur once and therefore, the only books that would be written are history books.  That is not the universe in which we live, no is it the universe in which I want to live.  Our universe, fortunately, is composes of circles and cycles, and perhaps only one circle that plays itself into infinity.  By writing and rewriting these cycles the Reader is able to tap into these cycles, whether consciously or not, and relate.  Without the ability to relate, there would be no literature.  I cannot say that I subscribe to the idea of stories being part of the human biology.  Stories are not inherent.  Instead, we have concepts, like the circle, that are inherent in every story.  From the story that will never be written, to epics, to airport novels, some concepts will never be left out.  The circle and cycle will never be left out of stories and that is what makes it seems inherent to our biology.  Barth’s “Night-Sea Journey” is one of the stories that propagate the motif of universal circle and cycle of life and death.  It is a link on the evolutionary chain that is literature.  The past possesses the present and then moves on, and “Night-Sea Journey” is no exception.   

          

Displaced Fairy Tale

Displaced Fairy Tale

            The rain ran down the pane of the floor-to-ceiling window in Walter’s office.  It was days like these that he would stand near the glass and look down and imagine that he was one of the raindrops: falling, falling.  He had been the vice president of D&H Investment Strategies for nearly ten years, and his prospects for climbing any higher seemed non-existent.  About two years ago, The Board of Directors found itself unhappy with direction the company was going and in response, replaced the existing CEO with one Stanley King, a great-nephew of one of the oldest members of The Board.  Mr. King had a keen eye for business and had worked wonders for the company, but despite these ‘improvements,’ all the senior members of the staff felt cheated by this act of nepotism.  For weeks, it seemed that things would continue as business as usual, but slowly, Mr. King, backed by the board, began eliminating the members of upper-management and replacing them with out-side hires.  He started at the top, moving down, slowly, slowly.  Before long, each member knew when his time was up, it was only a matter of time, and Walter’s number had been up for weeks.

            It was on this rainy morning, the city was as grey as ever, and from his window he watched, through the rain-streaked glass, the grey building, the grey cars, and the grey people moving down below.  His mind jumped back to his desk, the top left drawer.  He knew it was locked and his hand moved instinctively down to his right pocket to feel for his key-ring, on which he knew the little desk key was securely attached.  He hadn’t touched the pile of work on his desk all morning.  From his empty house, to the company lease, through the revolving door, and up the elevator his thoughts had been in that desk drawer.

            The static from the inter-com cut the air, “Walter, Mr. King would like to see you in his office.”  He didn’t say anything.  He kept looking out the window.

            From outside of Walter’s office, the receptionist and the few people who happened to be walking by were stopped by the bang and the flash and heard his body fall upon the floor with a pronounced thud after the thunder of the blast.  They rushed to the office, and called 911; but try as they might, he was lost before they even reached the door.  The paramedics arrived after a couple minutes; Walter was pronounced dead and carried down the elevator and into the grey world.     

There is Only the Dance

This semester is shaping up to be busy as all hell, so I must consign myself to less than daily blogs, but I will attempt to write longer blogs to make up for shortage.   Let me start this entry, which has the potential to be quite long, by creating a sort of outline I have created for myself in order to keep things tidy and ensure that I get around to everything I wanted to bring up today.

1.       Carol Oates and History

2.      The idea of ‘Still point” and reflections on “Burnt Norton.”

(There were three other topics here, but this took long enough as is and those will be postponed until a later date)

If I must start somewhere, I think I should start with a short story.  I’ll try to start in a somewhat methodical fashion, addressing each story in turn, but I cannot promise that, by the end, anything I have to say will not turn into a whirl-wind of chaos.  On the top of my pile is Oates’s “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been.”  In class, we discussed the historical and mythological history of this story.  We addressed the serial killer past and the story of Demeter and Proserpine and Hades.  Now, I am forced to ask, can we separate these two forms of history?  There must be some separation between the mythological past and ‘history,’ but where, and who has the authority to draw the line?  I cannot offer any answers with confidence, but I can’t help but to feel that eventually, the myth becomes history and the history becomes myth until at some point the two are undecipherable.  If we are to look at an example of this that is clearer (and older) than Oates’s story, we need only turn to a historical event which has been passed down through history and myth both independently and co-dependently.   In the past years, the Battle of Thermopylae has been brought into the public eye with the release of the film “300.”  In the film, King Leonidas of Sparta takes 300 men and those men hold off the entirety of the Persian army, numbering into the millions, and manage to do so quite successfully until they are betrayed.  If we now look to the historians and modern scholars, the actually numbers are about 7,000 Greeks against 100,000 to 150,000 Persians.   Then, after Leonidas realizes that he has been betrayed, and is being outflanked, he sends all but 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans away from the battle so that the entire Greek force is not decimated.  (I can thank Wikipedia for these statistics).  Not only have these numbers been greatly exaggerated (even accounting for cinematic liberties) as the story was passed on, but it was also believed that the leader of the Greek forces, the King of Sparta, Leonidas, was a descendant of Heracles himself.  So now, not only are the numbers being blown-up to mythic proportions, but the characters themselves who were, in fact, real people are being intermingled with the gods. 

            Perhaps I need not say anything more about the facts above.  Placing them next to each other sheds light on exactly how convoluted history and mythology can, and has, become.  I think it would be foolish to not ask ourselves, how else has this happened? and when has it happened and we weren’t aware of it?  

At the still pint of the turning world.  Neither flesh nor fleshless;

Neither from nor towards at the still point, there the dance is,

But neither arrest nor movement.  And do not call it fixity,

Where past and future are gathered.  Neither movement from nor towards,

Neither ascent nor decline.  Except for the point, the still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.

I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

My next topic, the idea of ‘Still point” and reflections on “Burnt Norton,” might seem to take things a step too far, but it is something that has passed through my mind, and now seems as good a time as any to sit down and expound on some of these ideas.  I would like to start with the idea of a ‘still point’ as used in the passage above.  For some reason, this idea brought to mind the image of circles, more specifically, circles spinning like a record or CD or a dancer.  Since we are dealing with Time, I think it is fair to turn to one of the leading novels (though that word seems insufficient) with regards to Time: Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu.  In this novel, if I may be a little reductive, Proust would like us to imagine time as circle on an infinite loop with infinite sub-loops which may take one who is experiencing the time in question back to a certain time and then just as suddenly be transported back to the ‘present.’  If I were to take this circular concept of time, and find a ‘still point’ in it, I would have to point right in the middle.  The center of a spinning disk will not move.  It will spin of course, but it will not travel like points on the disk out until the edge, and if the disk is large enough, (especially if it extends into infinity, while maintaining a fixed center) the center of the disk will not spin at all, or if we are working with a finite disk, will spin considerably slower than the edge of the disk.  (This is a bunch of messy rotating disk physics which I didn’t not understand on my first go; and the theoretical extrapolation into infinity is my own reasoning and some might disagree with me, but I’m not trying to split hairs, here).  Either way, the center, or midpoint, will always spin slower, and spin only in a single place.  This concept of midpoint, or ‘midway,’ brings us back to the discussion Dante where the first sentence of the Inferno is, “Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself/ In dark woods, the right road lost.”  This ‘still point’ becomes the starting point of one of the epics that merges the mythology of the Greeks into the Christian tradition—not trying to reconcile the two by any means, but placing the two hand in hand as we encounter many characters and figures from Greek Myth in the Inferno.  And, if I am going to take an even further leap and link this back to the idea of a “Eureka” moment.  Archimedes has been credited with shouting “Eureka!” as he witnessed the displacement of water in his bathtub allowing him to calculate how much gold was used to make the king’s crown (another case where there might be some mythological embellishments).

  Another phrase attributed to Archimedes is, “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth with [a lever].” (The engraving above is a representation of Archimedes ‘moving the earth’).   The combination of still points and midpoints brought me to this realization that as a spinning disk or circle has a still point, so does a lever.  The lever, at the fulcrum, will have a point that moves “neither from not towards” and will “Neither ascent or decline.” Here, successfully bringing us back to Eliot and “Burnt Norton.”  But since we are talking about levers, I cannot help but to recall reading an essay by Frederick Turner wherein he discusses the nature of levers and how “the weightless thoughts of man can effectively control the massive universe itself.”  This occurs because of the nature of levers and something called the “law of levers” whereby “a lesser weight balances a greater across a fulcrum by means of a proportionate difference in the length of the beam ends.”  Turner then proceeds to draw the matter out into abstractions and hypothetical as I did with the rotating disk of time and, by his reasoning, the Earth, or the Globe, or the entire universe can be balanced by nothing more than the thoughts of man.   He also describes “the transforming leverage of metaphorical language.”  Again: levers, fulcrums, still points, Eliot, metaphor, language. It all connects.