A magazine to think about.
Teaching English, like most vocations, comes with certain recurring challenges which define the job. In my line of work, convincing teenagers to read is perhaps the most fraught. Certain practices work to increase buy-in: dedicate time daily, in class, allow students to pick what they read, give a grade for reading if you are okay with making the entire exchange nakedly transactional.
In February 1921, John Quinn defended The Little Review in court against obscenity charges. As part of his defense, Quinn presented three experts in literature to explain the merits of Ulysses to the drowsy judges. But was it the compliment Philip Moeller of the Theatre Guild made it out to be when he, in his courtroom attestation to its merits, used Freud to explain Ulysses? Freud, after all, is useful notably for making sense of the incomprehensible ravings of madmen. And Moeller, like Freud, made himself sound like one, too, in the process of explaining; so much so that one of the white-haired judges requested that he “speak in a language that the court could understand.”
In the week or two before the man killed himself, I’d started training my attention while running on biosemiosis, by which I mean — please bear with me — I’d been trying to open my attention up to the exchange of symbols and signs among the living organisms and systems surrounding me. One of the reasons I’d started doing this was that my mind kept returning to things that I didn’t want it to keep returning to.
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The Better Argument is a community of thinkers committed to exploring the ideas that shape our world through rigorous dialogue, classical wisdom, and intellectual courage.
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