In his book The Goose-Step Upton Sinclair discussed among a great many of the other evils of American higher education in his time the surveillance of professors on and off the job by forces not only inside but outside their institutions. The surveillance, if attentive to anything unseemly in said professors' private lives (like the slightest whiff of a male professor's involvement with a woman not his wife), was mainly political in nature--and misstep followed by retribution.
Said retribution was not always official. As Sinclair notes, the professor who fell afoul of the administration might find pay rises and promotions withheld (with all that means given the lousiness of the pay to begin with). They might find their room assignments constantly changed. And, to quote Sinclair, the professor might find themselves "teach[ing] large classes of freshmen, over and over again the same weary routine," perhaps "for the rest of [their] life."
Those aware of the conditions under which adjunct instructors work will, of course, note that what the full-time faculty got as punishment--the lack of pay rises and promotions, the instability of assignments, the duty of teaching those grinding first-year classes--is the adjunct's lot as a matter of course, in the absence of even the thought that they had transgressed.
Consider that.
Friday, April 19, 2024
Review: The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education, by Upton Sinclair
The title of Upton Sinclair's 1923 book The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education promises a study of American education, but, as the author himself owns at the end of his book, limits itself to the still considerable subject of American higher education--the country's colleges and universities, which had him producing a second later volume dealing with the rest (The Goslings).
In approaching the subject of American higher education Sinclair's book is very strikingly a work of its time--the immediate aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution and the Red Scare, interwoven with the story of the Ludlow Massacre, and the Boston Police Strike, and the Abrams case, and the Great Steel Strike of 1919; of the then-ongoing fights over unionization, and the ownership and regulation of public utilities; of the personal exercise of power by people named Morgan, and Rockefeller, and Gould.
However, it is also the case that, to those evolved enough to not rush to dismiss what is merely old as outdated, and who can look beyond the superficialities of today's culture wars on which so much is lavished, much of what Sinclair discusses will seem exceedingly contemporary--the control of universities by businessmen, and the influence of alumni and politicians, generally to reactionary ends (and often venal ends, too, as they use their control of the institutions to fleece them for whatever they can get); the extent to which such institutions are less places of learning than "country clubs" for the children of the rich, vocational schools for persons encouraged to think of nothing but the salary their degree might get them, and factories for producing intellectual stultification and social and ideological indoctrination and conformity for the sake of perpetuating the worst that exists in society; the degradation and corruption of college presidents by the chase after donors' dollars; the unhealthful effects of the college fraternity and college athletics on college life; the extreme hypocrisy of administrators about free speech and academic freedom as they crush those things out of existence; the low pay and insecurity of the instructors that enables their bosses to treat them as if they gave up their rights as citizens in taking their jobs, and terrified to speak up about the way they are treated; the driving out of teachers and researchers of talent and integrity through innumerable forms of insult and injury as the careerist mediocrity rises into the administration, and even beyond; the resort to the shabbiest means to see that the unworthy children of wealthy alumni are admitted and passed, as equally shabby means, overt and covert, are employed to limit the numbers of deserving students from "successful minorities"; the foolishness on which colleges spend so much of their money (as with their wasteful "Collegiate Gothic" architecture); and much, much, much else.
Moreover, as is often the case with older books like this one, Sinclair treats his subject with an intellectual and moral clarity and a rhetorical force all too rare in our time--and rarely to be seen combined with such rigor of research as Sinclair displays as he successively surveys the records of one major university after another (the Columbia Sinclair himself experienced as a younger man, Harvard, Princeton, etc., etc.) in his short, punchy chapters, before he goes on to tackle, again in short and punchy chapters, the troubles that afflict the lot (and devoting a few chapters more to those he thinks are fighting the good fight against all the corruption he sees about him). All too rare, too, is his freedom from the prevailing pieties--like the insane elitism that stands foursquare for the existence of a hierarchy among educational institutions, and the intellectual superiority of those who inhabit the institutions at the top of the hierarchy to the rest, which we have seen so vehemently (and shamelessly) defended amid the scandals of recent years. It was particularly refreshing to see a writer who is by no means unintellectual, anti-intellectual or unlearned--who is, indeed, a great lover, critic and writer of literature and history--rather than bowing and scraping before the mindless Classicism, antiquarianism, formalism and "dust heap-raking" that so many take as the absolute awe-inspiring height of humanistic or social science scholarship challenge its primacy when so much matter crying out for attention. (Remarking the legacy of Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, indeed, Sinclair laments that this "student of Princeton College . . . was studying . . . Greek, and imbecile theology, when he should have been studying economics, geography, and social engineering!")
The result is that while this book is an antidote to simple-minded nostalgia about any superiority of the past to the present with respect to what formal education provided, it is probably also the case that, even if it is about the 1920s and not the 2020s, reading it one is likely to learn more about the troubles of colleges today than they could from a library's worth of more contemporary books (just as they can learn more about contemporary publishing from Balzac's Lost Illusions than anything they are likely to see written about it today)--and I have every expectation that I will have many an occasion to return to this book later when, inevitably, addressing its concerns as the comparatively inane mainstream debates about education rage all around us in that manner Shakespeare summed up all too well:
a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
In approaching the subject of American higher education Sinclair's book is very strikingly a work of its time--the immediate aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution and the Red Scare, interwoven with the story of the Ludlow Massacre, and the Boston Police Strike, and the Abrams case, and the Great Steel Strike of 1919; of the then-ongoing fights over unionization, and the ownership and regulation of public utilities; of the personal exercise of power by people named Morgan, and Rockefeller, and Gould.
However, it is also the case that, to those evolved enough to not rush to dismiss what is merely old as outdated, and who can look beyond the superficialities of today's culture wars on which so much is lavished, much of what Sinclair discusses will seem exceedingly contemporary--the control of universities by businessmen, and the influence of alumni and politicians, generally to reactionary ends (and often venal ends, too, as they use their control of the institutions to fleece them for whatever they can get); the extent to which such institutions are less places of learning than "country clubs" for the children of the rich, vocational schools for persons encouraged to think of nothing but the salary their degree might get them, and factories for producing intellectual stultification and social and ideological indoctrination and conformity for the sake of perpetuating the worst that exists in society; the degradation and corruption of college presidents by the chase after donors' dollars; the unhealthful effects of the college fraternity and college athletics on college life; the extreme hypocrisy of administrators about free speech and academic freedom as they crush those things out of existence; the low pay and insecurity of the instructors that enables their bosses to treat them as if they gave up their rights as citizens in taking their jobs, and terrified to speak up about the way they are treated; the driving out of teachers and researchers of talent and integrity through innumerable forms of insult and injury as the careerist mediocrity rises into the administration, and even beyond; the resort to the shabbiest means to see that the unworthy children of wealthy alumni are admitted and passed, as equally shabby means, overt and covert, are employed to limit the numbers of deserving students from "successful minorities"; the foolishness on which colleges spend so much of their money (as with their wasteful "Collegiate Gothic" architecture); and much, much, much else.
Moreover, as is often the case with older books like this one, Sinclair treats his subject with an intellectual and moral clarity and a rhetorical force all too rare in our time--and rarely to be seen combined with such rigor of research as Sinclair displays as he successively surveys the records of one major university after another (the Columbia Sinclair himself experienced as a younger man, Harvard, Princeton, etc., etc.) in his short, punchy chapters, before he goes on to tackle, again in short and punchy chapters, the troubles that afflict the lot (and devoting a few chapters more to those he thinks are fighting the good fight against all the corruption he sees about him). All too rare, too, is his freedom from the prevailing pieties--like the insane elitism that stands foursquare for the existence of a hierarchy among educational institutions, and the intellectual superiority of those who inhabit the institutions at the top of the hierarchy to the rest, which we have seen so vehemently (and shamelessly) defended amid the scandals of recent years. It was particularly refreshing to see a writer who is by no means unintellectual, anti-intellectual or unlearned--who is, indeed, a great lover, critic and writer of literature and history--rather than bowing and scraping before the mindless Classicism, antiquarianism, formalism and "dust heap-raking" that so many take as the absolute awe-inspiring height of humanistic or social science scholarship challenge its primacy when so much matter crying out for attention. (Remarking the legacy of Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy, indeed, Sinclair laments that this "student of Princeton College . . . was studying . . . Greek, and imbecile theology, when he should have been studying economics, geography, and social engineering!")
The result is that while this book is an antidote to simple-minded nostalgia about any superiority of the past to the present with respect to what formal education provided, it is probably also the case that, even if it is about the 1920s and not the 2020s, reading it one is likely to learn more about the troubles of colleges today than they could from a library's worth of more contemporary books (just as they can learn more about contemporary publishing from Balzac's Lost Illusions than anything they are likely to see written about it today)--and I have every expectation that I will have many an occasion to return to this book later when, inevitably, addressing its concerns as the comparatively inane mainstream debates about education rage all around us in that manner Shakespeare summed up all too well:
a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
The Poverty of Professors
One of the more striking chapters in Upton Sinclair's The Goose-Step is the seventy-seventh, "Damn the Faculty," where he declares that "[t]here are few more pitiful proletarians in America than the underpaid, overworked, and contemptuously ignored rank and file college teacher," and recounts their reports of their poverty. (Many of them, he makes clear, are materially worse off than when they were students--while it seems worth remarking that it is a sad situation indeed when professors cannot afford to buy books to read.)
As Sinclair makes clear, such things factor into the incentives to cowardice on the professors' part before the tyranny of their administrators, and in their corruption, as they fear losing what chance they may have to ascend the academic ladder to those posts in which, income-wise at least, life would be less unbearable.
Still, Sinclair makes clear that even at the absolute height of the field there is still extreme indignity, relating an anecdote in which the holders of a banquet invited both Albert Einstein, at a point in which he was already acclaimed by many the "greatest thinker of our time," and the Prince of Monaco. The Prince refused to be received at a function along with Einstein (making an excuse of his being "German"), and the compromise that promptly followed was that during the banquet "Einstein was put away in an obscure place at the foot of the table, and not asked to speak."
Such was the true nature of this "meritocratic" society then. So does it remain today.
As Sinclair makes clear, such things factor into the incentives to cowardice on the professors' part before the tyranny of their administrators, and in their corruption, as they fear losing what chance they may have to ascend the academic ladder to those posts in which, income-wise at least, life would be less unbearable.
Still, Sinclair makes clear that even at the absolute height of the field there is still extreme indignity, relating an anecdote in which the holders of a banquet invited both Albert Einstein, at a point in which he was already acclaimed by many the "greatest thinker of our time," and the Prince of Monaco. The Prince refused to be received at a function along with Einstein (making an excuse of his being "German"), and the compromise that promptly followed was that during the banquet "Einstein was put away in an obscure place at the foot of the table, and not asked to speak."
Such was the true nature of this "meritocratic" society then. So does it remain today.
Of Old Books and New
Comparing the books I read that were new (new in the sense of having been published this century, or not much before it) with the books published before that, I am time and again struck by the differences. Among newer work there is a sharper contrast between what might be published for a scholarly audience, and what might be of interest to a general audience, with what the latter seems likely to get often a magazine article (and rather a banal one at that) blown up to book length. Meanwhile the scholarly stuff, if striking for its wealth of data and apparent meticulousness in handling it, compares poorly with older work in point of breadth and fullness of vision, moral and intellectual clarity and courage, and plain old readability, to say nothing of literary graces and literary craft and literary force. (For example, just what writer of today would stand comparison with a C. Wright Mills or a John Kenneth Galbraith or a Richard Hofstadter? Let alone figures from still earlier such as an Upton Sinclair or a Thorstein Veblen?)
Considering all this I can see the tendencies already evident then in academic work playing their part, not least that toward extreme specialization, which some were already complaining had become excessive a century ago and more, but which has gone further still, and made writers timid as they handle smaller and smaller subjects in a manner not so much rigorous as overtimid, cumbersomely demonstrating that they "read everything" on their subject (at least, everything so far as the Establishment in their field is concerned), never making a claim they cannot back with a battery of full citations, and shying away from bold conclusions as they do their damnedest to make their writing read like a lab report.* However, if hyper-specialization played its part in making thinkers timid, so did that cheap and stupid epistemological nihilism that puts any seeker after knowledge on the defensive. All about putting limits on what can be discussed, it has done its job here only too well--and we are the poorer for it, so poor that I often find myself learning more about the problems of today from books a century old than anything being published now.
* Certainly H.G. Wells discusses that drive in his Outline of History.
Considering all this I can see the tendencies already evident then in academic work playing their part, not least that toward extreme specialization, which some were already complaining had become excessive a century ago and more, but which has gone further still, and made writers timid as they handle smaller and smaller subjects in a manner not so much rigorous as overtimid, cumbersomely demonstrating that they "read everything" on their subject (at least, everything so far as the Establishment in their field is concerned), never making a claim they cannot back with a battery of full citations, and shying away from bold conclusions as they do their damnedest to make their writing read like a lab report.* However, if hyper-specialization played its part in making thinkers timid, so did that cheap and stupid epistemological nihilism that puts any seeker after knowledge on the defensive. All about putting limits on what can be discussed, it has done its job here only too well--and we are the poorer for it, so poor that I often find myself learning more about the problems of today from books a century old than anything being published now.
* Certainly H.G. Wells discusses that drive in his Outline of History.
Does a Ph.d in Literature Make You a Better Novelist?
It seems fair to say that a Ph.d in Literature does not help one much in getting a novel published.
However, is it likely to make one a better novelist--if only by artistic standards?
That question seems to me trickier.
I can certainly say that graduate work in Literature exposed me to a great deal of literature I might otherwise never have read, and a great many ways of looking at literature to which I might never otherwise have been exposed. It also required me to think a great deal about those works and those ideas.
In the process I can say that it trained me as a reader in some ways--not least, to find interest even in works that were not "entertaining" in the conventional sense, and to read systematically.
None of that is negative, per se. Yet I also think that, especially given the worship of Modernism and postmodernism, and my increasingly dim view of that, it was less helpful than it might have been.
There is, too, the fact that textbooks and professors generally tend to be better at retailing the conventional wisdom of the field than furnishing a deep understanding of the kind that can only come with a really detailed knowledge and critical perspective--the more in as so many devote their energies to more specialized work. Indeed, I would say that the student who has an instructor who can offer an intelligent answer to a question like "What is literature?" is exceptionally fortunate in their education. And for my part getting a handle on the major movements, the various standards, that have defined modern Western literature (the stuff at the heart of my book about it), was a lengthy process that only seriously got underway well after the completion of my formal training.
Still, I suspect that that process would never have begun without that prior preparation, for all its failings--a reminder of just how preliminary and preparatory a thing college course work tends to be.
However, is it likely to make one a better novelist--if only by artistic standards?
That question seems to me trickier.
I can certainly say that graduate work in Literature exposed me to a great deal of literature I might otherwise never have read, and a great many ways of looking at literature to which I might never otherwise have been exposed. It also required me to think a great deal about those works and those ideas.
In the process I can say that it trained me as a reader in some ways--not least, to find interest even in works that were not "entertaining" in the conventional sense, and to read systematically.
None of that is negative, per se. Yet I also think that, especially given the worship of Modernism and postmodernism, and my increasingly dim view of that, it was less helpful than it might have been.
Still, I suspect that that process would never have begun without that prior preparation, for all its failings--a reminder of just how preliminary and preparatory a thing college course work tends to be.
What Do You Get Out of a Ph.d?
People talk a great deal about college degrees--and say very little of value about them.
Certainly one misconception evident in thinking about the whole range of fields of study is that having a doctorate entails mastery of an entire subject area.
In reality it is a preliminary--a preparation to begin the work that is likely to be the main source of learning the actual practice of their profession.
In his Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty, recounting his educational experience, remarked that at the end of his formal training, in which he completed a thesis "consist[ing] of several abstract mathematical theorems," he still "knew nothing about the world's economic problems."
Such self-awareness is likely to lead to a search after more substantial knowledge--as it did in his case, leading up to that particular book. Unfortunately such self-awareness and such searches are all too rare, especially in an intellectual and political culture so prone to seize on any badge of authority to elevate "experts" into a priesthood, which then sets about strangling any real discussion.
Certainly one misconception evident in thinking about the whole range of fields of study is that having a doctorate entails mastery of an entire subject area.
In reality it is a preliminary--a preparation to begin the work that is likely to be the main source of learning the actual practice of their profession.
In his Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty, recounting his educational experience, remarked that at the end of his formal training, in which he completed a thesis "consist[ing] of several abstract mathematical theorems," he still "knew nothing about the world's economic problems."
Such self-awareness is likely to lead to a search after more substantial knowledge--as it did in his case, leading up to that particular book. Unfortunately such self-awareness and such searches are all too rare, especially in an intellectual and political culture so prone to seize on any badge of authority to elevate "experts" into a priesthood, which then sets about strangling any real discussion.
Does a Ph.d in Literature Help You Get a Novel Published?
Before going any further in discussing the question that is the title of this post I would like to be clear that I am concerned here with publishing, not writing--a very different endeavor that often has nothing whatsoever to do with the ability of an author to write (as the hyperabundance of celebrity-associated sludge on the bestseller lists indicates).
My experience is that while the "You Can Be a Bestselling Author Too!" industry tells those whose money it wants that they can acquire credentials that will help their blind submissions to the slush pile get something other than more form rejection letters this is merely another piece of aspirationalist dishonesty on their part--making their target audience think they have more control over their careers than they really do, and so more willing to spend on their proffered service. Certainly I found that mentioning such credentials made no difference whatsoever in the way agents and editors replied to me. There seem to me to be two reasons for that.
1. A Ph.d in Literature is no proof of being able to write a novel, let alone the kind of novel that a commercial publisher is likely to be looking for. After all, it is a training for teaching literature, and producing literary scholarship--very different activities. Of course, acquiring that training one reads a great deal of literature, is exposed to a great deal of literature, does a lot of thinking and writing about literature, and it may seem that this could be helpful in preparing a writer to produce a work of fiction, enough so to count for something in their favor. Still, the claim is more ambiguous, and given the ever-narrower interests of commercial publishing, it may be that they will even see such a preparation as irrelevant or even a disadvantage someone who has given much of their life to, for example, Romantic poetry or nineteenth century realist prose, appearing quite remote from the kind of work that today's publishers would want to put on the bookshelf.
2. Far more important than the ways in which an advanced degree in Literature may be of little relevance, or even a disadvantage, from the standpoint of the ability to produce a salable work of fiction is the fact that publishers are infinitely less interested in whether someone can write a book than whether their name can sell a book. This is, of course, not a thing admitted much these days, but Balzac spelled out very clearly in Lost Illusions (the kind of work by the kind of author today's publishers are unlikely ever to read, and knowledge of which they would probably regard as being to an author's discredit), and the reality has not changed one iota since. Indeed, there is ample reason to think that any number of factors have only encouraged the latterday Dauriats in their obscene crassness, as what was only emergent in Balzac's day developed in full.
1. A Ph.d in Literature is no proof of being able to write a novel, let alone the kind of novel that a commercial publisher is likely to be looking for. After all, it is a training for teaching literature, and producing literary scholarship--very different activities. Of course, acquiring that training one reads a great deal of literature, is exposed to a great deal of literature, does a lot of thinking and writing about literature, and it may seem that this could be helpful in preparing a writer to produce a work of fiction, enough so to count for something in their favor. Still, the claim is more ambiguous, and given the ever-narrower interests of commercial publishing, it may be that they will even see such a preparation as irrelevant or even a disadvantage someone who has given much of their life to, for example, Romantic poetry or nineteenth century realist prose, appearing quite remote from the kind of work that today's publishers would want to put on the bookshelf.
2. Far more important than the ways in which an advanced degree in Literature may be of little relevance, or even a disadvantage, from the standpoint of the ability to produce a salable work of fiction is the fact that publishers are infinitely less interested in whether someone can write a book than whether their name can sell a book. This is, of course, not a thing admitted much these days, but Balzac spelled out very clearly in Lost Illusions (the kind of work by the kind of author today's publishers are unlikely ever to read, and knowledge of which they would probably regard as being to an author's discredit), and the reality has not changed one iota since. Indeed, there is ample reason to think that any number of factors have only encouraged the latterday Dauriats in their obscene crassness, as what was only emergent in Balzac's day developed in full.
Spy and Military Techno-Thriller Fiction
This page lists my Social Science Research Network (SSRN) working papers addressing the subject of spy and military techno-thriller fiction.
"The Decline of the Spy Story and the Transformation of the Thriller in the 1990s: The Data From the Bestseller List." (2018)
"American and British Attitudes Toward Spy Fiction: A Note." (2023)
"Spies, Elites and Imperial Decline: Fleming, Haggard, and le Carré." (2023)
"The Rise and Fall of the Military Techno-Thriller." (2018)
"The Military Techno-Thriller: A History." (2023)
"Military Techno-Thriller Fiction and the Bestseller List, 1985-2000." (2018)
"The American Military Techno-Thriller and the Debate Over Women in Combat of the 1990s." (2024)
"Reliving the 1940s in the 1990s: Germany and Japan in the Military Techno-Thriller." (2024)
"The Weirdness of James Bond's World: How Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class Helps Us Understand Ian Fleming's 007." (2021)
"'What Makes an Action Film an Action Film?': How the James Bond Movies Defined the Genre." (2021)
"The Decline of the Spy Story and the Transformation of the Thriller in the 1990s: The Data From the Bestseller List." (2018)
"American and British Attitudes Toward Spy Fiction: A Note." (2023)
"Spies, Elites and Imperial Decline: Fleming, Haggard, and le Carré." (2023)
"The Rise and Fall of the Military Techno-Thriller." (2018)
"The Military Techno-Thriller: A History." (2023)
"Military Techno-Thriller Fiction and the Bestseller List, 1985-2000." (2018)
"The American Military Techno-Thriller and the Debate Over Women in Combat of the 1990s." (2024)
"Reliving the 1940s in the 1990s: Germany and Japan in the Military Techno-Thriller." (2024)
"The Weirdness of James Bond's World: How Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class Helps Us Understand Ian Fleming's 007." (2021)
"'What Makes an Action Film an Action Film?': How the James Bond Movies Defined the Genre." (2021)
Social Withdrawal
This page lists my Social Science Research Network (SSRN) working papers addressing the subject of social withdrawal.
"Japan's Lost Generation, the World's Lost Generation and an Epoch of Social Withdrawal: A Note." (2022)
"Beyond Japan: A Note on the Hikikomori Phenomenon in America." (2022)
"Hikikomori Nation: A Note on the Possible Dimensions of the Phenomenon in America." (2022)
"Are Attitudes Toward Work Changing? A Note." (2021)
"Low Unemployment, or Just Undercounted Unemployment? A Note on America's "Full Employment" in 2019." (2019)
"Is a Flight into Virtuality Already Underway? A Consideration of Changing Lifeways in the Early Twenty-First Century." (2021)
"Japan's Lost Generation, the World's Lost Generation and an Epoch of Social Withdrawal: A Note." (2022)
"Beyond Japan: A Note on the Hikikomori Phenomenon in America." (2022)
"Hikikomori Nation: A Note on the Possible Dimensions of the Phenomenon in America." (2022)
"Are Attitudes Toward Work Changing? A Note." (2021)
"Low Unemployment, or Just Undercounted Unemployment? A Note on America's "Full Employment" in 2019." (2019)
"Is a Flight into Virtuality Already Underway? A Consideration of Changing Lifeways in the Early Twenty-First Century." (2021)
Science Fiction
This page lists my Social Science Research Network (SSRN) working papers addressing various aspects of science fiction.
"Ecological Catastrophe and the Neoliberal Imagination." (2020)
"Of Singularitarianism and Flying Cars: Our Changing Images of the Future, and Our Changing Economic Models." (2020)
"'Why Superheroes?' Explaining a Pop Cultural Phenomenon." (2022)
"'Why Zombies?' A Note on Zombie Imagery in Contemporary Culture— and Contemporary Economic and Socioeconomic Commentary." (2022)
"Why Does Discussion of Pop Culture Make Up So Large a Part of Political Discourse in Twenty-First Century America?" (2022)
"Ecological Catastrophe and the Neoliberal Imagination." (2020)
"Of Singularitarianism and Flying Cars: Our Changing Images of the Future, and Our Changing Economic Models." (2020)
"'Why Superheroes?' Explaining a Pop Cultural Phenomenon." (2022)
"'Why Zombies?' A Note on Zombie Imagery in Contemporary Culture— and Contemporary Economic and Socioeconomic Commentary." (2022)
"Why Does Discussion of Pop Culture Make Up So Large a Part of Political Discourse in Twenty-First Century America?" (2022)
Politics and Popular Culture
This page lists my Social Science Research Network (SSRN) working papers addressing the subject of politics and popular culture.
"Ecological Catastrophe and the Neoliberal Imagination." (2020)
"Of Singularitarianism and Flying Cars: Our Changing Images of the Future, and Our Changing Economic Models." (2020)
"Liberal Hollywood? A Note on the Conventional Wisdom." (2022)
"Why Does Discussion of Pop Culture Make Up So Large a Part of Political Discourse in Twenty-First Century America?" (2022)
"Cyber-Utopianism and Reality: A Note on the Politics of the Internet." (2024)
"To What Extent Was the Left Ever Actually 'Cyber-Utopian?': A Note." (2024)
"The Ascent of the Internet and the Ascent of the Culture War in American Political Life: A Note." (2024)
"Thomas Frank's 'Market Populism': Is it Still Relevant?" (2022)
"Ecological Catastrophe and the Neoliberal Imagination." (2020)
"Of Singularitarianism and Flying Cars: Our Changing Images of the Future, and Our Changing Economic Models." (2020)
"Liberal Hollywood? A Note on the Conventional Wisdom." (2022)
"Why Does Discussion of Pop Culture Make Up So Large a Part of Political Discourse in Twenty-First Century America?" (2022)
"Cyber-Utopianism and Reality: A Note on the Politics of the Internet." (2024)
"To What Extent Was the Left Ever Actually 'Cyber-Utopian?': A Note." (2024)
"The Ascent of the Internet and the Ascent of the Culture War in American Political Life: A Note." (2024)
"Thomas Frank's 'Market Populism': Is it Still Relevant?" (2022)
The 1990s
This page lists my Social Science Research Network (SSRN) working papers addressing the subject of the 1990s and its popular culture.
"The Mood of America in the 1990s: A Note on the American Political Imagination After the Cold War." (2024)
"The 'Information Age' Narrative and the Deflection of the Declinist Critique: A Note on the Tech Boom of the 1990s and Its Impact on American Politics." (2023)
"Thomas Frank's 'Market Populism': Is it Still Relevant?" (2022)
"What Made the '90s so 'Extreme?' A Note on the 'Extreme' Aesthetic of the Decade." (2024)
"Revisiting the 'Extreme' Culture of the 1990s: A Fuller Consideration." (2023)
"The Decline of the Spy Story and the Transformation of the Thriller in the 1990s: The Data From the Bestseller List." (2018)
"The American Military Techno-Thriller and the Debate Over Women in Combat of the 1990s." (2024)
"Reliving the 1940s in the 1990s: Germany and Japan in the Military Techno-Thriller." (2024)
"The Mood of America in the 1990s: A Note on the American Political Imagination After the Cold War." (2024)
"The 'Information Age' Narrative and the Deflection of the Declinist Critique: A Note on the Tech Boom of the 1990s and Its Impact on American Politics." (2023)
"Thomas Frank's 'Market Populism': Is it Still Relevant?" (2022)
"What Made the '90s so 'Extreme?' A Note on the 'Extreme' Aesthetic of the Decade." (2024)
"Revisiting the 'Extreme' Culture of the 1990s: A Fuller Consideration." (2023)
"The Decline of the Spy Story and the Transformation of the Thriller in the 1990s: The Data From the Bestseller List." (2018)
"The American Military Techno-Thriller and the Debate Over Women in Combat of the 1990s." (2024)
"Reliving the 1940s in the 1990s: Germany and Japan in the Military Techno-Thriller." (2024)
My SSRN (Social Science Research Network)-Published Papers
I have been publishing through the Social Science Research Network since 2018--or about six years. My papers vary greatly in subject and length, but the total number of them now comes to 170 at last count.
Given the number it seems to me appropriate to do something about organizing them for the reader--and so I have decided to here organize those relevant to this blog's themes by subject, allotting a page of this blog to each of those subjects that I have found myself writing about time and again. Where its subject matter makes this appropriate, I have listed some papers on more than one page, or even under more than one heading.
The links to those subject pages are listed below in alphabetical order.
The 1990s.
Politics and Popular Culture.
Science Fiction.
Social Withdrawal.
Spy and Military Techno-Thriller Fiction.
Given the number it seems to me appropriate to do something about organizing them for the reader--and so I have decided to here organize those relevant to this blog's themes by subject, allotting a page of this blog to each of those subjects that I have found myself writing about time and again. Where its subject matter makes this appropriate, I have listed some papers on more than one page, or even under more than one heading.
The links to those subject pages are listed below in alphabetical order.
The 1990s.
Politics and Popular Culture.
Science Fiction.
Social Withdrawal.
Spy and Military Techno-Thriller Fiction.
Social Withdrawal and the Cost of Being with Others
In writing about social withdrawal I have tended to write mainly about the economic and socioeconomic factors that seem to me to encourage this--the way the gap between "middle class" aspirations and what people are actually achieving, for example, has grown, the high monetary costs of participating in social life, and how all these create inducements for people to just "drop out" of the job market, the dating market, every market, and stay home, and immerse themselves in the world of Azeroth (or whatever has replaced it these days).
Still, it does seem to me that the quality of interpersonal relations does enter into this. I recall, for example, David Foster Wallace writing that the lonely are often people not willing to bear the costs of being with others--emotional as well as financial. It stands to reason that those who give more and get less satisfaction out of the experience of being with others--who, around others, find themselves repressing themselves all the time, for example; who find themselves enduring rather than enjoying the company of other people--will simply have less to do with those others. The resulting isolation may not be what they really want out of life--but as is much more often the case than those pampered idiots who speak so pompously about "choice" admit, life for most people, most of the time, is about what seems "least-worst" within a fairly unappealing range of options rather than the truly desirable.
It also seems to me the case that there is an interaction between the economic and the emotional here. Those who have not managed to live up to social expectations and "fit in" for whatever reason have fewer contacts and less status. Their choice of personal relations is smaller, and whatever their range of choice the people they deal with are likely to treat them less well--leaving them with that much more incentive to keep to themselves.
Still, it does seem to me that the quality of interpersonal relations does enter into this. I recall, for example, David Foster Wallace writing that the lonely are often people not willing to bear the costs of being with others--emotional as well as financial. It stands to reason that those who give more and get less satisfaction out of the experience of being with others--who, around others, find themselves repressing themselves all the time, for example; who find themselves enduring rather than enjoying the company of other people--will simply have less to do with those others. The resulting isolation may not be what they really want out of life--but as is much more often the case than those pampered idiots who speak so pompously about "choice" admit, life for most people, most of the time, is about what seems "least-worst" within a fairly unappealing range of options rather than the truly desirable.
It also seems to me the case that there is an interaction between the economic and the emotional here. Those who have not managed to live up to social expectations and "fit in" for whatever reason have fewer contacts and less status. Their choice of personal relations is smaller, and whatever their range of choice the people they deal with are likely to treat them less well--leaving them with that much more incentive to keep to themselves.
The Automation of Rejection
In that truest portrait yet of the struggles of the aspiring writer, Jack London's Martin Eden, the eponymous protagonist, in the course of receiving one form rejection letter after another, begins to wonder if he is dealing not with human-staffed organizations, but with a machine that returns form rejections for submissions in exactly the same manner that a vending machine would give a stick of gum in return for a coin.
If there is any difference between that experience and the writer's experience of today it is that, especially these last few years, the process probably has become genuinely more automated--and continues to become more so all the time. For many years it has been common for writers to submit work to publishers through online forms.
Given what we know about how employers automate the sifting of job-hunters' résumés to weed out much before there is call for any human to look at anything, and indeed job interviews now seem to be handled by artificial intelligence it is very, very easy to picture publishers turning over the low-priority work of dealing with the slush pile that turns the interns who deal with it into nasty little trolls pouring forth their abuse on aspiring writers in publications whose editors ought to know better (Salon, Guardian) over to algorithms and chatbots--which then dutifully arrange the dispatch of yet another copy of that e-mail saying "Please excuse the impersonal nature of this reply . . ."
If there is any difference between that experience and the writer's experience of today it is that, especially these last few years, the process probably has become genuinely more automated--and continues to become more so all the time. For many years it has been common for writers to submit work to publishers through online forms.
Given what we know about how employers automate the sifting of job-hunters' résumés to weed out much before there is call for any human to look at anything, and indeed job interviews now seem to be handled by artificial intelligence it is very, very easy to picture publishers turning over the low-priority work of dealing with the slush pile that turns the interns who deal with it into nasty little trolls pouring forth their abuse on aspiring writers in publications whose editors ought to know better (Salon, Guardian) over to algorithms and chatbots--which then dutifully arrange the dispatch of yet another copy of that e-mail saying "Please excuse the impersonal nature of this reply . . ."
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