In response to yesterday's post about whether and how blogging could revitalize and/or reshape literary studies, Amardeep Singh offers some observations and some possible names.

The observations:

I might venture a more detailed opinion on this later in the week, but for now I simply want to register how interesting the debate has been. Several of the people who have weighed in on the issue have pointed out that a) most of the most vibrant literature-oriented blogs out there are written by people who are not academics, and b) most of the people who are passionately involved in this discussion are either non-academics or not literary scholars! Sociologically, it's a little puzzling. Why are so many non English-lit people preoccupied with the fate of literary studies? I've encountered similar sentiments from many of my non-academic friends: 'why are you guys so debilitated by jargon?' Perhaps it's because literary studies has traditionally been a kind of core to humanist study. So maybe all the worry about the decline of the field is a form of backhanded legitimation.

'Bookchat'
(since the term seems to have taken on a life of its own. Downside: sounds a little like 'Bookslut')

'13 Ways'
(A reference to Wallace Stevens; suggests an openness to multiple perspectives)

'Fastidious Ant'
(from Marianne Moore's "Critics and Connoisseurs": "Happening to stand / by an ant-hill, I have / seen a fastidious ant carrying a stick north, south, / east, west, till it turned on / itself, struck out from the flower bed into the lawn, / and returned to the point." )

"All That Is Solid"
(...melts into air. Can mark the resistance to jargon [air], or it can be self-deprecating acceptance of airiness)

"Post:MLA"
(suggests that the bloggers are 'over' MLA, its conventions, and its journal, in the fashion of postmodernism, etc.; also alludes to the structure of a blog, where one 'posts')

"Surprised by Sincerity"
(ok, I just like the title... probably not a realistic suggestion)

My own feelings tend toward the populist.

I have no interest whatsoever in a lit blog that devotes itself to chronicling for the masses the professional culture of working academic humanists. The purpose of such a blog would, in my mind, not be to justify the job of literature professor by allowing the public to experience--vicariously, voyeuristically--the trials and tribulations of the academic life. It's true that what literature professors actually do, and whether they do anything at all, is frequently questioned by a general public that loves to fix on the misleading "six hours per week" non-fact. But I would hate to see a blog that is supposed to be devoted to literary discussion hijacked by an agenda of this sort.

What I do have an interest in: People coming together from all walks of life because they share an abiding and serious interest in studying literature, and creating a blog together to do it. Ideally the writers would come from a variety of backgrounds, and this would in turn attract a varied community of readers and commenters. Some would be academics, some would be students, some would be academics and students from non-literary fields. Some would be journalists and critics, some would be teachers, some would be poets and novelists and playwrights. Some would be voracious teenagers who have just discovered the immense joys of reading grown-up books with a newly adult mind. Some would be older people who are rediscovering literature now that retirement gives them the time to do so. Some would be hobbyists and audodidacts, some would be working professionals. And so on. What they would talk about: Not the politics of academic life, not who got what grant and when the next big conference is, but literature, aesthetics, and the philosophical, historical, and political issues that arise from them.

If academic literary study can't survive such an endeavor--if it loses its credibility in the moment of seeking to become genuinely accessible and broadly relevant--then so be it. Any discipline whose authority is predicated on an elitism that cannot and will not explain itself deserves to wither and die. My own personal belief is not that engaging with the public will kill the academic humanities, but that continued failure to do so will.

The question of who would have what kinds of authority on such a blog is a pressing one. There are people without literature degrees who can wipe the floor intellectually with those who do. There are professors of literature who do not deserve the title, and there are those who abuse their authority even when they do deserve it. There are students and adjuncts and junior faculty members for whom disagreeing with or displeasing someone senior to them costs them their grade or even their career. It shouldn't be so, but it is. Again, though, I think this is an argument for, and not against, the sort of cross-disciplinary, extra-academic "book chat" John Holbo envisions.

One thing that has been forgotten by too many people in too many English departments: One's loyalty should always be first and foremost to the material, not to ideological or methodological factions or to the particular ficklenesses of those with the power to do professional harm to others. And one thing a blog of the sort envisioned here could conceivably do: Create a space where what motivates participants is not professional advancement or self-protection, but the sincere and free pursuit of ideas. People would not participate because they are professor so and so, and people would not be granted authority just because they have a certain degree or a certain job. Academic participants would be conversing with people from around the world. They would not have power over the vast majority of them. They would have to earn the respect of the blog's community from scratch--that is just how the blogosphere works. This could be profoundly, positively transformative for those academics who take part. And it could be enormously beneficial to both the credibility of academic literary study and to a public eager to think harder and better about what they read.

This is the optimist's view, anyhow.

So, what's the first book up for discussion? Every journey....

Be an optimist. The only way anything will ever change for the better is if enough of us just stubbornly refuse to become so cynical. And refuse to accept that the way things are is the best and only way they could possibly be and anyone trying something different is either an "enemy of the state" or a fool.

I have to ask whether any of this blogging discourse ever actually happens -- after all, look at this post: it's an entry dedicated to talking about books but doesn't actually talk about a particular book or author (admittedly not its intention, but you get the point).

Political blogs may be worse; they purport to add to our current discourse on politics, but most just reiterate what some newspaper or other blog has already stated.

In both cases it seems that bloggers promise analysis, but only seem to be able to talk about others' analysis.

MB&B...I think your assertion that political blogs "only seem only to talk about others analysis" is very wide of the mark. Maybe we're reading different blogs...I often find insights from Steven den Beste, Sheila O'Malley, Donald Sensing, and Roger Simon (to mention just a few) which are nowhere to be found in the mainstream media. (These are "political" blogs in the sense that the writers are deeply concerned with political issues; they are not "political" blogs in the inside-baseball (who's winning/who's losing) sense.

It's the mainstream media (the vast majority of it, anyhow) that is lacking in analytical depth. If people are talking about Topic "A," that's all they want to cover, even if Topic "B" is coming over the horizon at a ferocious pace.

Moving from the comments page to the main page my various ideas for a title suddenly seem a little paltry. Let's just call them brainstorming; maybe someone will come up with something a little less ... obvious?

'Crooked Timber', for instance, is a great title, though I have no idea what it refers to. I have a hunch it is something to do with the durability of bundles of disorderly sticks vs. sticks on their own (striated vs. smooth).

Anyway, I think the idea of having people from genuinely different walks of life is right. I don't know anything about the ranks or affiliations of the people over at CT, and it wouldn't have occurred to me to look. They do their job as bloggers well: they bring out an interesting issue, make an argument, and then slog it out assiduously with everyone who stops in.

But I'm new to this space -- I have no idea how one goes about finding people. That's a question I'll leave to others...

If there is any guiding philosophy to the proposed lit-crit group blog, it might be, as Erin suggests, "loyalty to the material." While it is only appropriate to have the primary focus of the proposed blog be literature, how important is it to have books be the exclusive focus of postings? It might be acceptable to 'let bloggers be bloggers,' that is, to encourage people to post on topical issues that might not be specifically literary.

I don't have a lot to add to this discussion, except to delurk and say I'd enjoy reading a blog like this.

Crooked Timber gets its name from Kant--"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made"--with a bow to the philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who published a book entitled Crooked Timber. Cliopatria gets its name from Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which allusiveness I also admire. I have not had my coffee yet so my mind is a great big blank as to possibilities, though they are clearly endless. Continued suggestions are welcome. The person who submits the name that sticks will receive a pony.

One cup of coffee leads me to suggest "The Red Wheelbarrow" as a name...

I like it. Only "redwheelbarrow.com" is taken -- by a company that makes red wheelbarrows, no less.

"Theredwheelbarrow.com" is free however.

Putting on my marketing hat...in naming a product, it's useful to jot down a list of the ideas that you want people to associate with the product. That way, you can test that the suggested name support this positioning, or at least doesn't undercut it.

So, what are the associations that we want people to have concerning this effort? For starters, I'd suggest: scholarly...open...lively...approachable...interactive...iconoclastic.

Agreements/disagreements/additions?

How about

All Disagreeables Evaporate?

from Keats' Letters, you know - the excellence of every art is intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate.

Has a bit of a subtext...

Hi All,

I am a lurker on this site and have really enjoyed the conversation on this topic. I am currently working on my Ph.D. in Biometrics (modeling ecosystems), but enjoy literature and am excited by the idea of a group blog that goes after the material and lets it speak for it's self.

This would be a great addition to any conversation about books. I can see it as a way to help people, especially students, learn to love ideas and discussion.

Please begin soon..

Regards,

I have a contrarian opinion here.

Once I ran across an Edith Wharton ghost story on the internet - "The Lady's Maid's Bell". As is usual with her stuff and that genre, every little thing is not spelled out for the reader. You have to figure a lot of it out. My husband and my daughter read it, and we talked about it, and then I sent links to my mother, sister, and sister-in-law and we all talked about it by e-mail. It turned out kind of fun. I told my SIL that I thought we ought to pick out a story to discuss from time to time, just for culture's sake, you know, and she said, "Oh, culture me!" So we were going to do that, and call it the "Culture Me Reading Club" but sadly, we never did.

"Thereadwheelbarrow.com" ;)

I am totally puzzled by this thread. Why on earth would anyone want to destroy a good piece of literature by analyzing and dissecting it? Just enjoy it, for heaven's sake!

And people actually make a CAREER out of this kind of thing? Talk about tits on a boar hog...

Wow. I guess that's that.

I had a nice conversation with my kid a while back. She'd been assigned The Good Earth (which she disliked) and her stupid teacher's multiple choice test included this item: Was Wang Lung a moral person? yes/no. The teacher's right answer was yes. The kid told me about this and I said NO he was not a moral person. We embarked upon a discussion comparing Wang Lung to Mr. Rochester of Jane Eyre and their motives for caring for their helpless relatives: Wang Lung's daughter and Mr. Rochester's insane wife. During the course of this I learned that my daughter thought that morals always have to do with sex, and that being a moral person means you never do anything wrong. I was glad of a chance to disabuse her of both of these notions.

And actually, herein may lie the problem. You people who have studied English aren't going to be interested in discussing classics like these because they have been done to death. Whereas those of us not in academia are free to read and enjoy and get to know them, and think "original" thoughts about them; and after all, they are awfully good and full of things to think about, hence their classic status. So it's going to be a challenge to find anything you're really interested in that's not too obscure (to put it nicely) for the rest of us.

Au contraire! I'm up for a good energetic discussion about Bronte or Buck any day. Familiar books always become new when the talk is good. And by good I mean not obscure or arcane or hyperactively clever, but sincere and thoughtful.

Well let's get started then.

Although I'm still a little trepidatious about my comments appearing puerile. There is NOBODY I can talk with about the books I read, except my husband and daughter, and sometimes I think they are only being kind to me. Which is not to be sneezed at, of course, and I really appreciate it. But I'm afraid some of my insights might cause eye-rolling among people who are used to discussing literature.

Such a blog would be of most immense interest to me and several other people I know. Anything that gets people talking about literature is a good thing in my mind; and having an blog that people of different backgrounds can sound-off on seems to me to be the greatest thing since sliced bread!

Was browsing Google and found your site, enjoyed the reading, thanks