During the first week of classes one of my professors said something which, though two very busy weeks have followed, has kept most of its original force in my mind. The following represents my paraphrase from memory:
The Invisible Man is a long novel, but to be in this class you will have to own it-to [...]

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       In his essay “The Aims of Education” Alfred North Whitehead  speaks of something he calls “inert ideas,” which he describes as those “ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into combination.” These “inert ideas” can take any form, in any field of study, at [...]

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I am conflicted in my criticism of our new Center for Community Engagement: on the one hand, it was only through a fellowship with the center that I was able to spend a month in New Orleans this summer working with Habitat for Humanity, and it was good work. In as much as I was [...]

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How can a literary community-dedicated to serious discussions of literature-avoid, on the one hand a vulgar elitism and, on the other hand, allowing for pure nonsense?

I think a place to begin addressing this question is with a clarification-an elaboration, if you will-on the nature of the poles between which we might be allowed to seek our community. To qualify myself, the following represent exaggerated caricatures meant only to clarify the nature of the problem by exposing the extremes.

Vulgar Elitism

He imagines himself well-read…

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1) Doesn’t a literary “blog,” by virtue of its abstract, anti-social, and virtual nature risk losing something basically human about discussions on literature?

To be fair, my friend, I think the answer is yes. There is significant risk associated with this project, and I think you are exactly right to locate a part of this risk on the medium. For one thing, it does seem to be the case that good discussion about literature are good as much for the intimacy that they support between conversants as they are for anything we might hope to uncover about literature. What I think you are point to (and please correct me if I am wrong) if the following question: to what extent does the medium of the Internet dehumanizes communication?

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I have been told—on more than one occasion—that I’ve too much the bleary-eyed Romantic in me, and that I fall, too quickly and too often, for the heavèd exhortation:
…. Ah dismal soul’d!
The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll’d
Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. (Sleep and Poetry 187-89)
Despite my having been warned against these tendencies, [...]

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As this is the first post on this ’ere log, I thought it might be worthwhile, before we begin, to give a brief introduction to the affair—namely, to say what it is I think this blog is meant to achieve; what I hope that it is able to avoid; and to give some indication why it is that I would ever take time (that I don’t have) to write it.

First of all, this is not Pepper. Nor is it The Indicator—nor is it The Student, or the Circus, or The Amherst Review. Nor do I have any desire to write book reviews, or social analysis, or cover the news, or indulge in creativity. All of these things already exist on this campus (successfully or no), and I am quite content not to meddle in other people’s business.

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