If a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, what is a literary critic who purports to be the final arbiter of the meaning of his own writing? This question is prompted by the hostile, ad hominem (ad wominem?) response of literary theorist/literary critic/English Prof. Michael Bérubé to Erin O’Connor’s criticism (here, here, and here) of his article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on his problems dealing with a disruptive conservative student.
Bérubé refers to Erin’s criticism, and even to her personally, as, among other things, “cowardly” … “dishonest” … “most unscrupulous”… “fraudulent”; he gilds the lily by adding that “you completely — and deliberately, unless you’re utterly incompetent as a reader — misconstrue” … and, he concludes: “I know what I’m talking about, and you don’t….” He calls other conservatives “nutty,” “paranoid,” “hysterical.” Aside from the merits of his argument, this is not nice, nor is it a very effective way of winning friends and influencing people.
Since all this material is linked and available, and important, I encourage readers to fly through the rhetorical flak and read Bérubé’s article, Erin’s criticisms, and Bérubé’s responses. The underlying issue is whether Bérubé assumes his disruptive, conservative student’s behavior was associated with his conservatism, or not. Bérubé freely identifies himself with “campus lefties“; to what degree, if any, did his own political persuasion color his responses to an outspoken (and if one can believe Bérubé’s description), obnoxious conservative student?
Part of the question here, to which I alluded in the first paragraph, is whether Bérubé’s interpretation of his own writing is correct, which if nothing else is an interesting problem to confront a literary theorist. And who should have the final word on what’s “correct,” the author or the reader? To put it bluntly, does his article say what he says it said — or, to take one step up the interpretive ladder, does it mean what he says it means? Can an article say and mean something the author says (subsequently says?) he did not intend? Such questions keep literary theorists employed, and I’ll not belabor them further.
Well, that’s not true. I will belabor them a bit more. Prof. Bérubé made his first appearance here, a post in which I criticized a short piece of his in the New York Times Magazine that advocated extending the race norming of entrance exams to norming “for sex, income, region and level of parental education,” etc. [Note: the NYT link now requires a fee, but Bérubé has generously made the article available here.]
Or so it seemed. A couple of commenters on that post suggested that Bérubé must have been joking, but I didn’t read his piece that way, and neither did most of the others who commented on it. Indeed, when the latest Bérubéian controversy erupted I labeled my contribution to the discussion “Still Joking.” Then, a couple of days ago, someone identifying himself as “Michael Bérubé” left good-natured comments on my two posts saying the NYT piece really was a joke, “and the editors of the NYT mag knew it.” (Well, he does call me “a silly sod” in one of them, but I took that to be a playful punch in the arm rather than a smack in the jaw.) I confess: I thought the two comments themselves were a joke, postings by an impersonator, and I was about to erase them when due diligence, and common sense, and a quick web check that should have been done at first confirmed that their author was, well, their author. Now he has just left another one making the same point: it was a joke.
Coulda fooled me. In fact, did fool me. I’ve just gone back and read it again (reminder: it’s here, on his web site), and I encourage you to read it as well. I would like to think that I have a sense of humor, even when the joke is at my (or my side’s) expense. But upon re-reading, then re-re-reading, I honestly believe the reason I was so certain the piece was not a joke is that — I don’t mean this to be snide, but I don’t know how to say it any other way — it’s not funny. More to the point, it did not, and does not still, read as though it was intended to be funny, whether satire, parody, Swiftian, whatever.
The piece was short, and I don’t want to quote the whole thing (because you’re all going to go read it, right?), but when discussing text it’s always helpful to have at least some of the text at hand. So, here’s some:
I’ve heard well-meaning people suggest, for example, that the test be “race-normed”: the average “black” score is 857 and the average “white” score is 1,063, so let’s treat the black kid with an 1,100 the way we’d treat the white kid with a 1,300. This is the kind of suggestion that provokes immediate and justified derision from conservatives — often in the form of sports analogies: if we’re going to spot black students 200 points on the SAT, they say, let’s give white wide receivers a 10-yard head start on black safeties and cornerbacks.
But there is a way to “norm” the SAT, not only for race but for sex, income, region and level of parental education. (Every one of these variables is critical. Rural students average 998, while suburban students average 1,066. Boys outscore girls by 43 points. Most important, children of parents who have graduate degrees outscore children with parents who didn’t finish high school by a staggering 272 points.) And the best way to do it is by taking a page from a sport whose country-club associations belie its deep structural commitment to redistributionist justice: golf.
Golf is proud, and rightly so, of the fact that its handicap system allows hackers to play alongside champions. And if only the SAT were as well organized and as egalitarian as the U.S.G.A., every high-school student would be assigned a handicap. We already have all the numbers we need; all we need to do is to combine “region” and “parental education” with the race-gender-class triad, and we can issue remarkably precise handicaps — more precise even than golf handicaps, since the SAT’s permit neither mulligans nor “winter rules.”
The system would be complex, but certainly no more complex than the process by which every single golf course in the United States, from Pebble Beach to Van Cortlandt Park, is assigned a course rating….
Take a black girl from rural Alabama whose parents make under $10,000 and did not graduate from high school, and put her up against the wealthy white boy from Lake Success whose parents have Ph.D.’s. Before she sets pen to paper, she could be facing an 848-point SAT deficit. If we assign her only 80 percent of the parental-education gap (217.6 points), 60 percent of the income gap (155.4 points), 30 percent of the racial gap (61.8 points), 20 percent of the regional gap (13.6 points) and 10 percent of the gender gap (4.3 points), the 452.7 point handicap will help us gauge her true talents more accurately. Fair enough, no? The reason we’d have to scale the percentages is that the various categories overlap, but I don’t see any problem there — certainly it’s easier than scoring a golf match on the Stableford system.
One reason I missed, and still miss, the intended humor in this piece is that I don’t see its point. If something is being ridiculed or parodied or satirized, it is usually clear what point the author intends to make, but here the intended effect escapes me. Is the intent to show that tests are inherently absurd because different groups perform differently on them? Or perhaps the point is the one I have discussed here so often that I gave it a name, IUNS, the Invidious Ubiquitous Non-Sequitur according to which racial discrimination is no different from discrimination on the basis of athletic or musical talent or where your parents went to school. If you can discriminate for any reason, according to this view, you can discriminate for every reason.
Maybe I’m dense, but Bérubé’s universal handicap sounds like so much of the claptrap that passes for serious discussion of testing and qualifications these days that its humor passed completely over my head. Indeed, I believe Prof. Bérubé deserves more slack and sympathy than I have given him, for it would be almost impossible for even a Swift to satirize or parody the argument of our race-norming preferentialists. Reductio ad absurdum doesn’t work on arguments that are already absurd.
Maybe the humor consisted in its being so well disguised that no one would know it was humorous. If so, then then those pranksters at the New York Times, as Bérubé claims, played right along with the gag. On Oct. 12, three weeks after his piece appeared, the New York Times Magazine published, in its very scarce and closely guarded letters space, the following letter (taken from Nexis so no URL):
If Michael Bérubé (Idea Lab, Sept. 21) were suggesting that colleges, after handicapping admissions, also assume the burden of providing the continuing assistance that “a poor black girl from rural Alabama” will need through her four years of college — of providing the strokes required in the match that really matters — perhaps she could succeed. But he’s not; he’s only suggesting that we handicap the actual admissions process by adjusting SAT scores.
A handicap makes it possible for two golfers to enjoy a match, but it doesn’t make the poorer golfer play above his ability. Bérubé’s suggestion might make us all feel better, but it won’t do anything to correct the basic problem, which is that the differences in SAT scores are ultimately the result of a failure in our society to equitably distribute educational resources.
Charles E. Griffith 3d
Chairman, History Department, Westminster School
Simsbury, Conn.
Like many of the rest of us, poor Charles E. Griffith 3d was duped. He, too, made the mistake of taking the piece seriously.
Here’s another thought: maybe this whole episode is an unintended case study in literary puzzles. Consider: Bérubé may have thought he was writing a humorous piece. If so, he would naturally have assumed his readers would discern his intent. Thus perhaps his communications with his editor(s) at the New York Times, even if they were in writing, never actually dealt with the humor question — why else would they have printed a serious letter about it? On this reading, the joke would be on Bérubé for thinking the NYT was in on the joke.
But in the final analysis the joke really is on us, or at least on me. Haven’t I argued with some frequency that much of the commentary in the New York Times (and even some of the news) is a joke? If nothing else, Bérubé has convinced me that I should start taking myself more seriously. (Now, that‘s a joke.)
I just read the piece and I really can’t believe that he had the balls to suggest that the whole thing was a joke!It’s obviously meant sincerely. Did his editor at the NY Times think it was satire?
I simply must urge everybody to read the article again carefully and decide for themselves. Up until now I thought that Mr. Berube made some reasonable points in his spate of comments on various blogs, but this is absolutely jaw-dropping. I urge you to write directly to him to make sure that it is really he who is making these claims.
Laughing at Academic Leadership
There’s apparently some hash being made of the comments of a cat named Michael Berube about norming SAT scores. It’s a good joke, but apparently defenders of the regime didn’t find it so funny. What regime you ask? Why the…
i think it was not a joke, but was designed in cause a stir. i mean let’s face it it’s getting a lot of attention.
Puhleez! A cherished professor of mine, who rightfully prided himself on presenting elegant and memorable definitions of literary terms, said that a satire is an attack, by means of a fiction, on a recognizable target. As John observes, what’s the target? No recognizable target, no satire; no satire, no joke.
Maybe one should take him at his word. His idea really was to ridicule race norming and other such preferences schemes.
In this case there was a clear target and it makes sense in terms of the specific article. Sure, it makes little sense relative to other things he has written, but he is now on record as saying that this piece was intended as satire. Thus he is telling us to take the obvious satirical meaning as his meaning, and, after all, he, being the author, knows better than his readers what he meant.
Maybe this is the time to ask him to join hands with Ward Connerly.
First, thanks to John for his gracious email to me (ascertaining that I am indeed me), and for that relentlessly intelligent post on interpretive conundra and literary theory. John, you’re entirely right– not only about my over-the-top response to O’Connor, but about my futile desire to control the scene of my own utterance and arrest the metonymic skid, as we literary-theory types say. But on that note, let me repeat myself for the sake of Lucy and the Funky Ph.D.: the real point of my SAT essay is that everyone fixates on the racial disparities to the point of obscuring other important demographic data about the test, *and* that the most important question in all this, as you all know, is whether the tests really predict college success. Did the New York Times Magazine know about the joke? Of course they did– they asked me to be counterintuitive and contrarian, and I was happy to oblige.
I know the joke’s not “funny,” though. Not all “jokes” are. I wasn’t expecting anyone to laugh, either– I mean, come on, I’m not a complete fool. Really: I got a 1430 on my SATs, back in 1977 before they changed the handicapping system, and a really nice 790 on the logic section of my GREs in 1982. Also I had a 3.8 GPA in the College of the Catskills as a major in Standup Comedy and Pratfalls, so I think I can safely say I know a joke when I tell one.
But shaking hands with Ward Connerly? What are you, joking?
Well, 1430 on the SATs, sure, but if Mr. Berube came from a middle class white background that really only counts as around an 1100.
“Counterintuitive and contrarian” is language one would use for something quirky but serious, just like the article Mr. Berube wrote but now claims was meant as satire against the very idea of using non-academic, immutable information in admissions–i.e., affirmative action. Which part of the essay reminds the reader that the SAT (supposedly) doesn’t predict success in college, again?
This is really too surreal. I feel like I’m watching somebody disintegrate in real time. I certainly believe the stuff about the advanced degree in pratfalls, though.
Was Berube serious or merely joking? My answer: it was a bad joke. That is, his piece had many of the trappings of parody but it lacked the true structure of parody. No wonder Berube’s piece left so many people confused.
When you couple that blunder with his recent misstep — where he conflates conservatism, disruptive behavior, and mental illness — one concludes that Berube simply lacks a basic mastery of craft in the art of writing. We have a track record here.
When Berube writes, thoughtful readers are confused, and then Berube wades back into the mess to tell us what he really meant and who so many readers got his meaning wrong. But the fault lies with the writer, not the readers.
It was Bérubé who mentioned the Catskills first, right?
I confess, I laughed at the SAT stuff: I took it as satire about those apartheid-crazy Michigan U race-tables, that I gave up trying to understand once it became clear that USG and Injustice O’Connor were going to let us down – though it clearly wasn’t meant as such!
He evidently knows he comes off as relentless and charmless: the crassly unfunny playing with Erin O’Connor’s name, for instance.
Salon piece from 1998 mildly illuminating on the man: entitled The Maturing of Michael Bérubé.
Still waiting.
This isn’t really about conservatism. It’s about whether a white young man has the same status as everybody else. John, I think, is pissed off precisely because Berube is giving the type of class he is giving.
Young black man come to campus to find a black history department determined to plead their case. And also every humanities department. Why isn’t Berube, who is obviously white, pleading the case of this young white man?
Berube is teaching the wrong course. He’s teaching a trite course. Black nationalism barely ever existed except in the eyes of radical academics and the mau-mauers who live off them.
Mr. Berube, teach a course that encourages and proclaims the culture and aspirations of this young white man.
This is really the problem. I, too, would take Berube’s class just to piss him off and drive him crazy. He deserves it.
Whale away, guilty white liberals.
Angry, guilty white liberals, before you attack me…
How in the world did the notion that hetero white man should have equal rights become… conservatism?
This is really what John was mad about. It’s what Berube’s mad about. I’d suggest refocusing on the real issue. Why are white hetero men teaching this type of course? (The answer is obvious. In the perverse logic of the humanities, it is all they are allowed to teach. Teaching about their own culture is just about prohibited, unless they censor that culture.)
Why is this deemed a conservative issue? It isn’t.
I’d like to thank all commenters for your taking the time to comment here. More specifically, the SALON article John Smith linked is indeed interesting, as is its subject. As to Stephen’s comments immediately above, with all respect I think the LAST thing we need is to add white to the multicult rainbow and teach classes that “proclaim[] the culture” of hetero white men. Some evidence of just why we don’t need it can be found by looking at the new field of “white studies” that has been struggling to gain acceptance over the past few years, even though it is decidedly not what Stephen would like it to be. Finally, a doff of the metaphorical hat to Michael Bérubé; if everyone in the blogosphere (me included) would acknowledge going “over the top” when we do so, we’d all enjoy a much more civilized place.
Thanks, John, for reminding me of just what a minefield this arena is.
I learned my lesson the hard way when I was dragged into a men’s activist group. I thought that it was a way to address my rights as a man.
No such thing happened there. The group had nothing to offer except the addition of men to the ever growing herd of victims. It was a nightmare.
I really appreciate you site. You navigate the shoals of this torrent of meanness and anger very well. Don’t know how you manage it.
Hyperlinks allow this he-said/he-didn’t-say situation to be resolved. Thanks, John and Prof. Berube, for the links.
In the NYT, Berube wrote:
But there is a way to ‘norm’ the SAT, not only for race but for sex, income, region and level of parental education. … And the best way to do it is by taking a page from a sport whose country-club associations belie its deep structural commitment to redistributionist justice: golf.
The snide second sentence is obviously meant to be parodic.
That said, Funky PhD (12/6 7:47pm) has the right of it:
No recognizable target, no satire; no satire, no joke.
Like Funky, John, and most other posters–but unlike Prof. Berube and the NYT editors–I couldn’t discern a target. The author’s sincere beliefs remain veiled.
But try the link and see for yourself.
It strikes me that the hypothetical handicapping system described by Berube closely parallels the kind of “point” system used now at many universities in making admissions decisions. The base point-score for each candidate is proportional to objective academic merit of the candidate, and then some candidates get additional points for things like “life challenges”. (At many universities now, applicants must include an essay where they have to describe how they have been victims. One has the odd feeling that the goal is to find candidates who are most in tune with victimology and identity politics, given that those whose essays best justify their victimhood get the most “life challenges” points.)
If Berube’s proposal regarding the SATs was intended as a broad analogy to existing admissions systems, then whether it’s funny depends enormously on the opinion of the author which he is intending to convey or advocate. If, for instance, Berube opposes those kinds of point-systems and advocates abolishing them, then this kind of analogy would serve as mocking satire.
(The recent cases of conservative student “bake sales” where they sell cookies but have a graduated price list so that white males pay more than anyone else is an example of that, and is simultaneously funny and very pointed. The bake sales never mention university admissions policies, but the analogy is clear.)
But if Berube thinks that those kinds of preferences are indeed desirable, then there’s no humor at all. Instead, it could only be interpreted as a straightforward advocacy piece.
So it depends entirely on how the reader concludes that the writer feels about the issue. Is he for or agin?
It certainly reads as if Berube is for those kinds of preferences, not agin. When exaggeration is used to create a ridiculous caricature as a target for mockery and scorn, one would think the author would make that at least subtly clear. I don’t see any trace of that.
Which is rather odd, because in fact the analogy to golf handicaps (and to any kind of evaluation system which amounts to beating the point-spread) is rife with possibilities for such caricature and mockery. It doesn’t necessarily have to inspire guffaws, but there should be a clear feeling of the ridiculous, built up to in gradual steps.
If this was humor, it was terribly inept.
By the way, I ain’t no literary theorist, but I do have an opinion on whether the writer or the reader is a better judge of the message.
Writers often reveal more about themselves and their attitudes than they intend. When it comes to editorial pieces, there will be a message the writer wishes to convey, a point of view he wishes to convince readers to accept. But in what he says, and how he says it, and what else he says, he may unconsciously include information which the readers find even more persuasive — in the opposite direction.
This is much more common for zealots and extremists, no matter what political polarity. Rabid Christian fundamentalists who write advocacy pieces about homosexuality and societal breakdown try to advocate a return to “family values” but without realizing it also make clear just how intolerant the author is of the simple idea of letting everyone decide for themself how they should live.
The same thing happens for me when I read some leftist literature on some issues; I come away understanding the point they think they’re trying to make, but I also am not convinced by it because they reveal other things about themselves, their attitudes, and their deeper program with which I deeply disagree.
It is a rare author who can write an advocacy piece which does not hint at more than the author intended. And when readers react incorrectly, it is unsurprising that the author might become angry, because the piece didn’t inspire the kind of reaction among the readers the author intended.
But that doesn’t mean that the readers were wrong.
“Rabid Christian fundamentalists who write advocacy pieces about homosexuality and societal breakdown try to advocate a return to “family values” but without realizing it also make clear just how intolerant the author is of the simple idea of letting everyone decide for themself how they should live.”
Steven, I don’t think the strawman you’ve attacked exists. So, I’ll pose some questions to you that nobody seems to want to address.
For thousands of years, Judeo-Christian societies have in one way or another attempted to prohibit, or at least diminish homosexual behavior. Could it be that this taboo has a basis in fact? Could it be that those societies witnessed real harm to their communities when homosexuality was unrestrained?
Now, this society, in the space of several decades is attempting to overturn those thousands of years of human experience. Could there be dangers and costs in doing this of which we are unaware? Have we simply forgotten what those ancient societies learned through experience?
I’ll suggest a couple of reasons why those ancient societies acted and legislated as they did. 1. The AIDS epidemic might well illustrate one reason. Anal sex potentially has catastrophic health implications. Could it be that the ancients were aware of this and acted in the interest of the health of their communities? 2. Homsexuality implies a failure to procreate. The ancients lived in a world in which there were not enough people.
The explication of an opposition to public acceptance of homosexuality as bigotry strikes me as way off base. I have lived in predominantly gay communities for 30 years. I don’t buy the innate theory either, for the simple reason that gay guys who’ve tried to seduced me don’t seem to believe it either. Their explanation for why they are homosexual: they can have as much sex as they want without the interference of women, and they don’t have to shoulder the responsibilities incumbent upon heterosexual men.
Try responding to what I’ve said, instead of screaming “bigot” as is the wont of those who hold your views.