Lucifer: Bad Break or Breaking Bad?

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My old Ozark friend Pete Hale sent me a link to an intriguing, Milton-themed article by Malcolm Harris, "Who Can Resist Satan?" (NYT, September 30), which opens like this:

In his 1998 book "Surprised by Sin," the scholar and critic Stanley Fish suggested a way to resolve the central debate around John Milton's "Paradise Lost": whether the author was on the side of the angels, or, as William Blake put it, "of the Devil's party without knowing it." Fish said that readers were supposed to fall for the charismatic insurgent Lucifer -- as Eve had before them -- so at the end they could recognize their own share of original sin, the reader's own eagerness to turn away from God and goodness.

Harris then adds:

"Breaking Bad" followed a similar path, letting us root for the underdog genius in his tighty whities until we realize we may have developed sympathies for the Devil.

Now, I still haven't seen the Breaking Bad series, so I don't know if Harris is right about the viewer's sympathies (though I have read elsewhere that the series offers a crypto-Calvinist view of human nature as totally 'depravable'), but I do know Milton, and I also know Fish's book -- Surprised by Sin sits on a shelf about twelve inches to my right as I type these words -- and I realized that I could add a small point about the book's publication date to the discussion going on in the comments:

Actually, Stanley Fish's book was first published way back in 1967, but kudos to Mr. Malcom Harris for calling attention to it and its clever interpretation of Milton's Satan.

Fish's reading has been broadly influential, and not just in academic studies of Milton. I've used Fish's ideas not only in journal articles on Milton but even in a story . . .

I've only recently become aware of "Breaking Bad" -- living in Seoul keeps me somewhat isolated from from American dramas -- but Harris's application of Fish to the Walter White character motivates me to try to find time for the series.

But I guess Harris didn't read my comment, for the 1998 date remained unaltered. As with Walter White, my own genius continues to go unremarked . . .

Sophisticated Phishing?

Carmen

(Image from Wikipedia)

Phishers may be getting more sophisticated. A few days ago, I received the following email from a certain "Carmen":

I was reading "An Insightful Use of Reader-Response Literary Theory" and had a comment. Hmm, I think you might be misunderstanding Fish. His notion of interpretive communities suggests that the community creates the sole definition of a text, not a "fuller" definition.

One more thing, are you interested in getting paid to add a link on your page? Just a text link and it'd go to an education site.

I'd pay via PayPal at $100 for the link. Let me know and I can give you a call if needed.

I was somewhat taken aback by this email. While I appreciated the correction in my understanding of Stanley Fish, the offer of $100 triggered my suspicions. Nobody offers money to get a link, especially from a minor blog such as mine. But I didn't want to misjudge a helpful individual like "Carmen," so I replied:

I'm not interested in any money, but I might link to the site if I find it relevant.

In response . . . nothing, nichts, nada. "Carmen," apparently, believes that one gets what one pays for and thus wanted no free link. If it cost nothing, it meant nothing, I guess.

Was "Carmen" phishing? I can't be sure, but nobody offers to pay for a link, as I said, and she hasn't replied to my 'generous' counter offer. I therefore conducted a Google search using her full name (or the one supplied, anyway) and found only one site, a blog where she had apparently left a message in some fashion or other . . . indirectly, I take it, for the blogger herself seems to have had to post the message from "Carmen" (which strikes me as odd).

The circumstantial evidence might therefore suggest phishing, I hazard to think, but would a phisher of men like me be so knowledgeable about that Milton scholar and radical postmodernist Stanley Fish? Perhaps I should be unsurprised, however, that phishers might know about Fish . . .

Whether "Carmen," was a phisher or merely a naive, would-be letter-linker saying the darndest thing, the internet is a peculiar fishing hole . . .

Stanley Fish: Good Teaching and Student Evaluations (II)

Professor Stanley Fish

In Sartorial Splendor

(Image from Stanley Fish's Bio)

On June 24th, I posted a first blog enty on Professor Stanley Fish's critique of student evaluations. He now has a follow-up in his "Opinionator" column, "Student Evaluations, Part Two" (NYT, June 28, 2010), in which various instructors offer their horror stories of such evaluations:

[Such as] the teacher who, after having moved a class to a morning hour in response to student requests, found himself pilloried by those same students for making them get up too early; the teacher who was negatively reviewed by students who had never shown up (they needed to turn in an evaluation in order to get credit for the class they had not attended) . . . .

[Evaluations] can also lead to the abandoning or blighting of a career. Posters report variously that they left teaching altogether or moved to a foreign country where the "customer" mentality had not yet set in or stuck it out for 30 years while becoming ever more bitter and disillusioned. Even those who are aware that there is little correlation between student evaluations and effective teaching (the preponderance of studies document this non-correlation) and therefore know that negative comments do not reflect an informed judgment are nevertheless pained and humiliated by them . . . .

I've got news for Professor Fish. Some foreign countries have already adopted the "customer mentality perspective." Some instructors, however, resist:

A Teacher lets it all hang out and speaks for many: "Sorry kids, you are not the authority in the classroom. Me Teacher. You student. Me Teach , you learn. End of discussion . . . Education is not a business. You are not my customer. My classroom is not Burger King. You do not get to 'have it your way.'"

I ought sometimes to have said it like that to students with the 'customer' attitude . . . but articulations aside, the significant point is Professor Fish's reference to "the preponderance of studies document[ing] . . . [the] non-correlation" . . . "between student evaluations and effective teaching ."

Professor Fish's column is nonacademic and thus cites no sources, but I'm curious about the studies alluded to, for I would like to have cited such studies in previous years when issues of this sort arose in discussions over good teaching . . .

'Surprised by Sin' Again

Sam Raimi

Director

Universal Pictures

(Image from New York Times)

I sometimes recycle for Gypsy Scholar material that I've posted on the Milton List, especially when it gets ignored there because the other scholars fail to recognize my genius, a failure that, writ large, perhaps explains my largely failed career.

Recently, I read a review of Sam Raimi's new film Drag Me To Hell and noticed a remark by Raimi that reminded me of the central theme in Stanley Fish's great work, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. As some readers will know -- or will recall from earlier posts on this blog -- Fish argues that Milton depicts Satan as a heroic character with seemingly admirable qualities so that we will identify with him and sin along with Adam and Eve through taking Satan's side until we learn, too late, that we have been misled.

As I noted on the Milton List:

Sam Raimi must have been boning up on Stanley Fish's magnum opus. His recent film, Drag Me To Hell, tells the morality tale of what happens when a young and ambitious loan officer turns down an old woman's application for a mortgage extension. The old lady puts a curse on the ambitious young woman . . . and we're also implicated. Look at this review -- "After Spidey, a Return to Hell" -- by the much maligned Charles McGrath in the New York Times:

The torments the poor young woman suffers sometimes seem a little excessive compared with the relative smallness of her crime -- she's hardly a Bernie Madoff -- and that's part of Mr. Raimi's intention. "This is a young woman who thinks she’s a good person, but she acts out of greed," he explained. "That's what seems relevant -- the greed. I tried to make her someone you identify with, because at the moment she has to make her choice, I want the audience to make that choice with her. They sin with her. They know they’re culpable, and now" -- he lowered his voice so it sounded like the voice-over of a horror movie trailer -- "now they know they’re going to be punished."

That really sounds like Piscean twist to my learned ears. Stanley, have you been tutoring Raimi -- or did he bite into that fruitful lemon twist on his own?

I address Stanley Fish directly because I know that he subscribes to the Milton List and sometimes even posts there . . . but neither he nor any other scholar responded. Perhaps some didn't like my allusion to Charles McGrath, who was heavily criticized on the list by a few scholars last autumn for 'erroneous' remarks about John Milton in a review of Terrance Lindall's WAH Center's exhibit on Milton in the lead-up to the center's Grand Paradise Lost Costume Ball. Actually, I'm joking in suggesting that my Milton List post was ignored because of the reference to McGrath . . . just in case anyone was taking that as a seriously snarky remark.

Incidentally, while I have enjoyed Raimi's Spiderman films, I've not seen any of his horror films and don't intend to, for I have a wild imagination and would suffer nightmares if I watched (as readers will understand).

Why, I won't even watch the trailer to Raimi's hellish film.

Laughter, the best medicine?

Eduard von Grützner, Falstaff

Shakespearean Humor

(Image from Wikipedia)

As an old man now, I must lean on a rickety false staff to support myself with good humor as I continue this pilgrimage of mine through life, still climbing up along my chosen career path despite the many detours that I've taken.

But my humor often gets misread, as my longsuffering Uncle Cran has reported since yesterday's humorous blog entry. For instance, in his anecdote concerning the high school reunion where everyone present was expected to offer a brief biography of life's events since graduation, he originally related:

When I got to the part about meeting Gay and our marriage, I stated, "When we got married, we were both young, shy, inexperienced, and inhibited."

Then I continued, "Our first son was born 10 and 1/2 months later," and I heard someone, (who will not be identified), make the snide remark, "Sounds like Cran got over his inhibitions!"

There were a few (shall we say, sniggers?) as those two near but unconnected comments of mine were somehow mis-applied. This demonstrates that this lady, and perhaps others of my classmates, still had thoughts in their minds not exactly appropriate for such a gathering. But I will forgive and try to forget! As only I should.

That was Uncle Cran's summary of his brief remark, and he now reports in a circular sent out to those who might have misconstrued:

Some of our classmates have written, thanking me for my report on the 52nd class reunion. One (or more?) thought I might have had my feelings hurt about the cute remarks and giggles following my account of my and Gay's marriage and son's birth. That was actually intended to elicit such a response, and is a demonstration of my twisted humor.

Others, apparently, were worried that my gentle ribbing of my dear Uncle Cran throughout yesterday's blog entry might have been intended as harsh sarcasm or as some sort of criticism

Uncle Cran, however, has reassured them:

Nephew Jeffery has again placed my account on his blog. We have a good time doing this, and all comments are meant to be funny, as he is afflicted with the same family trait of wry (some would call 'strange') humor.

I've replied to Uncle Cran:

I can well imagine that some readers might lack the [peculiar] sense of humor . . . to recognize that we are just kidding. People have often thought that my posts on fan death are serious, a severe misreading that I cannot fathom. So . . . I sometimes wonder if we should be less 'humorous'. Except that it entertains the two of us and makes my blog more interesting . . . I think . . . . As for the comment made at the reunion itself -- the one about your loss of inhibitions -- I suspected that you'd been fishing for that. Yes, we share a sense of humor, unfortunately. Both our humors are radioactive, it seems, for when your humor and mine meet on my blog, there's a nuclear reaction. We ought to threaten North Korea.

As an aside, I'd note that humor probably would be felt as a threat by the Beloved Leader, General King Jong-il.

Anyway, speaking of humor, that 'paramour of scholarly virtue', Wikipedia, offers some theories on how humor works. One of these is the "superiority theory," which says that we laugh at the misfortunes of other people because such misfortunes imply our superiority to others in their failings. Superficially, this seems to be my humor at Uncle Cran's expense, and some people might read my humor this way and take offense on Uncle Cran's part. Those people are not in on the joke, so let me explain to any who haven't understood -- my jokes about Uncle Cran do not belong to this category of humor. A different theory better conveys my meaning, the "incongruity theory," which is a bit more complicated to explain, but this theory basically says that humor is conveyed through the incongruity between what is said and what is meant. What makes my humor at Uncle Cran's expense difficult to catch is that I pretend to laugh at his misfortunes (superiority) but depend upon readers to understand that I surely don't mean what I seem to be saying (incongruity). But, as I noted, not everybody is in on the joke. Well . . . I suppose that they now are.

Humor is often complex when it occurs in literature. Take the case of Falstaff. Are we intended to laugh at him? Or with him? Our reason for laughing says something about us. On the Milton List a couple of weeks ago, a question was raised about humor in Paradise Lost. Several scholars gave examples, and I offered a line by Eve in which she responds to the serpent's multiple, excessively over-the-top compliments on her wonderful qualities by doubting that the forbidden fruit truly conveys wisdom:

In my opinion, Eve has the funniest line in Paradise Lost. Immediately after Satan in serpent form has praised Eve with excessive compliments, she retorts:

Serpent, thy overpraising leaves in doubt
The vertue of that Fruit, in thee first prov'd: (PL 9.615-6)

I always have to laugh when I read Eve's remark. But is she aware of the humor . . . or is this solely Milton's joke?

In a recent offlist email, I received a belated response to my question from the scholar David Ainsworth:

Nothing like this time of year for a delayed response.

I think unquestionably that there's a joke here, on several layers. If Eve doesn't mean the contradiction, then she must be using "prov'd" in the sense of being tested or made trial of. Milton would unquestionably appreciate that this other usage of the word aligns itself not just with testing but with *tasting* in particular. The OED [Oxford English Dictionary] doesn't list many usages specific to tasting, but the quibble on test/taste was common enough even outside circumstances like this one.

I suspect there's plenty of bilingual or trilingual plays on words in Milton's poetry which slip past readers.

As for Eve's awareness -- I guess that depends on how close to falling one believes her at this moment. The more she's chiding Satan for praise which she has secretly embraced, the more calculated this response will seem. For me, part of what I appreciate about lines like these is that Eve can mean the joke regardless of how she's taking in the situation, but that the purpose of the humor shifts -- she's either expressing false humility by affirming the serpent's judgment by affirming the fruit's virtue, or she's genuinely chiding the serpent.

Sadly, I suspect in context that Eve's doubt of the fruit must be seen as her humor, deployed precisely in a situation where Satan's overpraising genuinely ought to lead her to genuine doubt.

I take Professor Ainsworth's point to be that Eve only pretends to doubt the fruit's power to bring wisdom, for she secretly enjoys the serpent's attentions and wants to believe the serpent truly wise and therefore correct. As Professor Ainsworth notes, the humor can work on several levels. One possibility is that the reader will react as the superiority theory might predict -- with a sort of judgemental humor, as though one felt superior to Eve and were silently thinking I wouldn't fall for that flattery! Milton, however, thinks that we would fall for it -- if Stanley Fish is right about Milton tempting the reader to fall into sin along with Eve and Adam by encouraging us to identify with Satan. If so, there comes a moment of grim, ironic incongruity as we recognize that Milton is not merely describing Eve but also describing us. If such is the case, then echoing Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennet, I can say, "That is a failing indeed, . . . [but] I really cannot laugh at it."

And with those words, I must now exit this stage and begin my day.

Um . . . so he really is Obamessiah?

Stanley Fish

"smiling wisdom from the epicine . . . picine . . . piscine era"

(Image from NYT)

In his NYT column "Think Again" of October 26th, "The Power of Passive Campaigning," Stanley Fish reaches for a literary analogy to describe Obama's campaign style.

Fish reminds us of Obama's unusual calm -- what Charles Krauthammer calls a "first-class temperament" -- during the past few weeks' swirling chaos:

We saw it in the 10 days when the activity around the mounting economic crisis was at its height. Henry Paulson alternated between scaring members of Congress and scaring the public. Nancy Pelosi alternated between playing the responsible Congressional statesperson and playing the partisan attack dog. Media commentators went from one hysterical prediction to another. John McCain went from saying there's nothing to worry about to saying there's everything to worry about to saying that he would fix everything by suspending his campaign to saying that he was not suspending his campaign and that he would debate after all.

And Barack Obama? He didn't do much and he said less (O.K., he did say some reassuring, optimistic things), and his poll numbers went up.

Fish doesn't cite Krauthammer but does turn to another conservative pundit to make his point:

He just stands there looking languid (George Will called him the Fred Astaire of politics), always smiling and never raising his voice.

Meanwhile, John McCain gets angry -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- and ever more energetically attacks Obama, who does nothing. Fish asks:

What's going on here? I find an answer in a most unlikely place, John Milton's "Paradise Regained," a four-book poem in which a very busy and agitated Satan dances around a preternaturally still Jesus until, driven half-crazy by the response he's not getting, the arch-rebel (i.e., maverick) loses it, crying in exasperation, "What dost thou in this world?"

Fish assures us that he doesn't "mean to suggest that McCain is the devil or that Obama is the Messiah (although some of his supporters think of him that way), just that the rhetorical strategies the two literary figures employ match up with the strategies employed by the two candidates."

Concluding his analogy to Paradise Regained, Fish gives Milton's explanation for why Obama's strategy works:

Toward the end, the poem describes the mighty contest in a metaphor that captures its odd and negative dynamic. Jesus is "a solid rock" continually assaulted by "surging waves"; and even though the repeated assaults result only in the waves being "all to shivers dashed," they keep on coming until they exhaust themselves "in froth or bubbles." The power Jesus generates is the power of not moving from the still center of his being and refusing to step into an arena of action defined by his opponent. So it is with Obama, who barely exerts himself and absorbs attack after attack, each of which, rather than wounding him, leaves him stronger. It's rope-a-dope on a grand scale.

In short, Obama need do nothing at all, but simply remain calm within the chaos that buffets about him, and he wins? Well . . . maybe. It's not over yet, and unlike in Paradise Regained, there's no predetermined winner.

But Fish is clearly onto something with this analysis, and it need only be turned around for some obscure Milton scholar to offer a new perspective on Milton's depiction of Jesus: "The Son's Rope-a-Dope Strategy in Paradise Regained?"

The Wall Street Journal: 'Lost' in Paradise Lost

"Exiting paradise:

An engraving (after Gustave Doré)

of the archangel Michael

expelling Lucifer from Heaven"

- Wall Street Journal

Friday's issue of the Wall Street Journal has an article by John Gross, "Cosmic and Sublime," that reviews and largely praises the recent publication of The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton, edited by the scholars William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon:

The edition is a model of its kind, well designed and attractively produced. There are scholarly but unintimidating footnotes and helpful introductions to the major works. Spelling and punctuation have been modernized -- a difficult decision but the right one. The long pages of continuous verse, which could have looked daunting, are easy on the eye (not least thanks to ample leading between the lines). A great deal has been packed in, but Milton has still been left room to breathe.

Gross, therefore, is happy with the edition but wonders if readers will open the book and read:

The whole enterprise is meant to be reader-friendly, and it succeeds. Yet one can't help wondering how many readers are going to avail themselves of the invitation it extends.

Why not? Because Milton so totally overwhelms:

No one disputes that Milton is a great poet. But for many readers today, that might be part of the problem -- not his stature as such but the fact that he is so strenuously, so oppressively great. There are other great poets in English, but most of them, beginning with Shakespeare, wear their greatness fairly lightly. By contrast, Milton will settle for nothing less than the cosmic and the sublime. As the Germans would say, he is kolossal.

I happen to like the kolossal character of Paradise Lost, but I can understand that many readers might feel a bit . . . what's the word for it . . . 'lost'?

Well, everybody gets lost in Milton, and that was part of Milton's intention -- if we are to believe Stanley Fish:

I would like to suggest something about Paradise Lost that is not new except for the literalness with which the point will be made: (1) the poem's centre of reference is its reader who is also its subject; (2) Milton's purpose is to educate the reader to an awareness of his position and responsibilities as a fallen man, and to a sense of the distance which separates him from the innocence once his; (3) Milton's method is to re-create in the mind of the reader (which is, finally, the poem's scene) the drama of the Fall, to make him fall again exactly as Adam did and with Adam's troubled clarity, that is to say, 'not deceived.' (Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, 1997), page 1)

Even the Wall Street Journal's editors get lost. Beneath the image reproduced above, which the paper borrowed from the Granger Collection (but which I have borrowed from Art Passions for its more precise detail when enlarged), I have quoted the words precisely as they appear in the paper:

Exiting paradise: An engraving (after Gustave Doré) of the archangel Michael expelling Lucifer from Heaven

The Wall Street Journal, as one might suspect, gets its information from the Granger Collection (as one discovers by plugging 0005727 into the search function):

MILTON: PARADISE LOST. The archangel Michael, expelling Lucifer from Heaven (Book I of John Milton's 'Paradise Lost.') Wood engraving after Gustave Doré.

Despite these 'helpful' words intended as informative, this scene is not that of Lucifer's expulsion from heaven -- which Milton attributes not to the power of any archangel such as Michael but to the Son of God. Rather, this scene depicts the archangel Gabriel 'expelling' Satan (not called Lucifer, by the way) from the Garden of Eden. Here's the scene, from Paradise Lost, Book 4, with Gabriel addressing Satan:

Satan, I know thy strength, and thou know'st mine,
Neither our own but giv'n; what follie then
To boast what Arms can doe, since thine no more
Then Heav'n permits, nor mine, though doubld now
To trample thee as mire: for proof look up,
And read thy Lot in yon celestial Sign
Where thou art weigh'd, and shown how light, how weak,
If thou resist. The Fiend lookt up and knew
His mounted scale aloft: nor more; but fled
Murmuring, and with him fled the shades of night. (PL 4.1006-1015)

Gabriel tells Satan to look up at a sign in the heavens and read its prediction of the outcome if Satan should resist. Satan reads and sees that his power is too weak (signified by his "scale" in the celestial balance being aloft because too light). Satan then flees.

Thus is Satan expelled...