The Bozos on the Other End of the Park Bench: 
How the Public University Can Help Keep Good Reading and Writing Alive

[T]he ordinary reader, the man or woman
on the other end of the park bench, is the bozo I'm interested in.
Hayden Carruth

In 1992, poet Dana Gioia shook up the poetic world when he asked, in an essay that culminated in a book of the same name, "Can poetry matter?"  Gioia's alarm stemmed from what he saw as the loss of America's cultural intelligentsia that cross-section of citizens who read prolifically and passionately support the arts.  In Gioia's view, "However healthy poetry may appear within its professional subculture, it has lost this larger audience, who represent poetry's bridge to the general culture" (pp. 18-19).

In 1997, management guru Peter Drucker shook up a few university presidents when he predicted that within 30 years university buildings will be mere relics, having been abandoned, presumably, for the likes of virtual education.  Not lost on Drucker's prediction was the implication that the disappearing campus buildings also would mean the loss of the social aspects of the university including its ties to the surrounding communities.

In April 2002, Oprah Winfrey announced that she would end her popular book club because it had become harder to find books each month that she felt passionate about.  Some critics thought it had more to do with the flack caused by author Jonathan Franzen's comments, following the selection of his book The Corrections, which suggested that Oprah's middle-browed readers sullied his image among the high-browed audience for whom he was writing. 

What do Gioia's, Drucker's, and Winfrey's concerns have in common?  Perhaps the same thing I've been sensing lately that the cultural pool that reads and writes and who produces generations of readers and writers appears to be drying up--and no one seems able or willing to refill it.  Think that's not a problem?  Hear this.  Recently, a cultural critic remarked that America is cleaving into two groups:  those who don't read and those who run things.

Few would argue that the much discussed cultural "dumbing down" of America is critically related to the loss of influence of the cultural intelligentsia.  What a far cry from two centuries ago when, according to Os Guinness, "Many people in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a knowledge of Shakespeare and the Bible that people today would view as the preserve of the literary scholar or theologian.  There simply was no literary aristocracy."  (Fit Bodies Fat Minds:  Why Evangelicals Don't Think And What Can Be Done About It, pg. 72)  Guinness also quotes Jacob Duche's description of many people in the eighteenth century:  "The poorest laborer upon the shores of the Delaware thinks himself entitled to deliver his sentiment on matters of religion or politics with as much freedom as the gentleman or scholar.  Such is the prevailing taste for books of every kind, that almost every man is a reader." (p. 72) 

Today, consider yourself blessed if you find someone who is vaguely familiar either with Shakespeare or, even among many Christians, the Bible.

Is the Public University Part of the Problem?
............How can America's public universities help to restock, as it were, the cultural pool and restore this influence in our communities? 

..........All too often, and not without good reason, the public university is perceived to be a semi-submerged entity which comes up for air only when it needs (financial) support.  September 11 changed things, as states' economies suffered massive revenue losses, and funding for education faced severe cutbacks.  Linking the public university to the community perhaps has never been more critical, and the onus is on the university to devise ways to re-establish itself back into the community's good graces. 

.........The situation may not be as daunting as it might seem, especially in and around urban areas and university towns where the cultural intelligentsia tends to live and where links may already exist, however loosely.  But how can we tighten these links? 

........The quote from Hayden Carruth, one of America's grand old academic poets and writers, suggests that it's time the public university descended its proverbial ivory tower and started interacting with the "bozos"--those general readers whose book purchases keep the publishing industry afloat to the tune of billions of dollars each year. 

........Perhaps the greatest challenge lies in the public university's attitude towards the community whose tax dollars often determine the university's very existence.  Sheer academic snobbery all too often blinds the university to believe that the general culture is out of step with the academic literati, and thus the university is right to exclude the community from literary events and professional activities.  In so doing, however, the university ignores the general reader (who, by the way, bridges not just poetry but ALL of the writing arts to the general culture) at its peril.  Academic snobs would do well to remember that as Entertainment Weekly.com said after the Winfrey-Franzen fracas, "America likes its brows set neither excessively high nor low, and &millions of citizens are able to comprehend the subtleties of [literary writing]--even if [the author] happens to appear on TV."

Connect or Perish
.........The dilemma for the public university appears to be this:  connect or perish.  It's not enough to sit around moping about how sports departments get millions of dollars while English departments, which typically oversee the university's literary activities, go begging.  (More often than not, sports departments pay for themselves what other department can say that?)

.........What English departments need to do is a bit of self-marketing:  find out what services it can provide both on and off campus.  The poetry scene is hot right now and, like it or not, hip hop poetry and slammin' are probably here to stay.  Why not add the public university to the list of places where people can pay a few dollars to see or participate in a poetry reading?  Why should bookstore chains be the only places to host major slams?  And if the university simply can't bring itself to do slams, it can still sponsor monthly poetry readings and charge a nominal fee.

..........And don't forget other literary forms. While in graduate school at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), I joined an organization called Sigma Tau Delta (Sigma Tau), a national honors society for English majors.  In 2001, Sigma Tau held its regional meeting at UDC.  As I listened to the students read their critical essays to meager audiences, I remembered that the D.C. metropolitan area has some of the most educated people in the U.S.  Why didn't we invite the community to the readings?  Any time you can get hundreds of people out to listen to lectures on such arcane subjects as Byzantine architecture (as a museum did recently), surely Sigma Tau can treat this same public to a feast of literary criticism! 

New Wine in Old Wine Glasses
..........After the conference, I broached the subject with an English professor.  Almost immediately, I was confronted with the traditional, insular attitude that said in so many words:  "This is our school, and we don't need to include the outside world in our activities."  I refused to back down, repeatedly reminding her that if it wasn't for the support of the "outside world," there probably would be no university. 

.........I truly believe that the reason UDC spends so much time fighting for its right to exist as a university (certain politicians would like to turn UDC into a two-year community college/technical school) is because it lacks the support of truly influential people, especially the cultural intelligentsia who, if properly approached, would go to bat for the university against those who, through endless rounds of budget cuts and "unfunded mandates," continually drain the university's finances.  Ironically, it is often the cultural intelligentsia who the university seems particularly adroit at avoiding.

.........How did my conversation with the professor end?  She was unyielding.  And so was I.  But there's hope yet.  Both she and the Sigma Tau faculty sponsor recently retired.  I am now an adjunct professor at UDC, and I'm on good speaking terms with the head of the English department and the new sponsor. 

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