Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Ivy League Caste

What does it say about today's media that this essay by Martin Morse Wooster about America's caste system is getting more attention of the Right than the Left?

http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2736

I've been talking for years about the Ivy League's unhealthy domination of today's literary scene. I disagree with Wooster's article on one point. Having met enough of them, I don't think Ivy Leaguers are very bright, high I.Q. or no high I.Q. What they are is very conformist. Teachable. Obedient.

The point for literature is that a class of unindependent bubble people so out of touch with the vast bulk of American society shouldn't be monopolizing literature, which depends for its force on things like heart, compassion, and hard experience. Haven't we had enough infantile solipsistic intellectualizing-- too many books of the self-congratulatory and the unreadable?

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