Superficial, Trite and Self-Serving
Reader comment on: The English in Us

Submitted by Ben Lifson, Dec 18, 2006 22:33

This is not an article. It is the authors' advertisement for their book--a lame, repulsive advertisement at that. "Ash heap of history" ... "giants" "visually driven pop culture"... "birthright" "encountered" -- and these on only the first page. Weak, trite, embarrassing words and phrases, platitudes and received ideas such as these make it difficult to believe that the authors themselves have ever read the cited works or any of the other works in their new book. The article is so poorly and superficially written, in fact, that it makes one wonder if the Ravitches really compiled and wrote the book themselves, if they didn't, rather, farm it out to literary hacks. After all, from Palgraves Golden Treasury and other musty 19thC anthologies to The Oxford Book(s) of English Prose and English Verse. and other specialized Oxford anthologies there are plenty of anthologies to pillage, with Harold Bloom's Western Canon as a guide. Compare the Ravitches prose, in this article, to anything Geoffrey Grigson, that great 20thC anthologist, wrote in Before the Romantics or any of his onther many exemplary anthologies. and you will see the difference between hack writers (and perhaps hack scholars?) like the Ravitches and a true writer and scholar like Grigson. And then to end the essay with the tired, jingoistic, unsubstantiated (to say nothing of unproven) assertion, The terrorists who attacked America on September 11 despised the tolerance and individualism of our free society. They represent forces in the world that are eager to destroy our civilization and its beliefs. is the most intellectually cheap and intellectually dishonest thing I've seen in what purports to be serious writing in a long time. This article is, to borrow a sentence from William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch, "The most distasteful thing I ever stood still for" in a long, long time. The publishers of The Oxford Book of English Talk, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, The Oxford Book of Carols, The Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse, The Oxford Book of Light Verse, The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, etc. should be ashamed of itself for allowing the Raviches to publish this self-serving, self-glorifying, intellectually shameful tripe.

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