It is interesting to look at the responses to this reasonably straightforward essay as some sort of Rorschach test. People seem to see in it what they wish to see (a pretty common response). But what I find most interesting is the lack of real argumentation. Most of the response falls into various logical fallacies – ad hominem attacks, guilt by association, misattribution, argument by assertion, misdirection, false strawmen, argument by disparagement, and red herrings. There appears to be little engagement with his actual argument.
Epstein's central argument – English Departments at American Universities are doing a disservice to literature by focusing on obscure, ideological or faddish issues (exemplified by the common prism of race, class and gender) at the expense of teaching a love of reading and a common grounding in literature. The evidence to support this is the declining undergraduate interest and increasing irrelevance of English Department luminaries in the wider culture. He ascribes this decline to a loss of standards (his terms are high and low culture) and the former practice of distinguishing between them.
Epstein’s essay would seem to be part of a larger lament of the passing of the Classical Liberalism of the Enlightenment era augmented by the empiricism of later practitioners. Basically the economic, political and cultural world created by Newton, Smith, Locke, Jefferson, Madison, and Darwin. It seems indisputable that these Classical Liberals find little shelter in many English Departments today – as little shelter as there is comprehension of their works and the context of their times. Hirsch, Postman, et al. have made similar arguments.
Epstein has written what is nominally a book review but used that as a platform to make a larger argument. That isn’t an uncommon approach. Does his essay fall short in terms of a book review? Probably. He advances enough information to give you a sense of the book but not enough to make independent judgments. However, given its form, one has to judge the essay as an argument rather than as a review. So what is his argument? It seems that he is arguing that the intrusion of ideology, history and other issues into the study of Literature along with the abandonment of some means of distinguishing “good” books from “less good” books has led to a disengagement on the part of university students from the study of Literature and a consequent failure to cultivate a love of Literature. He advances the information that undergraduates taking a degree in English has shrunk from 7.6% of the student body to 3.9%.
There are five pertinent questions – 1) Is it real?, 2) Do we understand the causes?, 3) Can we change it?, 4) Is it important?, 5) Is it worth it?
Is the decline real? – Probably worth checking the numbers but his numbers are consistent with others I have seen.
Do we understand the causes for the decline? – Here is where things come off the rails. He proposes that the cause is a change in focus of Literature teaching away from standards to an increased focus on ideological and historical issues (race, class, gender). He makes a logical argument with some indicative but not by any means conclusive observations. There are certainly alternate propositions (which might include - increasing focus in the culture on training rather than education, cost of university versus the anticipated remuneration of a Literature major, shortened student attention spans, etc.)
Can we change the decline? – Possibly but depends on what the true nature of the decline might be – what are the root causes? If it is ideological infusion, then we can change it. If it is increased focus on monetizing education, then that might be more problematic.
Is it important to halt the decline? – Important to whom and for what reasons? To professors? Sure it is important. To students? Maybe, maybe not. To the continuity of our culture? I would argue yes.
Is it worth it? – The existential question.
I would argue that Epstein has a legitimate issue (decline of Literature education), has a rational but incomplete proposition for cause, and that he has not made the case for whether the decline can be or should be halted.
What I find interesting is that no one contests Epstein’s observation (declining English majors), no one offers an alternate explanation for why the decline is happening (other than that he is incorrect about the cause), no one argues that the decline can be halted and no one makes the case for why it ought to be halted.
Following are some of the criticisms advanced against Epstein's essay which seem to me to be irrelevant, and yet which seem to the primary counter-arguments.
Criticisms – “Can’t do maths” In maths we speak of decline in relative or absolute terms. In the context of Epstein’s essay, it is clear that he is speaking of relative decline, a declining percentage of students are committing themselves to the pursuit of an English major. Only about half as many students graduating university with a degree are pursuing English as a degree (from 7.6% to 3.9%). That is a clear signal, however you wish to interpret it. The assertion that he “can’t do maths” is simply wrong.
Guilt by association – His essay and argument can be dismissed because of his associations; i.e. a recommendation from Buckley, and publication in what are apparently deemed the wrong magazines, The Weekly Standard, The New Criterion, and Commentary.
False attribution – One critic attributes a view to Epstein, that the “decline in English majors is due to the fact that we now teach classes about science fiction, fantasy, children's literature, pop culture, women's fiction, Af-Am fiction, etc.” What he actually said was “at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture).” He ascribes the decline to loss of focus on great books. The proliferation of classes in other topics is a symptom of that loss of focus, not an independent cause.
Mischaracterization - “The automatic leftism behind this picture is also part of the reigning ethos of the current-day English Department.” It seems to me that Epstein is advancing this as evidence that the current curricula is an incomplete and misrepresentative presentation of history. Not that “Leftists ruined everything” but rather that the overrepresentation of the Leftist (on the US spectrum) weltanschauung distorts the choices about how to present English literature. He doesn’t mention the supporting evidence but it is certainly available in both studies and in the obvious disconnect between humanities academia and the public at large.
Argument by assertion – “this is why students don't want to be English majors any more. That assertion indicates such an ignorance of how the social sciences work that it takes the breath away from my inner undergraduate, who was a sociology major. His argument for the cause of the decline is “There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself.”
Why is that ignorant? I might agree or disagree but just asserting that it is ignorant doesn’t make it so. There is nothing inherently illogical about his correlation: Loss of focus and intrusion of ideology into English Departments leads to a decline in the percentage interested in majoring in English. Is there data to support it – don’t know but it isn’t on the face of it illogical and therefore ought not to be dismissed by simple assertion. Especially when no alternative explanation is offered.
Argument by disparagement - “officious piece of nonsense”, “cantankerous ideological cant”
Misdirection – “The issue, of course, is that he blames leftists for all that is "wrong" with literature academia today.” But of course he doesn’t blame Leftists. He blames “The automatic leftism behind this picture is also part of the reigning ethos of the current-day English Department.” As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of surveys that document the wide mismatch between the political orientations within academia (and the humanities in particular), and the citizenry of the nation. Epstein is making the argument that that left-oriented world-view within academia has led to a means of teaching English which is of less and less interest to undergraduates.
Misdirection – “As to the experiences of those not of Western Europe in the US...I'd say "exploitation, racism, and prejudice" is a fairly accurate description.” He is not arguing whether history is informed by exploitation, racism, and prejudice. I think he is arguing that an over-focus on those issues (which might be better characterized as History, or Politics, or Philosophy rather than Literature) contributes to a decline in focus on Literature. Just as an historian turns to the literature of the day to inform their understanding of the history, so a person focusing on Literature legitimately turns to the history to inform their judgments of the literature. I think Epstein is pointing out that the one is not the other and that an overemphasis on the non-Literature issues undermines the cultivation of a love of literature. And then there are the occasions when both angles meet in the middle such as Louise MacNeice’s The Gloomy Academic. Whether the worldview that believes that the West is to blame for any or all of the world’s current problems is accurate or not is an entirely different issue from that which Epstein addresses – decline in the study of Literature.
False Strawman – “Ah, yes, the good old days, when old white men ruled the world (and ruled literature, history, and anthropology departments, too, of course), and all the gender bias, colonialism, and racism was simply taken for granted as the way things were and had to be.” I think it is a reach to assume that that is what Epstein is nostalgic for and a slander to ascribe that to him. He seems fairly explicit that his regret is that departments “have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books.” I’ll grant you that what constitutes “good books” is a truck-sized gateway for discussion about various biases and prejudices but he seems to be interested in exactly that – what constitutes great literature rather than what are the histories and ideologies attendant to literature?
False strawman – “it seems to mean that multicultural literature--by which, I assume, he means texts by people of colour?--is all inherently and inevitably part of what he calls low culture” imputes to Epstein what is in the mind of his critic. Epstein is explicit that the problem is not “works of all cultures” but that the problem is ascribing an “equivalence of value to the works of all cultures”. If there is no set of standards or means of differentiation then Literature is really just a subset of the other disciplines (History, Philosophy, Politics). Epstein would appear to believe that there is a means for ranking some sort of aesthetic value to different works and that study of aesthetic values in the written word is what constitutes Literature. If he is correct then his concern seems well-grounded. If he is not correct then it would seem to call into question the study of Literature outside the other disciplines.
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