I do not believe life is about problems and solutions. I believe it is about dilemmas, and dilemmas don’t have solutions; they have resolutions, which then morph and lead you into future dilemmas. ja I wrote Travis Bickle in order not to become Travis Bickle. – Paul Schrader

In spite years of training, I had not become my mother. I was my father, with ovaries. – Cathi Hanauer

Lähde: The Guardian Weekend 8.3.2003

Some editors contend that, if Genesis can describe the earth’s creation in a thousand words, then no reporter needs any more than four pages of copy for any event of human dimension.

Lähde: Melvin Mencher: News Reporting and Writing

So values are there in literary criticism, but they must never ever show themselves. – – This is possible because of the underlying assumption in literary studies that every text studied in a course is valuable, by definition: what is English literature as an academic discipline if not study of valuable literature? This assumption becomes clear at unexpected (unexpected by me, anyway) moments of staffroom conflict. We can’t teach a course in contemporary literature, I’m told, we don’t yet know which authors and titles are any good. We can’t offer a degree course in creative writing, I’m warned, we wouldn’t know how to assess it – this from the only group of people in the country who make a full-time living from literary criticism.

The problem for the music student, suggests Kingsbury, is focused on the concept of ”talent”. Talent is something that students possess, it is talked about as something real, but it can only be recognized by someone else, by a teacher, and the paradox of music education is its underlying assumption that only the ”talented” few can be taught what is in the end unteachable (because it is, in fact, a quality of the student).

Art music makers also know well enough that their livelihoods depend on commercial logic, that art and commercial values have to reconciled in practice if kept apart in rhetoric – – one can still hear the argument at work on North American classical music radio stations: listen to the deejays imply in their reverent tones of voice that what is on offer is still a transcendent experience even if it is now punctuated by advertisements for insurance.

Lähde: Simon Frith: Performing Rites

It is a relatively recent phenomenon for us to be aware of what’s going on all over the world. We’re not wired up to cope with the suffering of huge numbers of anonymous people. – – So it’s a triumph of reason that most of us feel that if it’s terrible that someone should be starving to death on our own doorstep, then it is equally terrible if they are starving a million miles away. It takes an intellectual effort to make that transposition.

Lähde: Julian Baggini (G2 4.2.2003)

Viitaten aikaisempaan muovikassijuttuun, haluasin vielä sanoa, että Sunday Timesissä minua ei vaivaa lehden sodanmyönteisyys (eikä liene mikään yllätys, että minä en puolla uutta sotaa Persianlahdella). Onhan Guardianissakin harva se päivä kolumneja tai editoriaaleja, joissa puolustetaan sodan oikeutusta, eikä niiden lukeminen tuota minulle minkäänlaisia vaikeuksia, päin vastoin.

Sen sijaan minun on hankala ymmärtää, minkälainen ideologia lehdellä on uutiskynnyksen ja -agendan suhteen, jos maan historian laajin mielenosoitus ei ole päivän tärkein uutinen. Ainakin päällepäin kyseessä tuntuisi olevan institutionaalisen vallan pahimmanlaatuinen väärinkäyttö, krooninen epäusko vox populiin. Aion kyllä silti jatkaa Timesinkin lukemista.