[lbo-talk] More on Literature and Revolution

Mark Bennett bennett.mab at gmail.com
Sun Apr 26 22:01:30 PDT 2009


"There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors there is great scarcity." Montaigne "Of Experience".

On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 9:43 PM, Joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:


> "During my time as a student in the arts, two then current and well known
> writers were definitely kept out of the discussion of US art history --
> Arnold Hauser and Andre Malraux. So then the social condition of the arts
> and their psychological unity and function that Trotsky talks about were
> both excluded. These writers including Trotsky of course in effect
> represented the illegitimate realm, as opposed to the legitimate realm of
> the academy."
>
> Thank you Chuck. You picked out some great passages. When I read the
> above...about the critics excluded from criticism, it brought back something
> even more incredible.
>
> When I used to teach the introductory composition class at various
> colleges, I always included Marx's very brief essay on money (Money is the
> pimp between man and the object of his desire...) into the reading list.
> It's short; it's beautifully written; it's easy to understand: nearly
> undergraduate proof. I used it to show the students that Marx was
> comprehensible and that he had interesting things to say.
>
> On time, at the end of a class where we had discussed this essay, everyone
> filed out except one student who just sat at his desk, shaking his head. I
> asked him if anything was the matter. No, he replied, it was just that he
> had taken a class on Marxism and they had never read anything by Marx. This
> essay was his first experience with reading Marx.
>
> Joanna
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