I like the idea that it was all in good fun. If only we had context!

True, but you said, “Terry Eagleton is Utah-obsessed.” Obsessed is the word we use when we talk about an irrational interest in an actress that might lead one to try and shoot the president–though most obsession is not that dangerous. My post was meant to suggest that Eagleton doesn’t have some irrational obsession with Mormons or BYU but has an interest based on family history.

Come to think of it I may have been reacting more to the last paragraph: “As for the Mormon potshot: eh, whatever. It’s sort of like the potshots on Gilmore Girls — I still find you somewhat witty and interesting, but think you’d do best to keep to what you actually know.”

I suspect he does know what he was talking about. If Eagleton had said, “My father-in-law teaches at BYU and has to carry around this stupid beard card,” would it seem less shallow to you? We have a marvelous capacity, we hyu mans, to trivialize complaints about conditions that don’t affect us personally. I don’t know if John Murphy does wear a beard. I last saw him in 1995 at the Flannery O’Connor 70th anniversary symposium, which he organized, and I don’t remember, but if he doesn’t I suspect he knows someone who is affected personally by the university’s beard policy, as do I.

It’s also true that people who don’t have a personal stake in a particular religious or cultural question can perceive the struggles over such questions as no more important than squabbling over which end of an egg to break open, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.

I suspect Eagleton knows perfectly well his remark is a potshot and expects it to be taken in that spirit. That he chose to take his potshot at BYU’s beard policy rather than, say, BJU’s interracial dating policy may suggest a certain affection for Mormons. Shortly before his death Fred Rogers was on the Diane Rehm Show (http://wamu.org/programs/dr/02/12/17.php) and mentioned meeting Eddie Murphy at a studio where he had gone to tape something. He was surprised at how warmly Murphy greeted him, considering he had just done some sketches lampooning Fred’s neighborhood. “You don’t think we’d want to make you famous if we didn’t love you,” Murphy replied.

Which is, in a way, hypocritical of me, since part of what I’m saying here is that I can’t bring myself to be overly interested in literary criticism that doesn’t mesh with my own worldview. Still, that’s more or less how it is…

The nice thing is that well-grounded litcrit can often (surprisingly) be translated from one worldview to another. Insightful readings by Marxist/feminist/postmodernist/Freudian/archetypal critics can offer value to Mormon readers. But I feel no compunction to respect sly little digs at my worldview that have nothing to do with litcrit, but only to do with trying to trying to made me feel like I don’t belong in the clubhouse.

My recollection of Eagleton was that he was certainly one of the most approachable of Marxist literary scholars. And at a conceptual level, I agree that tracing power concerns within literature is a direction that’s highly consistent with gospel concerns. However, a lot of Marxist literary criticism tends (from my experience) to be highly obsessed with its own concerns: engaged in a debate over dogmas that wouldn’t be out of place (except for the specifics) in a medieval discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Part of the problem is that from what I’ve seen, literary interpretation – including Marxist literary interpretation, including postmodern literary interpretation, including feminist literary interpretation – tends to be very heavily rooted in some particular view of The Way The World Is. It’s a debate about Truth, even when those engaged in it are postmodernists who (officially) deny that there is any Truth out there.

All that being the case, I’m not inclined to feel very charitable about those who use literary theory as a forum for bashing my worldview – typically without acknowleding either (a) that my worldview even has standing to return the favor, or (b) that their own rhetoric is in defense of a worldview that is at heart no less arbitrary – no less a matter of belief (as opposed to “rationality”) – than my own. The characteristic rhetorical move of postmodernism is a kind of condescending dismissiveness, from what I’ve seen. Of course, that’s hardly unique to postmodernism either…

Sorry. It’s a bad day, and I have a headache.

I wonder if Eagleton is aware that there’s “no support in Scripture” for scripture citations being required in how a church-owned university sets its dress and grooming policy.

It’s a cheap shot utterly devoid of a framing logic, as vapid as demanding the Air Force cite scripture for its beard card policy.

(I also like how he seques from “flagrantly ideological” deviations to beard cards in the space of a single sentence. Come now, Mr. E… is that worst heresy you can drum up?)

– Lee Allred

It was a very difficult chapter to read, so I was pleasantly surprised, when I got back to Provo several years later, at how accessible Literary Theory: An Introduction is–at least the first chapter, The Rise of English. It’s a popular book and I could only get ahold of it once or twice while I still had my UVSC library card, good at any academic library in the state.

That chapter helped me understand why I’ve never seen an interpretation of Othello as an abusive husband, except the one I wrote. English was invented as an academic discipline in late Victorian times by academics who wanted a back door to let women into the academy. They thought English would be sufficiently non-taxing for women’s inferior intellects. And one way they controlled the discipline was to teach women that literature is not about their lives, or the teachers’ lives, or anything quotidian, really. It exists in its own rarefied realm. (See Helene Hanff’s Q’s Legacy for an account of reading some of Arthur Quiller-Couches textbooks for English classes.)

This was right when plays like A Doll’s House or novels like Jude the Obscure (I’ve never read it, but listened to a recording recently, knowing that Father Time and the other children would be there hanging from the ceiling to haunt)were insisting that literature was very much about our daily lives–but of course Henry Gibson (listen to Laugh-In if you want to hear how he pronounces his name) and Thomas Hardy weren’t studied in the universities.

Anyway, I was mentioning something about Eagleton to Linda Adams one night at Charlotte England’s for the AML prizewinners reading, and she said, “You know, he’s John Murphy’s son-in-law,” John Murphy being the devout Catholic who was a visiting professor the year I took Marilyn Arnold’s Cather class (1983, I think), and came to speak to the class, and also joined the BYU faculty. I think he’s retired now, having reached the age of all those trombones leading the big parade.

So Eagleton is not speaking from ignorance. He has a family connection with BYU of many years’ standing.

I have somewhat to say about the beard rule, but we also have a tool/camping shower to attend across the street. More later.