March 30, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston
I don’t know a lot about the sociology of art. But one thing that’s interesting about art is that art is artificial. That means there’s a special relationship between audience and artist. They have an unspoken agreement that it’s all a lie, that it isn’t real. But at the same time, they have to pretend that it is real.
Magicians make a big show of making things disappear or reading minds. They wave their hands in a big flourish or furrow their brows in deep concentration. But we know they’re just pretending. They don’t come right out and say, “This is just a trick – the vase of flowers didn’t really disappear, and I can’t really read your mind.” But we know that’s the deal, the same way we know, without being told, that the actors playing Romeo and Juliet don’t really die.*
Novelists, too, admit that they are telling lies. They make up characters, give them made-up names. Alexander Portnoy (he of the complaint) is a fiction, a character invented by Philip Roth. But in later novels, Roth went on to create a character, Nathan Zuckerman, who was very much like Roth and had even written a book much like Portnoy’s Complaint. Roth was deliberately blurring the line between author and character, between reality and fiction.
In Operation Shylock, he smudged that line even further. The novel is subtitled, “A Confession,” and its narrator is a novelist named Philip Roth. Yet another character in it is a man who goes around claiming to be Philip Roth and propounding political ideas that are at odds with those of the real Philip Roth. Well, not the real Philip Roth the author, but the “real” Philip Roth the narrator of the novel. Or are those two the same?
And now life is imitating art. A fictitious Philip Roth is saying things that the real Philip Roth disagrees with. As Judith Thurman reports in the current New Yorker, a right-wing Italian tabloid published an interview with Roth by freelancer Tomasso Debenedetti in which Roth said he was “disappointed” with President Obama. Asked about this by another Italian journalist (for the respectable and more leftish La Repubblica), Roth said he’d never heard of Debenedetti or the tabloid and that the statement was “completely contrary to what I think. Obama, in my opinion, is fantastic.”
I suppose there’s a satisfying irony here – Roth’s own meta-chickens coming home to roost – but he’s not the only one. Debenedetti also published an interview with John Grisham, whose novels stick closely to the conventions of fiction. That interview too was critical of Obama. And it was entirely made up by Debenedetti.
(I have a personal association between Roth and sociology. I was in grad school when the first chapter of Portnoy’s Complaint was published in the premiere issue of New American Review, a journal formatted as a drugstore paperback – same shape, same size – but with articles and fiction inside. I got a copy at the newsstand and had barely started reading it when it was time for a class with Talcott Parsons. I sat there in the auditorium, keeping the book discreetly below the level of the seat in front me, trying to read the story and listen to the lecture at the same time – an impossible task. It was Portnoy or Parsons. I think I made the right decision, but a few of my classmates wondered just what it was that Parsons was saying that I found so amusing.)**
*Magicians resent performers who claim to have real magical powers but who are, in reality, just doing magic tricks – people like self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller. In those cases, magicians will do what they would never do otherwise – expose the secrets of the “psychic’s” tricks.
** UPDATE, July 20. Our library has . New American Review volumes on the shelf, and in checking yesterday, I discovered that it was issue #3, not #1. The excerpt from Portnoy was the first piece in that issue, and it began with this sentence: “Did I mention, Doctor, that when I was fifteen I took it out of my pants and whacked off on the 107 bus from New York?” No wonder Parsons lecturing on Weber lost out.
The Envelope Please . . .
March 27, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston
. . . . and please let it be a thick one.
It’s the other collegiate March Madness. Acceptances and rejections are going out to high school seniors.
The Wall Street Journal had an article last week about very successful people who were rejected by their first choice (which was mostly Harvard). It was a feel-good article, or more accurately a don’t-feel-bad article. See, even if you don’t get into your first choice, you can still become fabulously wealthy and famous. Look at Warren Buffett, Meredith Viera, Ted Turner, Tom Brokaw, et. al.
That’s what we social scientists call anecdotal evidence – examples. Examples exemplify, they don’t prove. On the other side, you could just as easily paraphrase Sophie Tucker: “I’ve been accepted, and I’ve been rejected. And believe me, honey, accepted is better.”
There may be actually be some systematic evidence showing that when you control for other success-related factors like ability, it doesn’t much matter which college you go to. But I’m not at all sure about this, and if such evidence exists, the WSJ did not cite it.
As for assuaging the pain, I wonder if stories about Brokaws and Buffetts help as much as does talking with others around you. At the high school my son attended, the kids have a “Wall of Rejection” where they tape their 8 ½ x 11" pieces of bad news. The kids see all the others they know – even the smart ones – who got the same thin envelope. And unless a kid believes strongly that he’s the next Warren Buffett, the news about classmates may be more comforting than knowing about celebs.
I blogged this a couple of years ago – I’m not too ashamed to be recycling my garbage. Go here for the story, some pictures, and a great letter one of the kids wrote.
Posted by Jay Livingston
. . . . and please let it be a thick one.
It’s the other collegiate March Madness. Acceptances and rejections are going out to high school seniors.
The Wall Street Journal had an article last week about very successful people who were rejected by their first choice (which was mostly Harvard). It was a feel-good article, or more accurately a don’t-feel-bad article. See, even if you don’t get into your first choice, you can still become fabulously wealthy and famous. Look at Warren Buffett, Meredith Viera, Ted Turner, Tom Brokaw, et. al.
That’s what we social scientists call anecdotal evidence – examples. Examples exemplify, they don’t prove. On the other side, you could just as easily paraphrase Sophie Tucker: “I’ve been accepted, and I’ve been rejected. And believe me, honey, accepted is better.”
There may be actually be some systematic evidence showing that when you control for other success-related factors like ability, it doesn’t much matter which college you go to. But I’m not at all sure about this, and if such evidence exists, the WSJ did not cite it.
As for assuaging the pain, I wonder if stories about Brokaws and Buffetts help as much as does talking with others around you. At the high school my son attended, the kids have a “Wall of Rejection” where they tape their 8 ½ x 11" pieces of bad news. The kids see all the others they know – even the smart ones – who got the same thin envelope. And unless a kid believes strongly that he’s the next Warren Buffett, the news about classmates may be more comforting than knowing about celebs.
I blogged this a couple of years ago – I’m not too ashamed to be recycling my garbage. Go here for the story, some pictures, and a great letter one of the kids wrote.
ΑΚΔ 2010
March 25, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston
Seventeen Montclair State sociology students were inducted into ΑΚΔ last night. They are
Our speaker was Jamie Fader of SUNY Albany, shown here with Faye Allard (they were students together at Penn).
For the past several years, Jamie has been following fifteen inner-city kids from Philadelphia who had been sent to a privately run rural lock-up for juveniles a five-hour drive from home. These were kids the court deems as “serious” in terms of either risk or needs. Jame hung with these kids during and after their incarceration, and she is especially interested in how they fare after release. The short answer is: not so good.
These kids’ lives are something out of the “The Wire.” Many had childhoods devoid of experiences that most of us take for granted. The drug trade is pervasive; most of them were sent away for drug offenses – even possession. When they return, the year or so of coercive “therapy,” based on long discarded psychological ideas about criminals, is usually of minimal help, despite the $80,000 a year price tag. It takes incredible strength to wall yourself off from the pressures of the environment – social, physical, and economic. They get back to the ’hood, they need money, and drug dealing is something they know how to do.
But while Jamie’s talk may not have been so hopeful about juvenile justice, it was inspiring as an example of ethnographic sociology.
(Here are a couple of other pictures from the evening. It’s obvious that the Socioblog needs a better, or at least more persistent, photographer.)
Yasemin, Sangeeta, Janet
Posted by Jay Livingston
Seventeen Montclair State sociology students were inducted into ΑΚΔ last night. They are
Viviana Bertaggia Michael Fichter Jessica Gomez Rebecca Helfer Kyle Hoekstra Richard Imparato Elizabeth James Nicole Joseph Anthony Marrone | Joseph Molitoris Nicholas Pampaloni Heather Posternock Brittney Price Jadqueline Price William Parker Reynolds Tamara Suvil Andrea Swinson |
Our speaker was Jamie Fader of SUNY Albany, shown here with Faye Allard (they were students together at Penn).
For the past several years, Jamie has been following fifteen inner-city kids from Philadelphia who had been sent to a privately run rural lock-up for juveniles a five-hour drive from home. These were kids the court deems as “serious” in terms of either risk or needs. Jame hung with these kids during and after their incarceration, and she is especially interested in how they fare after release. The short answer is: not so good.
These kids’ lives are something out of the “The Wire.” Many had childhoods devoid of experiences that most of us take for granted. The drug trade is pervasive; most of them were sent away for drug offenses – even possession. When they return, the year or so of coercive “therapy,” based on long discarded psychological ideas about criminals, is usually of minimal help, despite the $80,000 a year price tag. It takes incredible strength to wall yourself off from the pressures of the environment – social, physical, and economic. They get back to the ’hood, they need money, and drug dealing is something they know how to do.
But while Jamie’s talk may not have been so hopeful about juvenile justice, it was inspiring as an example of ethnographic sociology.
(Here are a couple of other pictures from the evening. It’s obvious that the Socioblog needs a better, or at least more persistent, photographer.)
Yasemin, Sangeeta, JanetAge, Generation, or History?
March 23, 2010
Posted by Jay Livingston
On questions of interracial dating and homosexuality, older people are generally more conservative than younger people. But is that because people get more conservative as they age, or is it because different generations have different ideas? (The aging effect is also known as “life-cycle”; the generation effect is also referred to as “cohort.”)
When I blogged this last May (here) in connection with a story about segregated high school proms, I forgot to add a third factor – the effects of historical change. Regardless of age or generation, people who experience the same historical changes – the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, 9/11 – may be affected in a similar way whether they are in their teens or their seventies.
In that post, I wondered whether today’s kids will get more conservative as they age. Or will they retain the attitudes of their generation? The Pew Foundation has some relevant information. Its report on “Millenials,” has a graph showing changes in attitudes towards interracial dating in each of four cohorts.
Each generation is more accepting of interracial dating than are those that came before. And each generation itself becomes more liberal over time. As the report’s authors, Scott Keeter and Paul Taylor, say, the upward trend of all lines is probably not part of some general liberalization over the life cycle; it is almost certainly a period effect. When it comes to interracial dating, we’ve all become liberals.
(I don’t know what happened in 1991 to make the older generations become suddenly more accepting of interracial dating. A change in the wording of the question? A change in the formula for choosing the sample? Or was it a real change in attitude?)
Hat tip: Lisa at Sociological Images.
Posted by Jay Livingston
On questions of interracial dating and homosexuality, older people are generally more conservative than younger people. But is that because people get more conservative as they age, or is it because different generations have different ideas? (The aging effect is also known as “life-cycle”; the generation effect is also referred to as “cohort.”)
When I blogged this last May (here) in connection with a story about segregated high school proms, I forgot to add a third factor – the effects of historical change. Regardless of age or generation, people who experience the same historical changes – the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, 9/11 – may be affected in a similar way whether they are in their teens or their seventies.
In that post, I wondered whether today’s kids will get more conservative as they age. Or will they retain the attitudes of their generation? The Pew Foundation has some relevant information. Its report on “Millenials,” has a graph showing changes in attitudes towards interracial dating in each of four cohorts.
Each generation is more accepting of interracial dating than are those that came before. And each generation itself becomes more liberal over time. As the report’s authors, Scott Keeter and Paul Taylor, say, the upward trend of all lines is probably not part of some general liberalization over the life cycle; it is almost certainly a period effect. When it comes to interracial dating, we’ve all become liberals.
(I don’t know what happened in 1991 to make the older generations become suddenly more accepting of interracial dating. A change in the wording of the question? A change in the formula for choosing the sample? Or was it a real change in attitude?)
Hat tip: Lisa at Sociological Images.
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