Forum

The Hillsdale

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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lo

l
fo
us
on
V
o
lu
m
e

III
,I
s
s
u
e

10

TEN DOLLAR BILL

CONTROVERSY

BLANK SPACES
Taylor Swift as a
neo-Victorian

LITERATURE
AND REALITY
Dr. Lindleys on-campus
lecture in print

NOUNS AND VERBS

Words mean things, so
use them well

13

HILLSDALE
ARCHITECTURE

15

OUT ON THE PORCH

The life and death of an
American architectural
icon

19

LEISURE
The basis of schoolwork

22

PHOTO
Tree, Manning Street

24

IRONY
A heartbreaking work of
staggering genius

25

Mission Statement

The Hillsdale Forum is an independent,

student-run conservative magazine at
Hillsdale College. The Forum, in support
of the mission statement of the college,
exists to foster a campus environment
open to true liberal education and
human flourishing. We publish opinions,
interviews, papers, and campus news. The
Forum is a vehicle to bring the discussion
and thought of the students and professors
at the heart of our school beyond the
classroom, because if a practical end
must be assigned to a University course,
it is that of training good members of
society. The Forum brings the learning of
the classroom into the political reality of
campus.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

Watch it.

29

THE SPORTSWRITER
Read it.

30

HONEYMOON
Listen to it.

32

SATIRE
At last, something we
and every other college
campus can agree on.

35

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

NOVEMBER
2015

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
MADELINE JOHNSON
SARAH REINSEL

MANAGING EDITOR
EMILY LEHMAN

EDITOR-AT-LARGE
CHRIS MCCAFFERY

FEATURED ESSAYISTS
CHANDLER RYD
DR. DWIGHT LINDLEY
CHRISTOPHER RILEY
LARA FORSYTHE

STAFF WRITERS

TIMOTHY TROUTNER
SARAH SCHWEIZER 15
STACEY EGGER
NOAH WEINRICH

HEAD DESIGNER
MEG PROM

PHOTOGRAPHER
SARAH REINSEL

s summers reality falls down dead around us, it seems

appropriate to reflect on disillusionment and to seek
the integrity that can disarm it. The distance that opens
up between a soul and the world when something like a
seasons end strikes it is a rich space, if risky. Each in its own
way, the essays and features in this issue ask sharp questions,
force integration. Timothy Troutner seeks to set a recent pair
of Collegian editorials in a broader historical context, while
Chandler Ryd considers how Taylor Swifts Blank Space
persona reflects our position between the Victorians and the
moderns in our search for whats missing. The link between
words and the world comes in for scrutiny as The Forum has
the privilege of publishing Dr. Dwight Lindleys on-campus
lecture What does literature have to do with reality? and
Co-Editor-in-Chief Madeline Johnson considers two parts of
speech she finds too often out of reach.
The issue turns next to a pair of essays reflecting on how
we physically structure our world: Christopher Riley leads
an expert tour through the architecture of Hillsdale County
and Lara Forsythe zeroes in on one particularly significant
architectural feature, the front porch. Managing Editor
Emily Lehman offers a critique of the campus culture of
busyness before Editor-at-Large Chris McCaffery concludes
this issues collection of essays with the first installment of a
three-part examination of ironyone enduring response to
the perpetual betrayal that time brings to all earnest young
things, as November does to Mays green sincerity.
The three pieces of art that our reviewers explore at the end
of the issue are rich with the tensions of pathos and distraction.
Timothy Troutner doesnt just recommend Inside Llewyn
Davis; he articulates an elusive angle of its excellence, as Sarah
Schweizer does with Richard Fords novel The Sportswriter.
Stacey Egger explores the panoply of temporal perspectives
that is Lana Del Reys Honeymoon.
And should all the foregoing fail to galvanize a sincere
response to absurdity, satirist Noah Weinrich offers us some
humor as we give the world the cold shoulder it deserves.
Our hemisphere is tilting into darkness. Curl up with this
magazine and decide how youll face it. F
Co-Editor-in-Chief Madeline Johnson is a junior studying
philosophy. Co-Editor-in-Chief Sarah Reinsel is a junior
studying English and classical education.

FACULTY ADVISER
DR. JOHN SOMERVILLE
3

THE TEN-DOLLAR BILL

CONTROVERSY IGNORES
HISTORY
Feminine imagery on cash is more traditionaland more
Americanthan editorials suggest.
BY TIMOTHY TROUTNER
The recent pair of Collegian editorials on the ten-dollar bill
controversy [Oct. 22], while interesting, failed to consider
the history of United States currency. History suggests
that the history of our currency, particularly in relation
to women, is far more complicated than seniors Micah
Meadowcroft and Josiah Lippincotts arguments suggest.
Depictions of the feminine used to be common place, while
the cult of the statesman on currency is relatively more
recent.
The following is an extremely brief history of portraits
on United States currency. In 1792, the United States coined
its first currency, the half dime. Prominently featured
on the coin was the profile of a womanthe female
personification of liberty. Fascinatingly, the Federalists
had proposed that George Washingtons face should be
on the nations currency, but their proposals failed, in part
because of concerns that this and other Federalist proposals
would represented a capitulation to the model of European
monarchies. No standard United States coin had a portrait

of a historical figure on it until the Lincoln penny, issued

in 1909.
Although the Continental Congress would briefly issue
paper money (which did not feature portraits of political
figures), the true beginning of paper money was in 1861
under Abraham Lincoln. This paper currency, which was
not backed by gold or silver, did feature portraits of Lincoln,
members of his administration, and historical figures like
Alexander Hamilton. Its notably that in 1864, in response
to abuses of the prerogative by Treasury officials, a law was
passed against featuring living people on United States
currency. Although United States Federal Reserve Notes
did not begin to circulate until 1914, there were a variety
of notes issued by the United States government from 1861
onward, featuring a variety of largely political figures.
The United States currency has not been universally
dominated by men. As mentioned earlier, the female
personification of Liberty was the very first portrait on
United States currency, and actually almost completely

AMERICANS SHOULD ASK THEMSELVES WHY THEY MUST REINFORCE

THEIR IDEALS, WHETHER THE CULT OF THE GREAT STATESMEN
OR THE VALUE OF WOMEN AS A NEGLECTED CLASS, BY
BESTOWING UPON THEM THE MORAL
AUTHORITY OF THE ALMIGHTY DOLLAR.

dominated coinage in the 19th century. In addition, Martha

Washington appeared on the one dollar silver certificate
in the 1880s, and Sacagawea, Helen Keller, and Susan B.
Anthony have each appeared on coins at some point in the
last 40 years.
This brief history suggests a number of points. First, adding
female figures to United States currency is not necessarily
an act of identity politics, supposedly a consequence of
our feminist age. In fact, it would be a return, in one way,
to the female imagery which is a rich part of our nations
numismatic history going back to 1792. America associated
its currency with the principles of the goddess liberty, thus
enshrining at least a form of femininity into the American
identity. The United States has found at least one woman in
its history, Martha Washington, worthy of putting on its
paper money, and this happened in 1886. This is not to say
that Americas public recognition of women has always been
sufficient, but it is important to note that adding a woman
to the ten-dollar bill need not be considered a rejection of a
supposedly universal American tradition of male statesmen,
like Lippincott seems to suggest.
Second, the idea shared by both Meadowcroft and
Lippincott that United States currency must include portrait
of great statesmen or other figures who have achieved great
deeds for the republic is not a truly traditional one. It was the
dramatic break caused by the Civil War and the emergency
printing of so called greenback dollars by Abraham Lincoln
which first introduced the portrait of the statesman to United
States currency. If anyone introduced identity politics to
currency, it was Abraham Lincoln and his administration.
Before this, United States currency focused more on the
ideals of the republic, including Greco-Roman idealized
images of Liberty. Portraits of statesmen were originally too
closely associated with the monarchy. With the movement
of the United States towards a more cohesive national
identity under Lincoln and his successors, the cult of the
great statesman began to rise to prominence. Even after
Lincoln, agrarian imagery, the goddess Liberty, and Native
Americans continued to be heavily featured on coins. The

contemporary debate presumes what is actually a more

recent and concerning development, focusing on individuals
instead of the values supposedly embodied by the Founders
republic.
Finally, one should step back and ask why Americans
find it so important to assert their values by placing them
on money. While earlier currency featured national symbols,
this seems to have been more of an organic phenomenon
than later efforts to consciously impose awareness of
national identity on the people. The effort to include In
God We Trust on currency is a prominent example of this.
It was added to coins in 1864 in part as an invocation of
Gods blessing for the North during the civil war. This effort
to assert a civil religion was even more blatant when the
Eisenhower administration added the motto to paper money
in 195657, partially motivated by the opposition to godless
communism. These efforts to honor God and modern
efforts to honor women contain an implicit recognition
that Americas true symbol is the almighty dollar. When we
want to make something sacred, we put it on paper money.
It seems that our increasingly commercial society cannot
help but make statements through the medium of currency.
Even God is somehow authenticated by being placed there.
Returning to the contemporary situation, it would be truly
ironic if Harriet Tubman, a woman who spent her life
fighting against the commodification of human beings, was
affirmed as worthy by being placed on a ten-dollar bill, or if
feminists asserted the value of women through the medium
of currency.
The supposed tradition of honoring great statesmen
on currency is a more recent one, and the presence of the
feminine goes back further still. More importantly, however,
Americans should ask themselves why they must reinforce
their ideals, whether the cult of the great statesmen or the
value of women as a neglected class, by bestowing upon them
the moral authority of the almighty dollar. F
Timothy Troutner is a senior studying history and philosophy.

BLANK SPACES
Underneath the Victorians hope was the same
vacuum that drives Taylor crazy.
BY CHANDLER RYD
He drives a fast little
two-seater into the
motor court of a
sprawling Victorian
estate. He steps out of
the car and enters the
house, looking darkly
into the distance. She
stretches an arm out
to greet her guest,
and he accepts. This
is the first 30 seconds
of Taylor Swifts
collaboration with
director Joseph Kahn
in her Blank Space
music video, but on a base level, this scene plays out every
day in bars, coffee shops, college campuses, and on a host of
social media platforms. Its the beginning of a hookup.
The rest of the video plays out like most hookups do
quick to burn and quick to burn out. For whatever reason
(all we see is her lover-for-a-month staring at his phone
perhaps hes checking another girl out on Tinder) she
explodes in a terrifying whirlwind of revenge: shouting in
his face, burning his clothes, pummeling his two-seater with
a golf club. Arent these quasi-romantic encounters supposed
to be casual? Her passion, both during the relationship and
after, indicates deeper stirrings in her heart. She has a weird
mix of Romantic optimism and jaded pessimism: Its gonna
be forever, or its gonna go down in flames. And she has a
reputation (Aint it funny, rumors fly); shes done this many
times before. Something causes her to voraciously fling into
flings, and she tells us the exact cause of her passion: a blank
space. A vacuum in her heart sucks up men and spits them
out with charred shirts and craterous sports cars. In the
Blank Space music video, Taylor Swifts lyrics and Joseph
Kahns Victorian-era inspired visuals exaggerate the hookup scenario and reveal our cultures simultaneously idealized
and pessimistic view of love.
Ive been referring to the woman in the music video as
the indefinite pronoun her, though Taylor Swift is clearly
the videos subject. I refer to her in an indirect way because
Swift isnt as insane as the woman in the videoits a persona
rather than the pop star herself. This Blank Space persona is
6

a polarization of the
two types of songs
that launched her to
superstardom: love
songs and breakup songs. Weve
been hearing Swifts
break-up songs on
the radio for years,
but who could forget
her tender, youthful
time as country
musics little lovesong darling? Right
from the start, her
discography
was
brimming with break-up melodrama in Picture to Burn,
Teardrops on My Guitar, Cold as You, The Outside, and
Should Have Said Noits nearly half her first album. But
the other half is saturated with young-love guitar strummin
and a slight country twang in Tim McGraw, Stay Beautiful,
Marys Song (Oh My My My), and the massively popular
Our Song. Even as a sixteen-year-old, her music exhibited
a cycle of lyrical love and hate. The Blank Space persona
has been her source of inspiration since before she entered a
recording studio.
In the past ten years, the persona has become more
polarized and passionate. Her sophomore album, released
two years after her first, includes the single Love Story,
which naively references Romeo and Juliet as figures off of
whom to model a lasting relationship. Two songs later in the
album, in White Horse, shes reversed the romance of Love
Story to instead bemoan her naivet and condemn her
Romeo ex-lover. It happens in her third album, too, in Sparks
Fly and then in Better than Revenge, in which she taunts,
Theres nothing I do better than revenge. Her fourth album
contains a few songs pointed somewhere in the direction of
love, and though the persona has clearly matured since her
early years, no one remembers her newer love songs because
theyre no longer her focus. Red saw the release of I Knew
You Were Trouble and We Are Never Ever Getting Back
Togetherthats who the persona has become. Her breakup singles are her selling point, and Taylor Swift has built
her career off of them. But the hope isnt quite gone. Even

in her latest album, 1989, Swift still leaves room in her lyrics
for the expectancy of a brighter future and a longer love. Her
man will come back into style, or come out of the woods, or
shimmer somewhere in her wildest dreams. Swifts music has
a dichotomy of hope and pessimism in regards to loveit
comes to fruition in Blank Space.
Joseph Kahns visual adaptation of Swifts song is more
than the mere cinematographic eye candy to which most
music videos resign themselves; right from the opening shot
and title credits Kahn establishes his goal: to create a film, not
just a music video. Few music videos credit their directors
at any point in their short run-times, but Kahn immediately
signs his name to his work and calls it a film, a story. He tells
his story through Victorian-era visual references.
Kahn references Oscar Wildes novel A Picture of Dorian
Gray to illustrate the Blank Space personas fall from
idealism to pessimism. Throughout the video, Swifts persona
interacts with a painting of her manfirst, she paints his
portrait while saying in her trademark talk-sing voice, I can
make the bad guys good for a weekend, insinuating that with
a stroke of wishful thinking, she can paint over his flaws, in
essence grasping for the hope that he wont turn out like her
previous lover. The persona traps that previous lover, like all
the men before him, in her brushstrokes: their pictures hang
in the hallway like Brownings girl from My Last Dutchess.
Then, when the relationship explodes, she vivisects the
memory of him by stabbing his picture, smashing his car,
and, most disturbingly, kissing him one last time, his body
motionless on the ground, his bottom lip pulled upward
by her grasp on it with her teeth. The sharp and immediate
fall makes the persona seem all the more desperate, much
like Dorians desperation at the end of Wildes novel. Dorian
begins as an idealistic aristocrat, but through the corrupting
effect of the picturehis hidden demonhe falls from
supposed grace to become a murderer. Isnt there a similar
corruption of the heart in Swifts persona? The blank space,
the vacuous holethats where the corruption lies.
Its fitting that Kahn uses Wildes A Picture of Dorian
Gray as a visual spring-board, with the Victorian era
holding the vestiges of Romantic hope and the precursory
sentiments of Materialist pessimism. The Victorians
Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, Eliot, Wilde, (and Dickenson
in America)all sensed, sometimes even without concrete
evidence, the cultural shift out of the high-flown, idealistic,
I sing myself stuff of Romanticism and into to the colder
grip of Materialism. The Victorians existed in the transition.
They held onto the hope of somethingit varied from writer
to writerbut the underpinning beliefs enabling their hope
for something greater were in the process of disappearing.
Agnosticism, individualism, urbanization, and a host of
other rapidly changing cultural forces eroded traditionally
held beliefs of God, the soul, nature, and love. Underneath
the Victorians hope was a blank space.

But the blank space has always been there, right since
the fall of man. Its the human condition to lack an essential
piece of our heart. The Victorianslike any other era before
or after themsensed the space and filled it with something.
The Blank Space personaand our culture at largefills
it with cheap love. We love to hate pop music, but it reflects
mass cultural stirrings better than almost anything else,
and here it elucidates our own cycle of hopeful young love
and then searing pain in failed relationships. We idealize
romantic love, talk about it, hear about it, watch it happen in
front of usthen expect it to die, treat its death almost like
a necessity, perhaps intentionally kill it ourselves, and date
again.
Theres an earnest spirituality in Swifts lyrics; underneath
the sheen of chart-topping breakup songs is the hope of
filling the blank space in her heart with a soul mate. She
falls painfully in and out of love, then sings about it, then
makes billions because we love it: it resonates with us. Our
cultures view on love is a smash up of Romantic idealism
and Materialist pessimism; the Victorians had art for arts
sake, now, in our hookup culture, we have sex for sexs sake.
Are we so shallow? No, we cant be, not since we now see
love as a constitutional right. Theres certainly something
heavier at play than mere sexeveryone tries it, right?then
everyone learns its never just sex. We know theres hope
somewhere beyond pleasure, but weve forgotten where it is;
we put our hope for something greater in the love of another
human being. But the love fails. We expected it to fail. Then
we try again. The cycle of the Blank Space persona is the
cycle of human nature: to dream, to fall, to dream again. Our
generation has a beautiful picture slowly aging, sagging, and
dying, hidden away behind the lyrics of pop songs, while we
remain eternally sexy and nave. Were all nightmares dressed
like daydreams, darling. F
Chandler Ryd is a sophomore studying English.

BY DR. DWIGHT LINDLEY

8

o answer this question, we will have to ask first what

literature itself is, and second, what reality itself
is, for my opening suggestion is that we have trouble with
this question because we are
unclear about its terms.
First, then, what is literature?
While there have been many
answers to this question, I think
we can isolate three strands of
thought emerging from the
classical world that give us our
most basic options: the first I
will call the Ionic tradition
(after Platos Ion), according
to which the poet produces
beautiful poems because he
is inspired and possessed
by some divinity, perhaps
a muse (534b). This model
arises again in the Roman
idea of the vates, and later in
the dark Romantic theory of
Percy Shelley, for whom poets
are the hierophants of an
unapprehended inspiration
(Defense of Poetry 48). The
second model is that of
Aristotle,
who
famously
understood poetry, and in
fact all art, as imitative of
reality: literature is essentially
mimetic. When we hear
Hamlet tell his players to
hold, as twere, the mirror up
to nature, we catch the echo
of Aristotles mimetic theory
(3.2.1819). The third model,
finally, finds its origin in the
poetic theory of Horace,
who recommended in the
Ars Poetica that poets aim
either to do good or to give
pleasureor, thirdly, to say
things which are both pleasing
and serviceable to life (334
335). Literature is to be judged
chiefly in terms of the good it
can do and the pleasure it can
give, then, and we hear later
versions of this theme in, for
example, Sidneys Defense of Poesy, where literatures work is
to teach and delight (10).
What are we to make of these three traditions, and how can
they get us closer to what poetry is? First, I want to suggest

that we need not choose between them, though it seems

that way: at times, we hear latter-day Ionians promoting an
irrationalist view of poetry over against the rationalism of
the Aristotelian model: for example, Wallace Stevens, in his
fascinating essay, The Irrational Element in Poetry. Again,
we are sometimes told that we must choose whether to be
more concerned about poetrys moral meaning or its truthvalue: A Poem should not mean, / But be, according to a
famous verse of Archibald MacLeish (Ars Poetica 2324).
But, as my argument will eventually show, I do not think the
three traditions are irreconcilable: they can, and should be,
synthesized in the right kind of theory.
I want to propose now that we if we attend first to the
Aristotelian model and develop it in the right ways, we will
be able to come back through and weave the other two into
our final account. For Aristotle, poetryliteratureis a

FOR ARISTOTLE, IT IS BEING IN MOTION,

EACH KIND OF THING UNFOLDING IN
ACCORD WITH ITS NATURE. FOR THE
MIMETIC ARTIST, ANY KIND OF MOTION
COULD BE THE OBJECT OF A WORK OF
ARTTENNYSONS EAGLE DIVING, OR
DICKINSONS SNAKE IN THE GRASS
BUT IT IS ESPECIALLY HUMAN ACTION
THAT CONCERNS US.
mimesis of reality, but here we have to stop and ask, what
is reality? For Aristotle, it is being in motion, each kind of
thing unfolding in accord with its nature. For the mimetic
artist, any kind of motion could be the object of a work of
artTennysons eagle diving, or Dickinsons snake in the
grassbut it is especially human action that concerns us, as
there is simply more to care about when rational deliberation
and choice are involved. We might talk first of all about the
dramas that unfold in the lives of characters in fiction, of
the intelligibility of their choices and of the plot in relation
to their traits of character. And this is indeed the heart of
the artists mimesis. But I want to draw attention instead to
that sometimes overlooked aspect of the authors craft: what
I will call the mimesis of the audience. There is no object
for contemplation without a subject, the one contemplating,
and just so no author depicts a drama of character without
also framing a point of view and a progression of realizations
for that characters audience. Art is always participatory. We
speak of a drama as cogent or believable because it is such to
a certain kind of audience, and a good work of literature will
9

construct that audiences role in the work just as carefully

as it does the characters. Indeed, as many critics have
shown over the last forty years, the epistemic drama of
the audience is a crucial part of the reality imitated in a
well-crafted work of fiction (e.g. Stanley Fishs work on
Milton).
What is that epistemic drama? I think it can be
broken down into a few basic elements, which are
present in our every-day lives, just as they are in
literature. In daily life, our experience in the world
is the experience of knowing subjects: as rational
animals, we cannot not want to know the truth about
things and people around us, and we walk into each
situation in life looking to see what it is. The first
stage in any of these epistemic situations is the
initial vision we get of its being: that first vision
might be of a small room full of students and
faculty, slightly warm, tense with expectation,
and yet paradoxically dulled by the time of day,
as well as faintly distracted with hunger. Or,
later today, it might be a home, pulsing with
boyish energy, with a thin layer of detritus
and overturned toys on the floor, the noise
of cooking and flailing infancy just offstage,
and the sense that conditions are stable, but
on the edge of not being so. In either case, one
has gotten an initial sense of the wholethis
is what is happening herewith its complexity,
interpersonal dynamics, and loaded potential: it
is a beautiful thing, if we have time and attention
to devote to it, and it is just enough to stimulate
ones further involvement.
In fact, I want to say that this first stage, our initial
sense of the situation as a whole, leads organically
into our further involvement with it: this is a beautiful
thing, and I want to deal further with it, to understand
it on its own terms and love it for its own sakethis
room, with these persons and things, at this time. That
home, with those persons and things, at that time. I have
picked prosaic examples on purpose in order to show
that this account is true of our lives in general, all the way
down: any rich human situation will lead us into itself, if
we allow it to. Once inside the situation, and committed
to seeing it through, we begin to inquire rationally into

10

its parts: what are these people actually doing? What is the
history of this situation? Does the tension in the air come
from anxious anticipation, as I at first supposed, or from
bitterness and alienation? What needs to be done? What are
the possible trajectories of the moment? At this stagethe
second stagewe are bound to find that some of our initial
conceptions have been faulty, and need to be revised, while
others were spot on: we experience a mixture of surprise,
upheaval, and confirmation. We learn that, as usual, the
thing is much more complicated than we at first supposed,
and yet we are also frequently relieved to find that our initial
grasp was not entirely off base.
By the time the situationan afternoon lecture; an evening
homecomingcomes to a close, we have a revised, more

ONCE I KNOW ALL THE WORK,

TEARS, LOVE, AND JOKES THAT
HAVE GONE INTO THE HOME TO
WHICH I HAVE NOW RETURNED,
I AM ALL THE HAPPIER FOR IT,
ALL THE MORE APPRECIATIVE OF
THAT HOME, THAT FAMILY, THOSE
PEOPLE.
adequate, more complicated view of the whole, but I would
also suggest that we have better grounds for appreciating
its beauty. Once I know all the work, tears, love, and jokes
that have gone into the home to which I have now returned,
I am all the happier for it, all the more appreciative of that
home, that family, those people. If the first stage is a vision
of the whole, and the second stage is the investigation and
complication of that vision, the third stage is the re-formation
of a more adequate, more beautiful, more various account of
the whole. This, I am suggesting, is the common, dramatic
structure of our epistemic lives, and I think it will be even
easier to see in our relations with individual persons over
time. My colleague, my student, my friend, my wife: in the

case of each of these persons, I could chart the stages of the

same cycle, on many a given day. The initial glimpse of the
whole person, the complication and deepening, the revised,
more various, more desirable picture. This is the drama of
personal relationship, and it is easy to see that it unfolds
cyclically: my relation to my wife is still just as dramatic,
in this sense, as it was when we were students. I could say
the same, of course, about my relation to any real friend. A
good relationship deepens over time, dramatically, in both
understanding and wonder at the beauty of the other.
Here, then, is the epistemic drama imitated in a good work
of fiction. As a brief account of Hamlet will show, a good
or great author can reconstruct the same kind of epistemic
experience, with the same three stages and cyclical structure.
In the first few lines of Shakespeares play, we are given a
glimpse of the whole: Whos there?, a fearful Barnardo
asks Francisco, and our minds immediately begin to work,
forming a view of the whole: this opening line, together
with the palpable anxiety, confusion, and heartsickness that
brood over the entire first scene, suggests a human situation
plagued by uncertainty about identity, in which those nearest
are likely to be objects of suspicion and misunderstanding.
Indeed, this turns out to be largely true as we are led further
into the experience of the text, but our initial vision of the
whole is also necessarily unsettled by the unfolding drama:
is Hamlet overplaying his distrust of others out of a desire
not to face his difficult moral situation squarely? Does the
pitiable Ophelia somehow rise above the toxicity of the rest of
the Danish court? Why do the commoners seem unaffected
by the climate of suspicion and skepticism? These and other
complicating questions surprise us with their urgencyeven
as Hamlet is surprised by the wisdom of the gravedigger in
Act Fiveand force us to adjust our initial view, bringing
us to a more satisfying and brilliant account of the whole.
If wonder draws us in initially, leading us further into the
play, forcing us to inquire rationally into its parts, then that
process of rational inquiry leads organically to a new vision
and a deeper wonder, just as in the case of a human situation
or an individual person. We are now ready to read Hamlet
again, beginning from a more complicated grasp of the
whole. In the case of a great work such as this, a lifetime of
dramatic reading becomes easy to imagine, for the cycle is
never finished: we stand to know Hamlet and the situation of
the play better and better with each passing year, all the while

realizing how much they transcend our ability to describe

them. Wonder and understanding coexist dramatically,
just as they do in our most important human relationships
outside books.
Clearly I am suggesting, now, that a good mimesis
unfolds a piece of literature before us in the same way
that a friend unfolds him or herself to us: there is a
sense in each case of a gift of self, a self-revelation set
to open up dramatically through time. This is why
we love literature: because, if it is good, it imitates
the epistemic structure of the relationships we most
value, only in a more focused way. A good book can
be like a good friend, if we let it. Now, these two
qualifications are important: it has to be good, and
we have to let it be itself. The epistemic experience
of reading a work of literature will be better or
worse, depending on the quality of the mimesis:
does the author give us humans, and human
situations, as they actually are, or is there a
noticeable ideological filter? Virginia Woolf s
devastating critique of the early-twentiethcentury novel was that it was all ideas, with
no real people: as she put it, there are no Mrs
Browns in Utopia (Character in Fiction
45). Does the narration explain the characters
conditions too much, or does it reveal who they
aretheir intelligibility and their mysteryin
flashes of action and speech? A good mimesis
will unfold itself just as a person normally does.
On the other hand, again, as in friendship, our
orientation toward the text must be of a certain
kind if it is to unfold itself before us. Do we let the
text be itself, or do we insist on imposing a model?
It is easy to lampoon some of the more absurd
Freudian or Marxist readings, and forget our own
temptation to fit the text into a box. When Yeats died,
W.H. Auden wrote ominously that his poetry would
no longer be his own: the words of a dead man / Are
modified in the guts of the living (In Memory of W.B.
Yeats, 2223): of course we are going to have a point-ofview, but do we try to avoid modifying the words of the
dead man? This would be to treat the text as we would a
good friend, and it is essential to a good ethics of reading:
if we fail to let the text be itself, we will miss the unfolding

11

drama. We will miss both the wonder and the intelligibility of of our epistemic lives, then it must be moral just as our
the thing. It is not that we will actually change the meaning of epistemic lives are. That is, as I have already suggested, moral
the work; we will just keep ourselves from seeing it. The loss character will necessarily shape the way one reads a text.
is all ours. Clearly, then, if good literature unfolds itself on And yet the reverse is also true: the faithful reading of a text,
the model of a good friend, interpretation must be a matter especially the reading of it over time, will necessarily make a
for great care indeed.
moral difference in the reader, educating even as it delights.
At this point, at least one aspect of the Aristotelian Inasmuch as we open ourselves to the revelation of the text,
model should be clear: that
letting it be itself, we will be
good literature imitates
changed. The Horatian
the epistemic structure
element in literature, like
of personal life. Perhaps
the Ionic, finds its place if
we can now make our
we first grant a rich enough
WHAT IS LITERATURE, THEN,
way back to the other
account of the reality
two traditions, the Ionic
imitated.
FINALLY? IT IS AN IMITATION OF
and the Horatian. Their
What is literature, then,
insights, I think, have an
finally? It is an imitation
THE REALITY OF LIFE IN ALL ITS
important, intelligible role
of the reality of life in all
to play in the theory I have
its revelatory givenness
REVELATORY GIVENNESS AND
been developing. First, the
and moral richness, an
Ionic: if the account so far
imitation that draws us
MORAL RICHNESS, AN IMITATION
has been correct, the drama
further into the drama
THAT
DRAWS
US
FURTHER
INTO
of reading, like the drama
of understanding typical
of life, begins in wonder,
of a life well-lived. The
THE DRAMA OF UNDERSTANDING
which steadily deepens as
epistemic stages we cycle
the reader is led further
through in reading and
TYPICAL
OF
A
LIFE
WELL-LIVED.
into rational study of the
re-reading a good piece of
text. In a good reader, an
literature are precisely the
ever-greater understanding
same stages that deepen our
of the parts and the whole
understanding of life itself,
will yield an ever greater
along with our wonder at
wonder at the being represented in the work: it has been its transcendent beauty. That is, the drama of reading is the
given to us, just as the self-revelation of a friend is given to drama of a life well-lived. If man is a rational animal (and
us, and the more we know of this gift, the more we see that it I suspect he is), then man is a dramatic animal, caught up
transcends us. Here, the truth of the Ionic tradition becomes in a cyclical ascent of wonder and knowing that may lead,
clear: a good mimesis is revelatory inasmuch as all beingall eventually, beyond the sun, and the other stars.
creationis revelatory. The more we know of it, the more
it transcends us. The Horatian element may be even easier Dr. Dwight Lindley is an assistant professor of English at
to see: if the drama of reading is analogous to the drama Hillsdale College.

12

and

COMMON NOUNS
ACTION VERBS
BY MADELINE JOHNSON

Sentences are like pagodas: airy little meeting places for human
communion that reveal their creators inner characters and
shape the shared environment in unrepeatably particular ways.
And like pagodas, theyre better when theyre colorful.
Ive heard my generation described as aggressively
inarticulate, and while I count myself the awestruck friend
of many strikingly articulate young folks, I myself readily
subscribe to the descriptor. I cannot tell you [. . . ahemYes.]
how often in everyday conversations Im stopped short by
the absence of . . . not just le mot juste, but of any word, any
word at all, until, after a great, blind struggle, I once again
supply the most general specimens of the required parts of
speech.
When are we gonna . . . do the thing?
Menaces to articulacy roam each generations landscape
as it takes on for itself the task of learning to speak. When
I scrutinize ours, I can pick out two in particular. The first
has shaped the immediate experience of life from which
flows the impulse to articulate, and the second operates on
language itself.
The Screen has been charged with many crimes. I do
not advocate the death penalty, but its a fact that whatever
else they do, screens monotonize our physical experience.
When I want to ascertain my financial situation, to enrich
my atmosphere with music, to learn about a national tragedy,
to buy a book, to enter into a friends global adventures, to
practice my French, to navigate my city, to decide where to
eat, to learn a new word, or to settle a dispute, I differ from my
forebears in a significant way. Where they may have fingered

silver coins; plucked sheepgut strings; pressed their

way into a crowd; ducked
into a sidewalk book stall; set up a projector, screen, and
slides; hunted up a foreigner; climbed to a high point; asked
a local; paged through a dictionary; or gone to a field, chosen
seconds, and drawn a pistol, I repeatedly tap my finger on a
small plastic rectangle.
No wonder my speech is bland.
Figurative language is the peculiar glory of the rational
animal. To tie some mute objects together in speech and
wink to one another, knowing that theyre more than what
they look like to the fleshy eye, is to trace out again in
miniature the great joke of being both a sack of blood and
bones and a knower of the essences of things. They tied the
knot, we say, savoring the very unspokenness of the mystery
that the simple image signifies. Figures of speech dignify our
merely material movements with the spiritual significance
they possess as the movements of a rational creature. The
colorful colloquialisms that render rural speech quaint and
somehow profound come from a tactile engagement with life
that we simply get less of.
We still twirl our sentences around when we get bored, of
course, and when attended to, our habits of embellishment
are just as reflective of our digitized linguistic environment as
earlier generations have been of their pastoral or mechanized
ones. We let syllables fizzle out into abbreviated caricatures
of speech. We pour jokes into the molds of memes we dont
fully understand. We reflect the experience of reading hastily

13

composed prose by voicing things in badly punctuated

monotones, our delicately imbalanced inflections reflecting
the forgotten question mark, the misplaced line break. Fun,
just a little grey. Its missing the muscles of the back aflame,
the rhythm of the shoulder rocking.
So life glows and is glassy: I look and know, I tap and do.
The things that want naming often live in a plane of artificial
light. But further, the pool of verbiage from which they draw
their names has its hazards, too.
The second outlaw whose face I post for wariness is
The Brand. The marketplace is where weve always gone to
exchange both things and words, and the sellers of wares
occupy an influential place in the forging of language. The
narrators of contemporary markets map a vast linguistic
domain with unprecedentedly intricate territorial boundaries.
As manufactured products became more and more
processed, required more and more specialized apparatus to
produce, and, especially, became more and more numerous
and various, the people who made things had not only to
supply us with things we knew we needed, but also to narrate
for us where their products fit into our lives. Thus began a
new genre in the history of human literature, one designed
not to recognize sameness, not to call out the essence of
different particulars and give them all one common and true
name and thus to render it intelligible to the rational intellect
and the deliberative will for contemplation and choice, but
rather! instead! very differently! to officially differentiate each
particular and affix to each one a trademark to keep them
that way. The Epic, the Romance, the Novel, the Brand Name.
The virtue of a name is not just to provide an object
with a unique handle for reference by our mental software.
Conventional names for the fixtures of human life are
invitations to fruitful etiological mythologizing. Theyre
cultural artifacts, carrying with them, like family names, a
history. Theres no hand-me-down wisdom in a brand name,
by contrast, just the amusing suggestion of a conferenceroom scene of which this particular string of adjectives was
the fiercely debated product. Mass-produced uniqueness is
often hard to remember, though, and further, we might have
a visceral aversion to adopting it because we can smell its
impersonal commercial origins. Can I get the . . . [squint at
the display; skip four chipper, hyperbolic, punny, or suggestive
descriptors] car . . . wash . . . please?
It may seem ill-humored of me to pick a fight with the
cute narrative embellishments of local establishments wares,

14

but here is my concern: I am twenty years old, and I have

found myself of late staring at objects and uttering, with the
triumph of a three-year-old, the common nouns that name
them. The objects in my world are so stickered with the labels
necessitated by the infrastructure of our technologically and
bureaucratically artificed world, and indeed the contours of
my experience are so genuinely shaped by the technological
and bureaucratic steps I will need to take to make them
work, that I continuously find myself uncertain of the basic
genre to which any given object in my experience belongs,
and unable to describe with a simple, true verb an action I
might be taking without ellipsis-inducing deliberation.
There are many consequences of the marketers
encroachment on the poets and philosophers and common
mans language-forging-roles, from softening the impact
of euphemized atrocities to the proliferation of redundant,
overly-specialized hair products, but I simply want to point
out precisely what it is that is getting squished out, so that we
can be sure to keep doing it anyway: its the creative activity
of the most human of our faculties as we perceive a thing and
recognize its teloswhat its meant forand accordingly and
authoritatively name it. I miss, and with my childish relapses
I have been tasting again, the quite proper thrill of calling a
spade a spade, not because Im up on the production trends
(Nah, dude, thats an ErgoSteelForceVegeTremorBlade.),
but because I am the sort of creature who has hands and
digs holes and can recognize a handy rearrangement of the
materials of my planet when she sees one.
My fellow speakers, what it is to speak truth is in these
times of ours partially defined by these obstacles. Let us then
with high humor navigate the proliferous tendrils of The
Brand to seek out the plain, elusive common noun. With
spirit and verve and all five senses alert, conscious of our
skeletons and muscles and the balance-regulating canals in
our inner ears, let us pursue the swift and bright-plumed
action verb! F
Madeline Johnson is a junior studying philosophy.

THE ART OF ARCHITECTURE IN

HILLSDALE COUNTY
BY CHRISTOPHER RILEY
All photos by the author.

Buildings are both the most abundant and least appreciated of artistic creations.
Ask an educated man to envision art, and he will, more than likely, imagine
merely da Vincis Mona Lisa or the jarring cubism of Picasso. The lowly Greek
Revival residence standing a few blocks from his home hardly merits notice.
Paintings and sculptures,
1830s, and 1840s, constructed
cloistered in museums
primarily braced frame2 residences
and displayed proudly
in the Greek Revival style, in
accordance with the architectural
in parlors, draw praise,
norms of their homeland.
whereas the myriad
dwellings
constructed
Unlike other Midwestern states,
in the 19th and early 20th
Michigan never witnessed the
centuries receive scant
development of a rich tradition
attention from lovers of art
of log construction (though log
history, perhaps because
structures were, and remain,
they are commonplace.
common in the forested counties
of the Upper Peninsula, a region
By nature, humans tend
to overlook the ordinary.
of Scandinavian settlement), and
the state was populated too late to
Yet buildings serve as the
most tangible evidence of The Munro House in Jonesville, Michigan.
enjoy the formal architecture of
the Federal period (approximately
a societys history and its
perception of beauty.
17881835).
The city and county of Hillsdale, like many American
Thus, Hillsdales architectural legacy begins in the Greek
communities, encapsulate the countrys changing tastes in Revival era. Grecian architecture rose to prominence in
architecture. Hillsdale County was formed from the Michigan America by the 1840s, inspired by Jeffersons Palladian
Territory in 1829 and organized in 1835; Jonesville, platted experiments and the temples of democratic Athens, and
in 1830, functioned as the first county seat, or center of popularized by the pattern books of Minard Lafever and
government.1 In 1843, this government chose to relocate to Asher Benjamin. Two of Hillsdale Countys finest extant
Hillsdale, a town slightly closer than Jonesville to the countys examples of the style, the William Murphy House and
center. In both locales, interesting buildings abound.
Munro House, stand in Jonesville. The Munro House,
The northeasternersnatives of New York state, mostly slightly awkward in its proportions, is the earlier of the two
who flocked to Michigans Lower Peninsula in the 1820s, (reportedly the oldest structure existing in the county),
History of Hillsdale County, Michigan (Philadelphia: Everts & Abbott, 1879), 124.
Braced frame is synonymous with timber frame and post-and-beam; this method of framing uses heavy timbers and mortiseand-tenon joints instead of the light studding of balloon framing, which had become standard by the late 19th century.
3
For various reasons, New Englanders and New Yorkers avoided constructing log houses. Crude log buildings, intended for
temporary occupation, were erected in Hillsdale County during the settlement period (an image of one appears in the Hillsdale
Community Librarys Mitchell Research Center), but the regions early residents replaced their cabins with frame homes rather than
well-finished log houses. The distinction between the terms log cabin and log house is beyond the scope of this essay.
4
Andrea Palladio (15081580), noted Italian architect, drew inspiration from Greco-Roman models. Thomas Jefferson was an early
American adherent of the Palladian school.
1

15

After the war, Greek Revival buildings were seldom built.

Some academics schooled in the classical tradition scorned
the exuberance of late 19th century structures; as the designer
I.T. Frary quipped in 1936, early builders had never gotten
the knack of making ugly things, an art in which their
descendants excelled.6
Though hardly matching the classical elegance of, say,
a marble colonnade in an Alma-Tadema painting, the
buildings erected in Hillsdale between 1865 and 1900 reveal
an optimism unique to the post-war period. Two buildings
on the Hillsdale College campus illustrate the Italianate style

The front porch of the William Murphy House in Jonesville.

having been constructed in stages between 1834 and 1840.

Murphy built his splendid house between 1845 and 1850,
though its Ionic porch was apparently appended in 1911.
A similarly detailed Doric porch, with entasis (bulging
columns) and triglyphs (grooved tablets), adorns Hillsdale
Colleges own Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house.
The Italianate style, indirectly inspired by the villas of
rural Italy, predominated in the decades following the Civil
War, which roughly marks the turn from neoclassical to
picturesque (or, in common usage, Victorian) architecture.5

The Lorenzo Dow House, also known as the Paul House, serves as a
dormitory on Hillsdale Colleges campus.

particularly well. The Lorenzo Dow House, now a dormitory,

is a textbook example of the type, with its asymmetry, tall

Though the Italianate style emerged before the Civil War, it did not supplant the earlier Greek Revival mode until the wars end.
Hillsdale County, a location relatively isolated in the 1860s, contains few pre-1860 Italianate buildings; most standing examples exist in
urban centers and dot the wealthy East Coast.
6
Ithna Thayer Frary, Early Homes of Ohio (Richmond: Garrett & Massie, 1936), 232.
5

16

Central Hall, Hillsdale College, Michigan.

tower (emulating the Italian campanile, or bell tower),

generous roof overhang, and bracketed eaves. Central Hall,
which replaced the original Hillsdale College building after
an 1874 fire, is also chiefly Italianate.
If the Italianate and Gothic Revival styles (the latter
omitted from this essay because of its scarcity in Hillsdale
7

Portico, Hillsdale. A fine example of the Classical Revival style as applied to

residences.

County) brought about the architectural eclecticism of the

late 19th century, the group of related styles collectively termed
Queen Anne perfected it. Such architecture originated
as an American response to the work of British designers
Richard Norman Shaw and Charles Eastlake. Carpenters,

Ibid., 237.

17

A Victorian Jonesville residence

using jigsaws, turning lathes, and other woodworking tools,7

freely combined motifs from various styles, adorning their

creations with rich ornamentation. So-called Victorian

homes are undeniably showy (see, for example, the colorfully
painted Jonesville residence illustrated in this article), and,
for some, obnoxious. Despite this extravagance, the men
who built these houses at least deserve commendation for
their invention.
About the turn-of-the-century, classicism once again
enjoyed a renaissance. The earliest Classical Revival
residences of this period melded late 19th century forms
with Greco-Roman ornamentation; at least one guidebook
categorizes such architecture as a subset of the Queen Anne
style,8 rather than a style in itself. The Classical Revival mode
was particularly popular for institutional structures, and
architects designed innumerable courthouses, libraries, post
offices, and banks in the style. In Hillsdale, notable Classical
Revival buildings include the 1911 City Hall, 1912 Post
Office, and a number of residences.
Neoclassicism never disappeared entirely (indeed,
certain classical motifs have become clichs in suburbia),
but its relevance diminished in the postmodern era. GrecoRoman architecture, it seems, is yet again in vogue, if the
rift between the Hillsdale College buildings erected in the
1950s and 1960s (Simpson, McIntyre, and Olds dorms,
especially) and those constructed in the last decade
is any indication. That traditional architecture
persists in the West, despite intervening faddish
periods, is a testament to its brilliance. F
Christopher Riley is a sophomore.

Virginia and Lee McAlesters A Field Guide to American Houses describes these transitional
buildings as free classic.
8

18

The Life and Death of an American Architectural Icon

BY LARA FORSYTHE
Every day this past summer I hopped off the 5:08 outbound
train and began my ten-minute walk back home just as the
church bells rang six. Having made it a habit of slipping out
of my heels after exiting the station, I would often finish my
route bare-footed. I grew up in this suburb. I knew my way
around. The houses were familiar, as were the manicured
lawns and the cars parked in the attached driveways. And yet,
on one of these nightly walks home I came to the unhappy
realization that, while I knew their front stoops, I did not
actually know the neighbors with whom I shared a street.
Nineteen years of living in this suburbtwo years on this
particular streetand I had no relationships to show for it.
The only face-to-face neighborly interaction I could depend
on was in passing an elderly man who often sat out on his
front porch, his dog at his feet, lazily looking out onto the
street. I would wave, he would nod, and Id saunter on, heels
in hand.
What I realized later was that the sole cause of my
interaction with this man had been his front porch. The porch
was my window into his world and his window into mine. It
was this modest feature that made our sense of community
tangible, if only for a passing moment. Nevertheless, his was
one of the few homes in my neighborhood fitted with a front
porch. Most front entryways opened up to a blunt stoop barely
large enough for a potted plant, much less a small gathering.
How this quintessential component of the American home
had become all but foreign to our Midwestern suburb was
a question that stayed with me throughout the summer.
Somehow our town had lostor perhaps had never begun

the art of porch building. And our community was the worse
off for it.
Those who live in rural or older urban areas may be
unfamiliar with this absence, for the disappearance of the
front porch has largely been a suburban phenomenon. In
smaller communities, however, whether rural towns or urban
blocks, the front porch has thrived as a defining architectural
feature of American homes. Originating in the south, where
slave owners adopted the porch-like structure often attached
to slave dwellings, the porch spread in popularity in the mid19th century as the industrial revolution made leisure more
accessible for the working family. Andrew Jackson Downing
and Alexander Jackson Davis, the two architects accredited
with the popularization of the front porch, recognized the
porchs distinct American quality and sought to incorporate
it into domestic architecture as a means of distinguishing
American homes from their English counterparts. So began
an architectural tradition that would become an icon of
small-town America.
As the entrance into the private sphere, the front porch
supported the household by providing an intimate space
for families to come together. In his book At Home: A Short
History of the Private Life, Bill Bryson summarizes the history
of the private life as being a history of getting comfortable
slowly, and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the porch
was the place for this. It essentially served as an outdoor
parlor (a word which originates from the French verb parler,
meaning to speak, an indication of the social nature of the
space). A cool place to gather on hot evenings to enjoy the
19

outdoors, the porch became a central gathering place during

summer months. Families gathered here to tell stories.
Mothers rocked their children to sleep on the porch swing.
Couples got to know each other on the front steps, talking
well into the evening. The porch encouraged a slower-paced
life, knitting families together in a leisurely private setting.
But it is the outdoor nature of the front porch that makes

PLACING THE PRIVATE LIFE WITHIN

VIEW OF THE PUBLIC LIFE, THE PORCH
PROVIDED A SPACE FOR PEOPLE TO
ENGAGE WITH THEIR COMMUNITY WHILE
REMAINING WITHIN THE COMFORT OF
THEIR OWN HOME.
it unique. Placing the private life within view of the public life,
the porch provided a space for people to engage with their
community while remaining within the comfort of their own
home. Passing neighbors could engage in brief conversation
or be invited up to sit for a spell. Local business was often
conducted here, since the porch gave private negotiations
a public setting. We see the public role of the porch play
out in much of Southern literature, for scenes of conflict
or compromise often take place under the front awning.
The plot of Harper Lees To Kill A Mockingbird develops for
the most part on various neighbors porches, given that it
is here where characters pick up on community news.
Perhaps the most appropriate platform for American
storytelling, the porchs communal nature called
attention to the relationship between family
and society, fusing together private and
public heritage.
After the end of World War I,
however, American architecture
took on new characteristics as
suburban areas began to
expand. The increasing
affordability of the
automobile
made
it
possible

20

for the middle-class man to live and work in two different

places. As a result of this enhanced mobility, many families
moved out of crowded urban areas seeking the privacy of
the suburbs. The commuter was born. Bedroom cities
emerged, creating sprawls for working men and women to
spend the night but not much else. In these areas, the front
porch all but disappeared from domestic design as television
and air conditioning began taking families indoors. While
home-decorating magazines encouraged homeowners
to modernize their houses with simple stoops, a new
architectural feature began to emerge in the porchs stead: the
backyard patio. The patio afforded more privacy to families
in mobile communities. Here a man could avoid interacting
with his neighbors while still enjoying his landscape.
Families, as a result, became disengaged from their
communities. Many urbanists have written on the social
significance of the attached garage and how it allows the
working suburban man to transition directly from the
anonymity of his car to the privacy of the house without
having to engage with his neighbors. So it has been with the
disappearance of the front porch. Without the porch, we
have become able to remain nameless, faceless homeowners,
indifferent to those nameless, faceless people who surround
us. Rather than gathering in a place where we can see and be
seen, we return home at the end of the day and retire either
indoors or in the backyard, detached from the people next
door.
Although we cannot attribute the broken marriage of the
family and the community solely to the disappearance of
the American front porch, we must not underestimate the
moral and cultural impact the architecture of our homes has
on society. Rather, we must remember Winston Churchills
reminder that, though we shape our buildings, in turn, our
buildings shape us. At its most basic level, a mans house
serves as a shelter for his domestic life. Thus, the design of
homes expresses both the predominant notion of the purpose
of the domestic life, as well as societys conception of the
relationship between the public life and the private life. It was
the philosophy of Andrew Jackson Downing that a homes
design influences its inhabitants so much so that anyone
who builds a beautiful home is a benefactor to the cause of
morality, good order, and the improvement of society where
he lives. Domestic architecture not only affects those living
on the inside, then, but also the lives of those on the outside.
Yet since the expansion of the American suburbs, which
have largely been built on trend and convenience, few of us
take the design of our homes seriously. We remain ignorant

to the ethics of domestic architecture, failing to realize the

great extent to which the structure of homes affects our
communities.
The life and death of the American front porch, then,
cannot be counted as mere architectural history, for it reflects
a grander history to which the architecture points. As it is, the
front porch serves as the bridge between ones private home
and the public street. As a gathering place, it encourages and
helps preserve the particular unity of the family within the
context of the general community. By taking marriage and
parenthood outdoors, and thus bringing it within view of
the community, the porch upholds the public significance of

YET SINCE THE EXPANSION OF THE

AMERICAN SUBURBS, WHICH HAVE
LARGELY BEEN BUILT ON TREND AND
CONVENIENCE, FEW OF US TAKE THE
DESIGN OF OUR HOMES SERIOUSLY.
these foundational relationships. In Arthur Millers play All
My Sons, we see the porch answer what Miller considered to
be the primary question all social dramas ask, that is, How
may a man make of the outside world a home? The porch
was a concrete way of grounding ones relationships and
cultural heritage in society and establishing ones identity in
the common principles of the community.
What we have seen develop over the last hundred years is a
widening gap between the private life and the public life, such
that we now refer to the two exclusively. The disappearance
of the front porch has paralleled the disappearance of local
accountability in the American suburbs. With the growth
of suburban sprawl, families have become increasingly
physically detached from society. Having taken the family to
the backyard, we have, like Joe Keller in All My Sons, let the
trees grow thick, divorcing ourselves from our communities.
Those living in suburban neighborhoods can testify to this.
We do not know our neighbors, nor do they know us. It is
all too easy to avoid making eye contact with the woman
cutting her lawn or the child walking his dog, for to do so
might delay us in our own purposes. But this fragmentation
has not merely been a physical one; rather, it has lent itself

to the growing
illusion
of
moral autonomy,
the idea that we may
exist as families morally
independent of each other.
Instead of sharing and sacrificing
with those who surround us,
and recognizing the family as the
foundation of the community, we deny our
own significance and the significance of our
neighbors for the sake of convenience. Where we
once gathered on porches, we now stand isolated on
stoops, observing our neighbors in passing but rarely
engaging with them.
It is certainly true that we will not be able to mend the
division between the public life and the private life simply
by bringing back the front porch. The state of American
domestic architecture is indeed an overlooked element of
community health, but it does not comprise the whole of it.
Furthermore, the simple existence of a porch does nothing
for a community, for the porch must be occupied to fulfill its
usefulness. Perhaps in our communities, rather than seeing
an absence of porches, we have seen an absence of people
on porches. Regardless, it takes the organic interaction
between a mans home and his community, the dual actions
of claiming something and giving something up, for him to
form a relationship with his neighbors. By building porches
and occupying them, that is, by becoming more conscious
of the human beings with whom we dwell and how the
structures in which we dwell affect them, we may be able to
begin remaking a home of the outside world. F
Lara Forsythe is a sophomore studying economics.

21

LEISURE
Slow down and find some time to wonder.
BY EMILY LEHMAN
As the school year picks up, the
perennially polite Hillsdale student body
asks one another, How are you? And as the
semester goes on, the answer becomes more and
more predictable: Busy.
Many of us are. One of the best and worst things
about Hillsdale College is the overwhelming number of
good things to do. Were a pretty committed crew and were
proud of it. We live and breathe the honor code; perhaps
even more, we live and breathe the motto. Virtus tentamine
gaudet: strength rejoices in the challenge. The challenge
looks like different things for different people. It might be
running three or four different clubs; it might be RAing and
keeping down two or three campus jobs; it might be playing
three instruments and running track; it might be some
amalgamation of all of the above. So were doing it, right?
Were rejoicing in the challenge. Its what Hillsdale College
is all about.
Or is it? What if the challenge is getting in the way?
In Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, a
tongue-in-cheek book on modern parenting by Anthony
Esolen [Review, The Hillsdale Forum, August 2014], there is
a chapter called Never Leave Children to Themselves, in
which he ironically recommends restricting a childs spare
time, comparing a crammed schedule with one that leaves
time for relaxation and play.
How irresponsible we once were, to allow our
children such huge blocks of time to be themselves,
outdoors with others of their kind, inventing things
to do! Think of the trouble they got themselves into.
Sometimes they went fishing. Sometimes they set
off firecrackers in garbage cans. . . . Sometimes
they climbed trees. . . . They mapped the woods.
They learned bird calls. They foraged for nuts, and
mushrooms, and berries. They jumped off bridges
into streams. They rode freight trains. They needed
no committees. They were alive. (55, 69)

22

In the book, Esolen critiques modern American culture,

something from which we at Hillsdale like to exempt
ourselves. But perhaps we are not as free from modern
cultural norms as we ordinarily imagineperhaps the
Hillsdale bubble is not utterly impervious to the world
outside. As we commonly understand it, there is a modern
tendency to see a human being as a producer, as something
defined by its activitys measurable benefits.
Maybe thats something that we dont always avoid.
No matter how much we like to deny it, theres something
glamorous about taking more than twenty credits. I cant
help but be somewhat in awe when I find out someone
works several jobs while pulling a great GPA and running a
GOAL program or participates in collegiate athletics while
playing in the orchestra and singing in the choir. And, every
semester, there are those classes everyone wants to take:
Shakespeare with Dr. Smith, Dostoevsky with Dr. Jackson,
and pretty much anything with Dr. Somerville (and thats
just the English department). Every semester we sign up for
those classes and theres a certain kind of satisfaction that
comes from looking at your schedule and seeing a portrait
of the person you want to becomethe kind of person
that takes St. Thomas Aquinas and organic chemistry
or symbolic logic and advanced music history.
And then theres the numberthe alluring 18
or 19 or 24 credits that you can casually
throw around in conversation so that
people know why youre so busy. Its
in some ways as seductive as the
4.0 or the 5-minute mile, and
its the challenge. Its what
were supposed to be
working for. Right?
Well,
maybe.
Its also a

I
o
w
a
d
a
b
w
d
i
a
p
a

manifestation of the human temptation to define ourselves

through what we accomplish.
To recall our education, the whole of a person, body and
soul, cant be summed up in a rsum, a newspaper feature,
or an organization, let alone a number. And if we define
ourselves that way, our hearts and minds will be devoted to
things that are passing away. Well be locating who we are
in what we do, and well be driven to frenetic busyness in
an attempt to define an indefinable human person through
activity. The result will be a schedule that leaves nothing that
we would call free timetime without deadlines, meetings,
or a lack of sleep hanging over ones head.
Someone might argue that theres a place for the busy way
of life. It gets things done and gives us something to show for
it when we make it through this crazy ride called college. But
as difficult as it isand sometimes we make it more difficult
for ourselvesits not the challenge.
The challenge is becoming a human person with integrity
and a proper sense of ones place in the world with relation
to God and other human persons. The
challenge is disciplining ones heart to
love what it ought to love and ones mind
to understand the things it ought to
understand. The challenge is learning
If we define
how to live, and its not over when
we shake Dr. Arnns hand and walk
ourselves that
across that stage.
way, our hearts
So perhaps its time that
we made time, not by adding
and minds will be
make more time to the todevoted to things that
do list, but by changing our
perspective on what it looks
are passing away. Well
like for strength to rejoice
be locating who we are in
in the challenge. Perhaps
its time for us to look at
what we do, and well be
our schedules and ask
driven to frenetic busyness ourselves what is helping

us to grow as human beings and what is part of a personality

wish list, or worse, a to-do list whose end is forgotten.
Then we might begin to fulfill the real challenge, and we
might learn to rejoice. In Platos Gorgias, Callicles says: I
hope Ill never be so busy that Id forego discussions such
as this, conducted in the way this one is, because I find it
more practical to do something else (458c). It takes time to
appreciate a sunset, to read a book thats not for class, to stay
after dinner enjoying good conversation until youre kicked
out of the cafeteria. But those might just be the things that
you remember long after the credits and GPAs are of no use.
In his poem Leisure, W.H. Davies reminds us of what
we have to lose.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beautys glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

If we were aware of the temptation to define ourselves through

our actions, we might take a few things off that schedule and
make time for the real challenge. We might stop and stare
and learn things that wont go on any rsum. And we might,
given enough time, rejoice. F
Emily Lehman is a junior studying English.

in an attempt to define
an indefinable human
person through
activity.

23

Tree, Manning Street

Photo by Sarah Reinsel

24

Do you think this is the good life?

irony
Part One of Three:
American culture and counterculture, consumerism and irony

In Midtown Manhattan a writer, Jack Kerouac, prepares for

his interview on TV. Were beat, man, he says. Beat means
beatific, it means you get the beat, it means something. I
invented it. For the television audience he announces, We
love everything, Billy Graham, the Big Ten, rock and roll,
Zen, apple pie, Eisenhowerwe dig it all. Were the vanguard
of the new religion.
from Herbert Gold, The American as Hipster, 1957.
Skinny jeans? Hipster. Workwear? Hipster. Acid-washed,
high-waisted jeans that look like diapers? Hipster. EDM?
Hipster. Americana? Largely hipster. Organic farming? If you
moved from the city to do it: hipster. Make your own pottery?
Hipster. Dress like its the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s? Hipster,
hipster, hipster, hipster, hipster. Love Apple? Hipster. Hate
Apple? Hipster!
Joe Keohane, 2015.
Q: You could interest yourself in these machines. Theyre hard
to understand. Theyre time-consuming.
Donald Barthelme.
Donald Barthelme paints his ironist into a trap in
Kierkegaard Unfair to Schlegel.1 The short piece, a
dialogue between an unnamed patient and psychiatrist,
revolves around the patients ironyAn amazing magical
power! It allows him to annihilate the situation of being
uncomfortable with some sort of joke, an ironical turn
of mind, an observation that cuts apart the vacuity he sees
and throws it out of the world.
The New Yorker, October 12, 1968, pg. 53f

25

This is a trick
were familiar with.
Its the posture ascribed
to the hipster and the
postmodernist: with their
magic powers of sarcasm,
observation, deconstruction in
a word, ironythey float through
the world refusing to be normal,
terrified of clich, terrified of looking like
one of the masses not in on the joke. Thats the
trend in Brooklyn and her colonies, right? Thrift
store tags and absurd facial hair show that this young
person isnt beholden to corporations or big fashion. Any
middle-aged Republican can own an iPhonehave you tried
a MOTO RAZR?
Its clich, of course, to begin essays, nowadays, by noting the
incredible self-consciousness of the millennial, the hipster,
the young thing so beholden to irony that they wouldnt even
be able begin an essay without self-consciously pointing out
the exact cliches theyre enactingironically, of course.
This is performance, but do you see the pattern?
Irony keeps us safe. Its magic powers negate the world
without giving it power. A youth movement for a generation
without backbone, as any number of fuddy columnists will
tell you on a slow news day. In their day, they voted for
Reagan or protested Nam. Action! Engagement! A far cry
from our emasculated millennial. The hipster is ungrateful.
He doesnt want the world theyve been given. Hed rather
mock and posture than change the world, or even get a job.
He unfairly derides normalcy as worn-out and boring.
What I propose to argue, or at least essay, here is that 1)
Irony, much maligned, is a valid and proper response to our
contemporary situation (and a much older phenomenon
than we might expect), 2) By examining the phenomenon
in several different places, we can see that the po-mo pose is
not motivated primarily by a tearing down but by a need to
build up, and 3) There are pathologies of irony that require
it to be grounded within a higher attention to the world,
and a proper understanding of these responses and their
motivations show that they can only safely find their home
in a fuller attention to the truth.

If youve paid attention, youre annoyed that I havent

explained Barthelmes trap, which I promised in my very first
line. Your patience is now rewarded: having been prodded
to explain how living as an ironist is useful, the patient is
telling a story. He describes renting a summer home from a
ski instructor whose closets overflow with play equipment:
There were bows and arrows and shuffleboard and croquet
sets, putting greens and trampolines and things you strapped
2

26

June 21, 2015

to your feet and jumped up and down on . . . (The list is

exhaustive; Ill only add that the merest bedside table
was choked with marked cards and Monopoly money.).
Immediately uncomfortable, this ironist wanted to make a
joke about all of this, some sort of joke that would convey
that I had noticed the striking degree of boredom implied
by the presence of all this impedimenta and one that would
also serve to comment upon the particular way of struggling
with boredom that these people had chosen. Were in
familiar territory with our patient now; heck, were probably
Facebook friends with him. He is over it and lashing out. Hes
discovered his magical power: it would do to annihilate
the situation of being uncomfortable in this house. The
shuffleboard sticks, the barbells, balls of all kindsmy joke
has, in effect, thrown them out of the world.

THE MEANING THE

IRONIST DESIRES IS
PRESERVED WHILE
THE TRUE OBJECT
IS THROWN OUT OF
THE WORLD.

So far so good, but suppose he becomes curious about

this power? (He does.) Suppose that, to his great luck, the
ski instructor he rents from is not only too bourgeois for his
tenants comfort but also a student of Kierkegaard? (He is.)
He picks up a copy of The Concept of Irony and discovers that
Kierkegaard knows what hes up to . . .

Lets connect this to today, or yesterday. In a perceptive

column published on Thrillist, Joe Keohane notes that
hipsters could not have emerged from the tepid muck of the
American mainstream at any other time in history, which
makes them an invaluable lens through which to view our
shambles of an American scene. He explains that the hipster
maintains a posture against a mainstream in continuity
with earlier countercultures (Beats, Hippies, Punks), groups
which sought an alternative to mass culture in something
more genuine and real than the vacuity of political and
commercial life. Like Barthelmes character in his chalet, they
see their surroundings as self-deceiving emptiness and attack
the discomfitting force with their own rebellion. A decade
before Woodstock and flower power, Jack Kerouac wrote that
he saw

Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the

general demand that they consume production
and therefore have to work for the privilege of
consuming, all that crap they didnt really want
anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, and
general junk you finally always see a week later
in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned
in a system of work, produce, consume, work,
produce, consume . . .

In this environment of middleclass non-identity, a

counterculture seeks to connect with something genuine.
Placing contemporary hipsters in continuity with these
earlier movements is important, because it gives us an
insight into the motivations of counterculture in general.
They do not seek something apart from mass society to feed
a superiority complex, but because of a genuine criticism
of the meaninglessness of materialist society, a criticism
they hold no monopoly on. They identify and struggle with
what Saint Augustine described centuries ago as the kind of
happiness which delights lovers of the Roman gods. These
enemies of the Christian religion are concerned
for each to get richer all the time. It is wealth that
sustains daily prodigalities. . . . let a succession of
the most cruel and voluptuous pleasures maintain
a perpetual excitement. If such happiness is
distasteful to any, let him be branded as a public
enemy; and if any attempt to modify or put an
end to it let him be silenced, banished, put an
end to. Let these be reckoned the true gods, who
procure for the people this condition of things,
and preserve it when once possessed.

This is a scathing criticism that neither founds nor

exhausts a tradition of anti-materialist rhetoric, certainly
germane to the writings of Kerouac and his contemporaries
and Barthelmes postmodern writing, wearingly attentive
to every detail of the sophistication, the lingo, the massively
stultifying second-handedness of everything we say. At the
center of each criticism is an empty picture of the good life
based in perpetual excitement for pleasures, consumption,
and play equipment, knowingly or unknowingly offering
praise to false gods. A catalogue of these criticisms is more
inharmonious than any thrift store outfit, and the eclectic
Goodwill where the American conservative heritage shares
shelf space with Alasdair MacIntyre and Jack Kerouac could
only be found in Brooklyn. Nevertheless, it is this concern
that unites many diverse intellectual projects.
According to Keohane, each successive movement in
American counterculture has attempted the same assault
on the norms of an empty culture by setting up an ideal of
life that assaulted and could not be co-opted by mainstream
ideals. The attempt to establish something that could not
simply be mined for saleable material by the marketplace
was behind the Hippies and the Punks, but both movements
ultimately succumbed to commercialization. By presenting

a lifestyle identifiable by certain cloths and products, their

attempt to provide an alternate world and group identity
simply gave the mainstream new products to consume and a
new standard for daily prodigalities. Keohane: We all know
how that worked out. Not only could bourgeois society
swallow it, it swallowed it whole, and we wound up with
Ramones baby clothes and Sex Pistols credit cards. ...any
intrinsic mainstream American terror of alternative culture
would always, in the end, be overwhelmed by the markets
fetish for novelty, youth, and new revenue opportunities.
What I wish to argue here is that these movements
were not sufficiently ironic. What sympathetic critics
such as novelist Benjamin Lytal predicted would happen
to Barthelmes mode of criticism, the style taken up by
popular postmodern fictionists such as John Barth, George
Saunders, and David Eggers, has instead happened to the
more forthright: a subversive fiction is possessed by its
chosen audience, adversaries to a man, and then turned
into a jokebookwe have only to wait and watch this in
action. Punks sought to smash the bourgeois and erect a
new, authentic culture; they ended up with Lou Reed selling
Honda scooters on television. Irony allows the exasperated
youth movement a way around this inevitability, a way
to seek an intrinsically internal and unpurchasable
authenticity. Lytal characterized this consummately ironic
approach as inhabiting the object of criticism. He lies
down on the therapists couch and confounds him, on
his own terms. Hipsters dont deprive materialism of its
power by advocating Zen meditation, free love, or rock
musicthey use iPhones ironically, simultaneously living
in the modern world while embodying by their attitude a
rebellion that cannot be co-opted, because it is intrinsically
un-saleable. You cant buy or sell ironyif you are, youre
not, youre pass, next on the sell-out, clich chopping
block.

Lets return to Barthelmes ironist. Well need to postpone

mention of the trap, Im sorry. But hes found a kindred
spirit in Kierkegaard, and we can see that hed identify with
our modern hipsters too:
To begin with, Kierkegaard says that the
outstanding feature of irony is that it confers
upon the ironist a subjective freedom. The subject,
the speaker, is negatively free. If what the ironist
says is not his meaning, or is the opposite of his
meaning, he is free both in relation to others
and in relation to himself. He is
not bound by what he has said.
Irony is a means of depriving
the object of its reality in order
that the subject may feel free.
...

This is how postmodern

27

irony functions. Out of a double recognition of the falsity

of its object and the futility of engaging with it on an
oppositional level as earlier movements had attempted, the
critic says what is opposite of his meaning. The meaning the
ironist desires is preserved while the true object is thrown
out of the world. An oppositional criticism of materialism
will eventually fall prey to its assimilating force, losing its
meaning but keeping the attractive appearance; the ironist
performs the same trick on his objectits given a new
ironic meaning that signifies the subjects freedom from the
clich he seems to embody, rather than his enslavement to
it. Everyone knows that hipsters drink Pabst Blue Ribbon,
but they also know that their choice isnt motivated by any
ad campaign or celebrity endorsement, but precisely by
a desire to model a freedom from those forces. Once this
freedom is established, the ironist can give the appearance

IT IS ESSENTIAL TO
UNDERSTANDING POSTMODERN
IRONY TO RECOGNIZE THAT IT STEMS
IN THE FIRST PLACE FROM A DESIRE
FOR SINCERITY, RATHER THAN THE
SELF-CENTERED IRREVERENCE OF
WHICH IT IS OFTEN ACCUSED.
of any kind of behavior, express enthusiasm for whatever
mainstream product or style he cares to. The object of attack
is not the product or activity itself, but the mode in which
its consumed. Bottom shelf beer doesnt change its essence
or appearance, but its robbed of any association with the
particular way of struggling with boredom that people had
chosen, and becomes an instrument for signaling freedom
from these daily prodigality and perpetual excitements, while
returning to the product a note of unconsumerized utility.
When he needs a beer to drink, PBR allows him freedom
from branding without ever opening a road to marketing
power.
An example: Use an iPhone or dont use an iPhone
which is more hipster? The individual can use the product
without allowing a brand to show any power over his choice.
And when PBR becomes too indicative of a group identity,
indicating coolness rather than irony, the object can change
without a group identity ever being co-optedit was never
in the object to begin with, but in the subjective freedom
modeled by the ironist. It is essential to understanding
postmodern irony to recognize that it stems in the first place
from a desire for sincerity, rather than the self-centered
irreverence of which it is often accused.
28

Keohane see this as essentially a stance of resignation.

Hipsters see the futility of chasing authenticity, and yet
they still chase authenticity. They see going to war against
Americas hallowed institutions is stupid and pointless, and
yet they also believe those same institutions are one vicious
joke played over and over again on all of us, and crucially,
they still participate in local economies, are patrons of quality
craftsmanship, and promote conscientious, sustainable
consumerism. Its not revolution, its incrementalism.
But this incrementalism cant ultimately provide an answer
to the consumer culture it provides an escape from and is
parasitic upon. How can the danger of ironythe nihilism
that awaits one who negates the worldbe avoided? Can
there be, at the end of this tunnel of escape, some contact
with real, positive meaning? Is every attempt to present a
firm alternative going to be undermined by the consumptive
power of modern culture?
In my next part, Ill analyse how irony may or may not
provide a way of accessing the hard reality of things by
looking at a failure, The Drowsy Chaperone, and a success,
Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Ill then
attend to Barthelmes own description of the motivations
of art, from Not-Knowing, and see how they relate to this
ironists plight, and to Dr. Dwight Lindleys answer to What
does literature have to do with reality? [see page 8]
Then, in Part III, we might hope for a way out of this
moral wilderness, and into the sun. F
Chris McCaffery is a senior studying English. He is a member
of the Dow Journalism Program.

THE FORUM
REVIEWS:
MOVIES

INSIDE
LLEWYN
DAVIS

BY TIM TROUTNER
In the opening scene of Inside Llewyn Davis, a 2013 film
directed by the Coen brothers, the young musician Llewyn
Davis (played by Oscar Isaac) takes the stage at the Gaslight
Caf in Manhattan and plays a stunning rendition of a folk
song on acoustic guitar to modest applause. After his set, he
walks into an alley behind the caf and is viciously beaten. His
surprise at the senseless violence mirrors that of the audience,
shocked by the contrast to the haunting beauty of the music.
Thus begins the Coen brothers exploration of beauty and
senseless suffering, set in the Greenwich Village folk music
scene at the beginning of the 1960s. Llewyn Davis is a talented
but hapless musician who cant get producers to recognize his
genius. Time and time again he misses out on chances to make
his fortune. Instead of earning money, he is dragging around
his guitar and sleeping on other peoples couches pursuing the
next chance to make it big. Meanwhile, he leaves behind a trail
of debt, broken relationships, and unwanted pregnancies. He
cannot even manage to take care of the cat that keeps showing
up in his life, perhaps the only living being he shows any real
affection toward.
The filmmakers portray Davis descent into despair, plays
masterfully with the viewers expectations and tragically
raising hopes only to dash them again. At every turn the
audience expects Davis to finally catch a break. Perhaps he
will change his ways and fulfill his responsibilities as a father;
perhaps he will finally make it as a musician.
Despite all the emotional pathos, one cannot help but be
enthralled by the films soundtrack. It is a movie about music,
and it does not disappoint, capturing the twang and pathos of
American folk music, from old classics to fleeting glimpses of a
rising star named Bob Dylan. Oscar Isaac is a musician as well
as an actor, and his performance as the musician protagonist is
mesmerizing. The cinematography is superb as well, as are the
performances of the other actors.
Yet the end may leave many wanting more. The film ends by

returning to the opening scene, as Oscar Isaac plays through

his haunting song and once again is beaten in an alley. The film
has come circle, but have we learned anything? The directors
seem to have stripped any hope, any lesson, and point from
the movie by letting despair have the last word in a cyclical
story.
The genius of the film, however, lies precisely here. Instead
of ending with some moral for the audience or tying the plot
together with some neat solution, the Coen brothers decide to
let beauty speak for itself. Even in the midst of suffering, moral
failure, and despair, the power of art cannot help but shine
through. Authentically depicted suffering has redeeming value
in itself. The success of the film is testimony to the inherent
power of beauty itself, which can be deepened and brought
into contrast by the unworthiness of its context and the failures
of the artists who channel it.
Beyond this aesthetic triumph, the film also raises important
questions about the countercultural movements of the 1960s,
highlighting like few films have the heartbreak and loneliness
that accompanied the pursuit of love and freedom in the
counterculture at this time. The unflinching look at abortion
highlights the social upheaval we now associate with the Sexual
Revolution. The earnestness of the young musicians and their
effort to revive the authenticity of folk music contrast strongly
with the alienation that seem to resultGreenwich Village is a
community of contradictions.
By the end of the film, when the camera returns to the
performance at the Gaslight Caf, we are world-weary, but
wiser. Witnessing beautys ability to transcend dingy streets,
moral failure, and social upheaval is a testimony that needs
no happy ending or didactic exposition. Although it may be
elusive, it cannot be completely extinguished, even by the
senseless tragedies of life. F
Timothy Troutner is a senior studying history and philosophy.
29

THE FORUM
REVIEWS:
BOOKS

THE SPORTSWRITER
BY

RICHARD
FORD

BY SARAH SCHWEIZER
I am going to make an unusual suggestion when it comes
to books: read not for pleasure, but, while still enjoying the
act of reading The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, do not let
enjoyment carry the momentum. Instead become an attentive
reader reading for empathygo to the literature to learn about
your neighbor. The best part of this learning process might
be that this book does not require keeping track of footnotes,
flipping to the back for the endnotes, or background research
because Ford is writing about us. Despite his great Southern
legacy, from growing up in Mississippithe land of Eudora
Welty and William Faulkner, whose names should strike
fear into your bookworms heartFord does not write only
to the south but manages to capture suburban America as a
whole: the freeways, the lonely man in the car driving on the
freeway, and the house a few streets over from the ex-wife
and kids. The point is not to despair, though that does seem
attractive at times. Instead the lonely man, Frank Bascomb,
tells us himself, I believe I have done these two things. Faced
down regret. Avoided ruin. To me, the question begs to be
asked, not what regret or ruin has Frank avoided, but what
can be regretted or regarded as ruin in this novel that focuses
so much on this transient and dreamy world, and the task of
merely putting off the empty moment in front of us?
Regret and ruin go together in cases like in lovers lost,
books unwritten, an up-and-coming writing career given up
for a more straightforward sports writing job, divorce, and
the death of a son. All of these cataclysmic events of regret
30

and ruin Bascomb has lived through and details in his dreamy
thoughts that, in their wandering, reveal the individualistic
and isolating nature of life outside of the comfort that his
girlfriends mother finds in Vatican IIso to speakfor the
same type of events.
Earlier I requested that we read for empathy. This appeal
stems from the idea that Frank Bascomb is a representative
of the post-modern man. He gives an example of the
transient feeling that comes with no greater purpose in life.
While Bascomb is no Oedipus, he does reveal how a tragic
hero would appear in this world. The story of Bascombs
Easter weekend starts with contentedness and ends in
chaos, despite his constant and careful actions to put off the
empty moment. While the fall takes the slow meandering
four years since his eldest son died of Reyes syndrome
or maybe, instead, all thirty-nine of Bascombs yearsthe
landing splat on the pavement takes only an Easter weekend.
The action happens in the many interpolating thoughts that
stream through Bascombs mind in which he reveals and
finally recognizes that his family is not fractured but broken,
finishes his four years of mourning, and quits the town,
Haddam, New Jersey, that he had so carefully chosen years
before for its blandness. We witness the end of an era and
the self-inflicted exile that necessitates a new one. Bascombs
self-awareness and dreaminess create an intricate loom that
weaves together memories of his marriage and failed writing
career, his revelations, and the discomfort of the present

and past moments. In turn, this reveals a subtle disconnect

between his thoughts and actions. One moment takes up a
multitude of pages of thoughts, actions, and memories that
reveal the connectedness of our lives to the present moment
and the great uncertainty that accompanies the neverending succession of empty moments. Through Bascombs
perspective, Ford purposefully creates an atmosphere of
turmoil of emotion and memory:
And I feel exactly what at this debarking moment? At
least a hundred things at once, all competing to take
the moment and make it their own, reduce undramatic
life to a gritty, knowable kernel. This, of course, is a
minor but pernicious lie of literature, that at times like
these after significant or disappointing divulgences, at
arrivals or departures of obvious importance . . . that
at such times we are any of us altogether in emotion,
that we are within ourselves and not able to detest
other emotions we might also be feeling, or be about
to feel, or prefer to feel. If its literatures job to tell the
truth about these moments, it usually fails . . .
While Bascomb, and possibly Ford, would admit that
even this piece of literature does not capture a turmoil of
emotions, it at least admits that it tried and failedbut failed
to a lesser degree, in this regard, than, say, Middlemarch,

these few days comes not in their end or even the process
of getting there but in the wandering yet straightforward
thoughts and descriptions of familiar modern day sights
that reveal themselves in sentences like, Central Jersey
dozed in a sweet spring somnolence. DJs as far as Toms
River crooned along the seaboard that it was after eight.
While it seems like I am prescribing depression
here, I can only hope to convince you that it will lead to
the opposite. Why not look in the mirror? Maybe a clear
example of someone who really has no idea what the Good
is, does not see a way in which it could possibly exist, and
does not have reason to pursue it, will cause you to really
pursue understanding. Or maybe it will show you a piece of
your neighbor. Or maybe it will reveal that the worst can and
will happen but even that does not change the act of living
itself even when that empty moment comes, as reflected in
the novels clear descriptions of banal activities. Fords gift to
us here is a good look at ourselves, where the attributes and
consequences of our transient, fast-paced, and impersonal
culture is refracted back to us through a single person. F

Sarah Schweizer graduated from Hillsdale College in

2015 with degrees in English and mathematics. She
now studies literature at the University of Dallas.

FORDS GIFT TO US HERE IS A GOOD

LOOK AT OURSELVES, WHERE THE
ATTRIBUTES AND CONSEQUENCES OF
OUR TRANSIENT, FAST-PACED, AND
IMPERSONAL CULTURE IS REFRACTED
BACK TO US THROUGH A SINGLE
PERSON.
which reduces revelation to clarifying images.
The clarity in this meandering and reflective narrative
comes from Fords careful application of stream of
consciousness writing, which gives a sense of earnestness
and lucidity. We are only privy to Bascombs thoughts and
actions. While spending three days inside the head of a
middle-aged divorced man does not seem like a pleasant
activity, it provides an education as to what emptiness,
loss, and lack of desire for life means. In addition, Fords
clear and precise construction of sentences gives the
quality of frankness we find in Bascomb. Bascombs job as a
sportswriter allows him to study and categorize people into
their respective archetypes, which in turn lets Ford open for
us the mind of a man who has noticed and observed more
of human nature than you or I probably have. The beauty of
31

ana del Reys newest album, Honeymoon,

has enough on its most surface level to merit at
least one listenwhich will almost inevitably lead to a
second, and a third. Its depth and variety of tone and its
vivid lyrics immerse the listener in what feels like a very tragic
day on the beach. But the artistry of Honeymoon goes deeper
than this initial sonic generosity.
The first signs of something deeper appear as odd timeline
discrepancies in Lanas narratives. Even if the album is viewed as a
compilation of separate narratives, it plays games with its own time frame.
The third track, Terrence Loves You, is a good example of this. I lost myself
when I lost you, Lana croons, before going on to tell the subject of her song, You
are what you are/ I wont change you for anything. Lana makes future promises to
a present relationship that has already ended. The song continues with an eerie Bowie
reference as she turns on the radio and television and tries to communicate with her lost
or present lover (Ground Control to Major Tom / Can you hear me all night long? / Ground
Control to Major Tom.). Lana plays with tenses and narrative elements throughout her songs,
and the tone of galactic distance and disconnectedness never goes away.
If the album is viewed as one narrative, its timeline becomes even more tangled. For instance, the
story of the relationship begins in terms of track order with Honeymoon (about which Lana has said I feel
like its where the record begins and ends), in which Lana comments that her lover doesnt go, because she is
the only one for him. In the next track, Music to Watch Boys To, she sees [him] going, and then in Terrence
Loves You, he has gone, yet she continues to speak of the relationship in the present tense. The middle tracks all keep
the tone of Terrence Loves You, referring to different phases and aspects of a present relationship, while frequently
switching suddenly to the past tense, as if referring to a relationship that has already ended. The second to last song (and
Lanas last original on the album), Swan Song, is a complex mix of beginning and ends, in which she dreams of running
away from her present life to start a new life with her lover. In her last song, a Nina Simone cover, she continues to look

32

THE FORUM
REVIEWS:
MUSIC

HONEYMOON
BY STACEY EGGER

back: Sometimes I find myself alone regretting/Some little

foolish thing/Some simple thing that Ive done.
Lanas narrative in Honeymoon, whether one or many, is
not a linear narration of time, nor does it fall in clear places
along any timeline. But Lana is not making accidental tense
errors and narrative mistakes left and right in her songwriting.
In Honeymoon, she attempts to depict the individual
consciousness, in which memory and potentiality can be
just as actively real as present events. Things are not entirely
linear in the individuals perception; rather, the present always
contains the past and the future.
Honeymoons eighth track, entitled Burnt Norton
(Interlude), supports this reading of the album. In the one and
a half minute track, backed by shimmering synthetic melodies,
Lana reads the opening lines of T.S. Eliots Burnt Norton, the
first part of his Four Quartets:

The Four Quartets is saturated with the concepts of time

and memory. Burnt Norton presents a world of blurred
past and future, potential and reality, which all come together
to form whatever is the present, or consciousness. And this
eternal present, which is composed of what might have been
and what has been, and makes no ultimate distinction between
the two, seems to be the home of Honeymoons psyche. Later in
the Four Quartets, Eliot says,

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory

Honeymoon lives at this point of intersection. Each song

showcases a consciousness that exists of necessity in the
present, but whose reality contains the past and the future
(memory and potentiality). And Lanas exploration of time
goes beyond the confines of the album itself. Every song on
the album (except for Burnt Norton) makes direct reference
to at least one song from her older albums, with Art Deco
actually including a sample from her song Born to Die (the
why? repeated throughout its chorus).
While her use of time, references, and T. S. Eliot may seem

Down the passage which we did not take,

Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden

Mens curiosity searches past and future

And clings to that dimension. But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint.

33

LANA MAKES
FUTURE
PROMISES TO
A PRESENT
RELATIONSHIP
THAT HAS
ALREADY
ENDED.

like enough,
Lana
has
left us even
more
clues.
Honeymoons
cover features
a
sun-hat,
sun-glasses
Lana draped
over the top
of a white
open-top car
stenciled with
the words Star
Line Tours, and
a phone number.
When the number (1800-268-7886) is dialed,
the full Burnt Norton
track plays, followed by Lanas
voice welcoming callers to the
Honeymoon Hotline and inviting
them to listen to a couple of tracks from
the album and the recordings of two lectures.
One, a TED Talk by Elon Musk, discusses the new
technology of electric cars. After briefly discussing
the science and innovation involved in the cars, Musk
begins to branch off, speaking of the cars responsiveness,
the connection that the driver feels to the car and to the road
that cannot quite be felt in a standard car. Lana has called a
meeting that she had with Musk one of the greatest days of
my life, and commented that she believes America to be on
the cusp of new technologies in a way that it was in the 1960s.
From the excerpt of the talk she has included, it seems that
this comment about innovation refers, more than the specific
technology, to the spirit and passion that surrounds the
innovation. The world has changed and has created a need for
very different technologies, and yet something of the spirit and
love behind the technologies is retainedthe romance of the
car that was so rich in the 1960s is being reborn as technology
is reborn. This is a good metaphor for Lanas music, which
incorporates many old-fashioned styles, images, and ideas,
while remaining bitingly relevant and personal to modern
listeners, and incorporating many new musical elements. Lana
does not make throwback music. She holds on to things that
she believes are fundamentally beautiful and musical, things
timeless, and brings her time and her perspective to meet
them. The lecture by Musk suggests this idea of timelessness
underlying all change.
The other recording she offers callers is her favorite
lecture, The Origins of the Universe, from leading theoretical
physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss. In the excerpt
from the lecture that plays, Krauss describes a photograph
of space taken recently, which features hundreds of colorful
34

spots of light. Every dot in this picture is a galaxy, he says,

And these galaxies are in real colors, and the blue galaxies,
the real distant ones, the faint ones, are maybe 9 or 10 billion
light years away. So the light from them left 9 or 10 billion
years ago, well before our sun formed 4 and a half billion years
ago. And its interesting to me whenever I see an image like
this Many of the stars in this image last 5 to 10 billion years,
and that means most of the stars in this picture dont exist
anymore. Through the extreme distance of space, something
physical and visible can be present-an image of a galaxy-while
the galaxy itself no longer exists. These two lectures juxtapose
Eliots concepts of time and timelessness. Things die, but there
is something fundamental that is eternal, and the temporal
things attain meaning and some kind of lastingness only by
their intersection with eternal things.
Honeymoon seeks for this kind of meaning and lastingness
at the intersection of time and timelessness. The style of the
music is amorphous and decontextualized, themes (like the
color blue) carry from song to song and from other albums.
Lana does not accept the vantage point of a specific time or
place, but twists time in her songs, at once depicting the way
human consciousness interacts with the present and pointing
to a kind of humanity that is timeless. The images Lana creates
are well described by Eliots words later in the Four Quartets:
Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment

In the context of this timeless humanity, all of the things

she has lost, the pain she has felt, and the potentialities that
have never been and may never be realized have a kind of
reality and meaning that carries on.
Eliot says in the Four Quartets, If all time is eternally
present / All time is unredeemable. The eternal presence of all
that has happened and will happen prevents any real human
capacity for change. Since the present contains the past and
the future, present action cannot really fix anything. But this
eternity of time is also all that gives time meaning. As Eliot
says, Only through time time is conquered. For Eliot and
Lana, the intersection of time and timelessness is both death
and salvation. We cannot redeem time, because it is all with
us at once. But only this being all-at-once gives it eternity, and
gives any events meaning.
This is the use of memory:
For liberation- not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past.
(Eliot, Four Quartets)
Lana seeks to redeem time and find meaning in the pain of
her life by pursuing the intersection of the timeless with time.
By presenting experiences as they interact with the human
consciousness, she finds meaning in their beauty, humanity,
and timelessness. F
Stacey Egger is a sophomore studying history.

Satire

BERNIE SANDERS

At last, something we and every other college campus can agree on.
BY NOAH WEINRICH
HILLSDALE,
MI
First Speaker Arnn,
now Professor Sanders.
Hillsdale is joining the
Revolution.
In a press release
Monday,
Christopher
Sullivan announced U.S.
Senator Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) as the newest
Distinguished Visiting
Professor of Economics.
In the announcement,
Sullivan stated that the
newest addition to the
campus would bring a
novel outsiders voice to
Hillsdale College and,
more importantly, a
higher level of economic
understanding.
Sanders has been in the
news recently as a prominent candidate in the Democratic
primary for the 2016 presidential election, marked by his
energetic on-stage antics and whisperings of sweet nothings
into the collective ears of the nation.
When asked by a local reporter why Sanders was chosen,
Sullivan responded that he felt that the economics program
focuses too much on the so-called free market and too little
on the moral tyranny of American capitalism. In addition,
of course, hell teach for free, as he believes salaries are
exploitation.

Students reactions to the announcement have been
mixed. Katie Jensen, junior philosophy major, expressed her
concerns over Sanders arrival. Look, we all love Bernie, but
do we really need another OWM [Old White Male] coming
in and talking down to us? I mean, hes a U.S. Senator from
Vermont. Whats more White Privilege than that?

When asked what prompted this addition, the

administration mentioned
the fact that Sanders recent
stop at Liberty University
was the first in a sequence
of campaign stops which
will ultimately include
Bob Jones University, Oral
Roberts University, Brigham
Young University, and other
bastions of conservative
thought named after men
made wealthy from their
religious movements.
Weve been feeling that
we need to put the liberal
back into liberal arts, one
administrator stated. I think
its about time we feel the
Bern.
Some
students
had
different takes: His whole
fashion sense screams fiscal
responsibility, said sophomore Mark Naida when asked
about the announcement. Hes really on the cutting edge of
normcore, which is something weve gotta have more of here.
Personally I dont think its a good idea to host someone
who hasnt built up a name for himself yet, said freshman
John Youngman. I mean, Ive never seen this guy talking on
Fox News, or even on Hannity. I just dont see why we couldnt
get someone with a little bit more national recognition, like
George Pataki or Jim Gilmore. That would be a dream.
In unrelated news, several economics and politics professors
have recently been hospitalized with various unexplained
cardiac arrests and minor strokes. F
Noah Weinrich is a sophomore studying politics and English.

35

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