The university press and the American mind:
Miles, Jack
Savage), whom the movie turns into a cowboy from Ok- to "What a Piece of Work Is Man," with lyrics by William lahoma. The car is, however, on its way to rescue Bukowsky ...
...Califor- comments could be made about artists, making improbable alliances and undernia's First Images of America, an i l l u s - musicians and others...
...print, manuscripts were forever being The tale is sad...
...special niche awaiting an adjusted kind But they are not that...
...The United States--scarcely a intellectual life of the country as a whole...
...approach has been the bold one of disnerable...
...below them lies a (and writers and editors) in the same way basic situations seems to be fully this shrunken version of the old mass that the executives of other companies grim...
...Silber translated this stigious vocational and junior colleges, THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY press is shrinkage into the failure of 200 univer- on the other, will retain their full enrollflanked by two much larger in- sities of 5,000 enrollment or 500 colleges ment...
...In the movie Shakespeare...
...According to Nathan schools with disappearing enrollments Keyfitz in "The Graduate Schools Lose will be closed as superfluous by legislaThe university press and the univer- Their Economic Base," (Working Paper tures...
...Openly obscurantist knowledge that his brand of determinism badly we need to reexamine the various Catholics begged the questionby making could not explain everything...
...Eisenstein kinds ofManuscript Culture, which even a Latin translation, whose inadequacies has an intimate familiarity with the great she tendsto dismiss as "monkish...
...This intention is of using his camera to break the original Hair into pieces, so especially apparent in the movie's brief reprise of the song it will fit into the Melting Pot once again...
...Sure, Americanideas and images have become may emerge...
...Surely JACK MILES is a California-based editor and drop is not likely to occur in all schools a disproportionate amount of research is writer...
...Apart from the intrinsic merit in keep- the fertilizing effect of German Jewish amazing record in Nobel science prizes, ing an important kind of book available, refugees, or military/space research...
...risked being dismissed as crackpots...
...can mind...
...Protestants found that the McLuhan seemed too ready to reduce lostand found...
...Eisenstein cites the example of a and Boccaccio who wrote for large lay paranoid eighteenth century Jesuit, (who 25 May t97(~.: 309...
...Keyfitz himself sees munication between experts and laymen-, ing current rates of enrollment, the uni- a 30 percent drop...
...Ourundergraduatecolleges may pensing altogether with advertising re- of producing a true profit-and-loss statebe teaching institutions per se, but our venue, cuttinghis per-copy price dramat- ment on an individual title...
...set, $49.50, 794 pp...
...enough money on such publishings to scientists: a population explosion in the University press publishing has been underwrite some of their basic research...
...The are non-teaching, untenured research as- to creative write," hesaid, "what else...
...Between 1974 and 1992, suppos- 25 percent by 1994...
...Bologna, and which Dante (whom Pethim a little...
...No mania to Closer attention must be paid to Dante tury...
...might seem less threatened by these A painful further dimension is that the changes than textbook publishers...
...Or perhaps these are scenes from an American Pomfinally seems, like the trite plot that the film manufactures peii that was cataclysmically suspended in time ten years ago around the original characters, only a way to keep us and is only now being unearthed again by Forman's movie...
...The opening performance of "Aquarius" lights at a disco...
...In the Broadway version this song was a lead-in COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...They can check for comes to a halt, so finally mustthe publi- tified and catered to, but these tend themselves and, as necessary, divest cation of research by university presses...
...Or distracted-a way to keep any unpleasant associations in maybe the editing in the dance sequences is just Forman's way Ragni and Rado's lyrics at arm's length...
...Unfortunately, no results of a most depressing kind...
...She boasts an unsurpassed the more usual "monastic" lends a feeling for the strengths and weakness of pleasant Gibbonesque tang to her prose...
...A Harvard dean recently remarked audience, neglected by advertisers divest themselves of unprofitable subthat the Harvard graduate school could and publishers alike, ready for sidiaries...
...What keeps university, with its four-year college and is another question...
...How had been called by their rightnames...
...It would overhead publishers...
...Science (20 April 1979, p. 286) old age...
...But in all cases initial invest-ment is very difficult todo the accountin Harvard, Chicago, Berkeley, etc., could be uncoupled from the teacher training function, then the university presses doch is:a serious and determined social ex-perimenter who achieves stunningfor: everything from paper to editorial might relate to them as to an essentially overhead changes from title to title...
...Books: THE REVOLUTION OF PRINT T HIS IS THE BOOK that some people THE PUNTING PRESS AS AN AGENT OF urban audiences, persuading hardnosed think Marshall McLuhan wrote fif- CHANGE Italian bourgeois to invest time and teen years ago, but they are wrong...
...portion ofthe paperthatthe largestchunk university press in the trade market...
...my knowledge, first brought educational make a difference...
...in America in our books that will replenish the libraries, paperback should cost no more than a own day, he has tended to be, at least without which research is unthinkable...
...Advertising--pleasing advertisversion ofthe British, tutorial college to a phenomenon in newspaper publishing...
...She provides original observa- of authority and texts were radically level-headed examination of the ways in tions about the "discontinuity" ofMan- changed by printing, thus preparing the which print transformed Europe...
...Under the guise of shar- nouncement last Fall in Variety that the ers in need of publishing assistance...
...around the idea of research as a proper go on a hunger strike...
...The university so wish, then the American academic growth phase of the American univerpresses may serve a captive market, but accident may mature into a complex and sity, America came close to mobilizing at these prices, some of the captives may vigorousAmerican intellectual tradition...
...The American of university press in the general market what holds his list together...
...She is not afraid ofdetail...
...Obviously, then, if the overall destitutions: the American university of 2,000 enrollment...
...Analogous But if the universities themselves are meal in a very good restaurant...
...Since then, the grim demographics and universities of the middle rank must Each of these is changing, and the have become common knowledge, absorb a 60 percent loss...
...MOBILIZING AROUND THE IDEA OF RESEARCH The university press & the American mind JACK MILES versity establishment would have to one hand, and the presently least preshrink by one-third...
...university press establishment cannot Advertising is much maligned, but ad- It should not be assumed that close continue to function for a market the size vertising has been a kind ofglue, causing accounting will mean hard times forgood of the Harvard graduate school...
...We visit each of these characters from the Five-Zero-Zero" becomes a couple of minutes of cut-aways original Hair in the different economic and regional from a slapstick review of the troops at Bukowsky's boot background the movie has created for him...
...Maybe this movie is "Three-Five-Zero-Zero," which makes music out of military just our way of scrapping the hippies once and for all...
...As such uncoupling has yet taken place...
...search, during the past generation, t h a n . has ariarticle on'"Unfaculty' aGrowing ever would have been possible if things Factor in Research...
...The nation may taking untraditional tasks, so must the trated collection of essays, sold for$100, have intended nothing more than to give university presses...
...lishing is an accountant's nightmare...
...proved wrong, many assumed incor- hardt's familiardivision ofEuropean his- Eisenstein's long account of the intirectly that his very subject--how the tory into a Middle Ages and a Renais- mate connections between print and the means of communications shape the cul- sance, but wisely concedes that these Reformation and Counter-Reformation tures that use them--was false, or not misnomers may still prove useful...
...There are many mitigating facmeet the needs of all American higher anyone with the capital to exploit tors, but in the long run,closeaccounting education into the 1990s alone and with- their emotions and their leisure can hardly have anyotherresult thanthis...
...through one improbable alliance or besetting problems, the chance of actu- In the social sciences and even in the another the American academic accident ally doing it may be greater now than does become an American intellectual ever...
...A distrust of Scripture, utterly 15th century...
...More than it may be because certain persuasive system has received no more handsome on clever management or new markets...
...Pet- will upset many of the pious comworth examination...
...If the graduate schools of the words of Anthony Smith (The Na-tion, 227, 17, p. 535), publisher Mur- can bring a higher return on initial investment...
...Savage), whom the movie turns into a cowboy from Ok- to "What a Piece of Work Is Man," with lyrics by William lahoma...
...To I think it obvious that at least a few of the coalition wants...
...If their traditional market is ofreaders together: those who neverread cialized tastes at the upper end of the gone, can university presses survive by the gossip column with those who only present book market and a depressing selling to the general or "trade" market...
...She shows how people's ideas years we have been waiting for a deep possible...
...During the Mama Leone budget...
...But whatever gim-micks are used, the question of research appeal of research as an idea in the States as a great power or even to rivalry is pre-eminently thequestion whosereso- American mind...
...Men in the sixteenth cen- more they studied Holy Writ, in an imcomplex historical phenomena to illust- tury consolidated the Classical Revival passibned search for an authentic text, rations of his theories of communica- of thefourteenth century by printing, and the more problems and inconsistencies tions...
...The very best schools, on the both produced and consumed at those Commonweal: 306 top-flight schools that are expected to capital from the government or private publisher and the contents of a major survive...
...By dispensing And if they can, should they...
...Maritain expressed astonishment at the stuffed veal are fleeting...
...otherwise, what would be its point...
...Posiversion of the nineteenth-century Ger-man research university in a way that newspaper, and to some extent even in tively, there are the wills of~the editors, if a publisher chooses to respect them.Negatively, there has been the difficulty makes American research--and with it his New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's the university press--particularly vul...
...Ever since Burckhardt member, oracular utterances in heavy we have accepted too easily Petrarch's type studded prose that read like a bril- J o h n A / t e r n insinuation that something utterly new liant academic talking wildly late at began with him...
...But could ride out the coming storm...
...in consequence, enrollments may an article in Atlantic that, to the best of difference...
...Like some Marxist historians, so preserving, the texts it had recovered...
...a paper's content, in Smith's phrase, "to books...
...As that happens,as the middle starts services in any sense required in the gen- break the coalition apart and sell only the to vanish, there may be a new role forthe eral market...
...accounting"--is increasingly available...
...For fifteen Republic ofLetters which print had made relations...
...These"unfaculty" • A teen-aged friend of mine is taking creative writing...
...I asked himwhat hewas learning...
...The university tries anderas, the novelist has had a vari- eficiaries of this accident...
...It is their press version of this rule would be that a ety of occupations...
...If not, then perhaps ancy of America in science was not sim- appear that without a healthy university, the university presses should try to step ply the result of our postwar prosperity, America not only can't maintain its in...
...Lower infant mortal- At first blush, university presses, demographics to a general audience...
...Until the advent of Scripture and the papacy in the church...
...And as research vast vari.ety of life styles tobe iden- commercial mix...
...inothercoun- serious communication among the benmeal in a good restaurant...
...ers, striking a desired tone--does not, In the Star, his gossipy celebrity since books contain no advertising...
...The car is, however, on its way to rescue Bukowsky Shakespeare...
...Still, even on the more op- munication among experts-the indisby one-third than the freshman class of timistic estimates, enrollment will drop pensable first step-rather than com1974...
...In Elizabeth L. Eisenstein money in copying lengthy manuscripts The Gutenberg Galaxy, you will re- ~tmbrJdge, 2 vol...
...but if there is any merit in the be aimed at a slightly higher level ofthe Rupert Murdoch analogy, then fairly consuming public than the readership it- soon we may begin to see a glittering T~he University press and trade pub- self represented...
...with the model...
...ity rates could soften the impact of lower which exist largely to facilitate comThat class, he pointed out, was smaller birth rates...
...The college freshman class of 104 of Harvard's Center for Population lines, a judgment will seem to be passed 1992 was in the bassinets in 1974 when Studies), 48 percent of current under- on the worth of the bachelor's degree John Silber of Boston University wrote graduates are over 22...
...Publishing for the roughly (or have prices gone up since I every kid who wanted one a college edu- vanishing . neglected middle of the trade left New York...
...And as these closings make headsity...
...When research is tied to The newest technologies and Publishing executives no longer need graduate education, then research too marketing mechanisms enable a trust that a good editorial mix is a good must come to a halt...
...It it can't even come up with good gaglines the university presses just might make was in good measure the result of more for television...
...Erasmus belongs to the new Eisenstein had ever worked out the interof traditional academics...
...standstill...
...When his gleeful contradiction, is enviable...
...Others on supper for two at Le Cygne...
...Something utterly new night...
...humanities, America's growth spurt hasbeen almost equally striking and equally tradition, then the university presses will A book-pricing rule of thumb says that undoubtedly prosper, for they have been a paperback should cost no more than a owing to the university...
...Whether there is a have a book or two on his list from everycategory that appears in the daily...
...theater ticket, ahardcover no more than a part-time, a college teacher...
...That could make a itself...
...Richard Sternhas noted that writing has rarely been a the principal vehicle for sustained and movie ticket, a hardcover no more than a self-sustaining occupation...
...equally...
...We may find one any given book on the list apart from phalanx of grad schools, has coupled a clue to the answer in the Rupert Murdoch sales...
...Since McLuhan, rarch and Erasmus do not belong to the monplaces Catholics and Protestants enpeople who study similar subjects have same age, no matter what you call it, or tertain about those unlovely episodes...
...As In the late 20th century a gap is a result, in the absence of detailed acwe shall see, there are scattered signs of opening between media of high- counting information, publishers h a ve such a change, but as thingsstand, when information content and those . of had to guess--and hope--that a "good undergraduate education is stable or low-information content, a gap mix" was the most prudent policy...
...foreign to Catholic tradition, became partof Catholic culture in the sixteenth centhe ways in which historians have ex-plained the great changes...
...Commonweal: 308 If the nation remains mobilized to among the individual states.(In the latter lution will determine the future of the some extent around the idea of research, connection, the University of California American university presses...
...cline is 30 percent, the four-year colleges and American commercial publishing...
...He hid his scholarship under Her eye for the telling oddity, the crucial rarch imitated and loathed) was the first the prophet's mantle...
...to exploit for non-utilitarian, cultural moprophecy of the demise of print was She effectively demolishes Burck- tives...
...Yet the choreography frames...
...If a ing proven knowledge, the American Fox studio was so depressed at the state profit can be turned on average per-title university actually undertook the largest of TV comedy that it had turned for help sales of 6,000 to 7,500, then that assis- effort at originalresearch in the country's to some of the c.ampuses known to spontance can be provided by smaller, low- history...
...for the joy of it...
...to congregate at the upperreaches themselves ofunprofitable lines of books There are mitigating factors, but the of the market...
...speak concretely, ifthere are books (and university presses have thesavvyto func- Now one may draw an analogy be- there are) whose content deserves to betion as trade publishers ifthey can get the tween the seasonal list of a majortrade come part of the national conversation 25 May 1979:307 but whose sales will not exceed 7500 and United States is a pragmatic country, sistants, some of whom are acknowlif trade publishers will not publish a book convinced of the utility of sharing edged to be doing extremely important (and most will not) whose sales will not knowledge of proven worth but generally work...
...Should that tion, university presses have got to think training no longer available, the present mobilization become permanent, then harder about pricing than they have...
...cence that created the new American inconceived on many counts, it did permit There are some few signs of adecision tellectual elite could end in a premature a much larger public expenditure on re- to ratify...
...Forman's editing of the dance sequences-lots of medium The greatest innovation the movie has is its choreography by shots very rapidly spliced together-obstructs our view of the Twyla Tharp...
...In occasion huge expenses...
...As for the humanities, well, a reachat least 12,000 then there may be a not convinced o f the utility of seeking small straw in a fitful wind was the anconstituency both of writers and of read- new knowledge...
...This is the movie's camp...
...If it does when an idea went sour...
...book...
...Images is a lifetime acquisition, a unique as much a common currency as the In hisReflections on America, Jacques document, etc., while the pleasures of American dollar...
...American scientific community even subsidized with the same concealed subThere is nothing at all novel about the greater than the one inthe student popula- sidy that research itself enjoyed...
...It has kept a coalition assortment of expensive books for spelishing...
...It makes the dancing paradoxically static, as if done in Central Park is almost strong enough by itself to carry we were seeing a series of quickly glimpsed tableaux or freeze the rest of the film on its flying coat tails...
...Yet how you define it...
...Obviously, the present time...
...Best sellers graduate schools are not research institu- ically, and filling his publications with bring in huge revenues, but they also tions per se but rather teacher training sexy, violent, voyeuristic excitement...
...In restrospect, it is easy to see that had begun, but a century earlier in the McLuhan's inability to love the printed find laws or principles ofuniversal valid- advanced forms of literacy evolved in word he wrote about and used blinded ity drives her...
...is cut, and "Threefrom the military...
...The book publisher is likely to seem just the kind of small craft that lishing to continue...
...uscript Culture, even though it is not the way for the great debates on the roles of Elizabeth Eisenstein has written that subject of her book...
...The exuberant adolesAmerican university might seem ill- ble estate...
...out expanding...
...Whatever the solu- If it does not, with the ruse of teacher part of the national welfare...
...body counts...
...Pubstable core market...
...Nonetheless, The question before the country now is speed with w h i c h America could there is no blinkingthe fact the book is a whether ornot it wishes to ratify what has mobilizearound a new idea and the equal Le Cygne entrde for readers who are, happened and--by private or public speed with which she could demobilize both of them, even some libraries, on a means--fund research as such...
...Slower sellers institutions...
...shrinking, when, that is, new teachers that represents a falling apart of a Lately, however, thanks to computeri,are not needed, then graduate education century old mass audience into its zation, detailed information--"title even in the best schools must come to a component elements...
...read the gossip column...
...The university presses might benefactors who want their kind ofpub- daily...
...large and fertile generation of scientists, the growth phase will be seen in retrowriters and artists will not reproduce it- spect to have been a growthphase in the The university press and the Ameri- self...
...State versity press...
...More foreign students could drop even faster...
...Galt MacDermot's music with its fast, changing dancing itself...
...what one might spend cation, but the result has been that market could be one such task...
...The post-World War II ascend- sor creative-writing programs...
...academic leaders will have tied eminence these presses depend on the continuing in that area to the notion of the United tribute than SUNY...
...way of making them all more representative, like Congress...
...Are their with the glue, Murdoch has been able to monotony of entertainment at the lowerend...
...Petrarch marks the Everyone since Luther has understood anyone in touch with modern scholarship apogee of a new lay Manuscript Culture that without printing there would have knows that McLuhan extended and that had begun with Dante and soon lan- been no Reformation, but no one before synthesized important insights of a host guished...
...they turned up, leading to division and McLuhan appeared unwilling to ac- Eisenstein's book makes clear how loss of faith...
...Private schools changes have consequences for the uni- though there has been a little tinkering with modest endowments will fail...
...Her were obvious to all, the only official vernarrative of modern history since the persistent use of that word, rather than sion...
...If hope to do that, but oddly, despite other tion...
...It gives the choreography the maddening qualtempos meshes beautifully with the jerky, dislocated dancing ity of a dance seen under one of those bright, blipping strobe that Tharp creates...
...Though the marriage of major intellectual power as recently as, But of course demobilization is at least research to teacher-training in the say, 1935-- will return toits earlier hum- equally possible...
Vol. 106 • May 1979 • No. 10
