The Value of Uselessness

THE VALUE OF USELESSNESS Thomas E. Boyle I begin with a statement from one of the more promising of the younger philosophers in this country—Charlie Brown of the "Peanuts" comic strip. In one of the strips Charlie Brown is pictured on the pitcher's mound saying to himself, "It's the last half of the ninth; there are two outs; the count is three and two. If I get him out we win." The next panel shows all the members of his team gathered around him. One is saying, "Throw him a curve, Charlie Brown," another "Throw him a fastball," another "Show him your slider, Charlie Brown," and so forth. The final panel shows Charlie Brown alone again on the mound, preparing to pitch and saying, "This world is filled with people who are anxious to function in an advisory capacity." Those most anxious to function in this capacity are often teachers and, as you know, there are more English teachers than any other land Someone is reputed to have said that if all the English teachers in this country were laid end to end, it might be a good thing. Those English teachers anxious to function in an advisory capacity are often those who desire to teach something through literature. History, biography, philosophy, psychology, and now social sensitivity. I stand in unabashed opposition to this approach. Not that I share Henry Ford's view of history rather than Santayana's and not that I deny the presence of valuable historical insights in literature. The following quotations, for example, speak for themselves: The destiny of any nation, at any given time, depends on die opinions of its young men under 25. Any ordinary city is in fact two cities, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich, each at war with the other. It is lamentable, that to become a good patriot we must become the enemy of mankind. Our present crises assume a different perspective when we realize that these quotes come not from the pens of a Cleaver, Carmichael, or Cassius Clay, but from Goethe, Plato, and Voltaire. Nor do I dismiss the occasional importance of biography in understanding, for example, the poetry of Yeats, or, as a student once put it to me, "It is important to note that Poe was a victim of dopes." Sirmlarly, I affirm the value of psychology and philosophy, and obviously no one can be against anyone's being socially sensitive. What I deplore is the attempt to teach any of these worthwhile values through literature . To attempt to do so is necessarily to reduce literature to a document , to use it as a vehicle for what is really important, to use it for what Plato first saw—its most obvious, but in fact, least important value—utility. We needn't go back to the ancient Greeks to realize that this is a tired argument. We can all recall the verbose batde between the now-not-so new 34RMMLA BulletinMarch 1970 critics and the literary historians in the generation before our own. My role in this symposium is that of an iconoclast, and like most iconoclasts I am as unwilling to lose die argument as I am unable to win it; the best that I can hope for is to sustain it. In calling your attention to the uselessness of teaching literature for an extrinsic purpose I have not been insincere, only devious. In using literature for its utilitarian value we are, if not useless, highly inefficient, and probably irresponsible. We're like the old school marm (fortunately there aren't too many still around) who insisted that we study Latin to learn English. Since most of us are not competently trained in the disciplines we are trying to teach through literature we are likely to be irresponsible. I'm not certain which discipline social sensitivity belongs to; like humanities or American Studies, it's probably a rather confused amalgam—perhaps sociology, ethics, and political science. If, on die other hand, there is something about the novel, the play, the poem that makes it a particularly efficient vehicle for teaching something else though, then the teacher must concern...