As a gay male who would like to become a good thinker, I am despairing of finding a graduate program that isn't going to drag me through the nonsense you regularly deride in your column. I'm studying Roman Catholic theology -- a fine tradition that is currently falling on hard times after a brief revival -- but find most of the big theology schools aren't at all interested in tradition, only ideology.

I long for the education my older professors got (the old priests, that is) -- a good liberal arts seminary education, an incredibly broad graduate education in language, history, philosophy and theology. Unfortunately, I don't think it exists anymore -- creating an updated version would be a worthwhile challenge -- and I sure as hell don't want a doctorate in the "latest thing," which will surely be worthless in a year. One can only take so much play with language -- cleverness can really only go so far. Truly accurate analysis requires piles of knowledge, and most of what I've read is a lot of nothing.

I certainly have a lot to learn, but finding a place to learn it doesn't look promising. Catholic institutions are running scared because of the latest Vatican attempts at mind control, and most non-evangelical Protestant places are dissolving into a miasma of interreligious syncretism. That's not to say that authentic religious dialogue isn't a good thing, but I don't think any faith tradition, or any system of ideas, for that matter, is well-served by trying to combine it with others into a false unity. Most religions have points of contact with others, but in the end they are separate systems that can only be combined with a lot of inauthentic twisting.

--Bryan Cones
Chicago

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I read what a reader of your column had to say about the surfeit and surplus of theory in American academia. While I find theory useful and exciting and have been particularly excited by the work of the Frankfurt school, I too, frankly, find the obsessive emphasis on theory in the olive groves of academe destructive to the study of literature.

I read recently that a university offers a course in "the epistemology of the anus" and I would like to know how such a course (which I am sure would be very cleverly done and interesting) could enlighten my reading of any text, save those which deal with the anus (I'm reasonably well read, and I haven't really come across details of the anus in any work I've read).

During a conversation with some theory-trippers a few years ago, I said that I still subscribed to the idea that literary criticism was an evaluative activity and that my favorite critics were George Steiner, Harold Bloom, Rene Wellek and Frank Kermode. I was made to feel that I was fascist, sexist, chauvinistic, homophobic, misogynist, misanthropic, a sort of "betrayer of the cause" being a post-colonial, postmodern, whatever-whatever individual.

When I pointed out that one reason I loved the work of these critics is that in their writing their passion for literature came across and that they themselves wrote in an elegant style (something none of the hyper-theoretical brigade quite achieve), I was told that these conditions of assessment were passé and that new radical grounds of assessment had to be used.

To what end? Liberating the world? Freeing the mind? Huh! I think theory of this overblown sort is a handy refuge for people who value their observations (and the importance of these observations) more than the texts themselves.

Hell, what can I know? I'm just a guy who likes Thomas Hardy, Neruda and Yevtushenko. But what use is that since I don't freak on the really important guys like Lacan, Lyotard and their offspring who flourish these days.

--Rohit Chopra

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I miss your reflections on academia. I am a young professor, and I already feel burnt out. I loved the idea of teaching bright young people and seeing their eyes and minds open through intellectual discourse. As a result of our misguided incorporation of critical thinking and self-esteem movements in education, I instead deal with smug young adults who seem to only know how to be critical without actually thinking and who need constant validation even when they are wrong. Is this why I got my Ph.D.?

I just ended my day by telling a student why a note from his mom does not constitute a valid excuse for missing an exam in my class. Unfortunately, like many other schools, my tenure decision primarily rests on student evaluations. It's a no-win situation, and I've decided to quit academia for a while. At least I'll get paid more for my grief in industry. I did not know that my job was to be a parent instead of an educator/scholar.

-- Name withheld by request

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I saw your [negative] reference to the Frankfurt School in your Western Civ piece the other day and figured this development must have come into vogue since I got out of grad school. So I cranked up my ferret and searched the Web for information about the Frankfurt School, hoping to get current.

What I got was Error 404s on the first five sites I tried to visit. So there it is: I'm not interested in any philosophy that can't keep its Web sites up. Now there's a comment on what's really happening with Western Civilization.

--Jay Lewis

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I enjoy leafing through the Oxford Classical Dictionary now and then -- and probably will continue doing so. I have always felt suspicious about the entries dealing with gender and sexuality, however. After reading your [negative] comments about Foucault, I was reminded of the dictionary's stress on his work (as well as on that of Lacan and Derrida).

My educational background is in literature, and I have struggled to free myself from the mire of deconstructionism. Studying old cultures has helped refresh my imagination, and the Oxford Classical Dictionary has been a part of that study.

I am sad that a volume of basic reference should be so impregnated with ideology, so preachy as the Oxford Classical Dictionary has become.

-- Name withheld by request

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