The Progress of Communication

Acchhhhh, this is embarrassing. In my ruminations about communication in my letter #4 (Shakespeare at Cambridge), I was meandering from:

Extreme communication -- in which a fixed meaning is launched from one mind, traverses space, and lands more or less intact upon a different mind (a phenomenon sometimes seen in 200-year-old works of fiction);

to:

the Cambridge style, also called Shakespearean communication -- in which the speaker's intent is more or less a mystery, and auditors register a variety of heterogeneous meanings;

to:

neoshakespearean communication, also called American politics style -- an about face from Cambridge: speaker intent is apparent, often even predictable, and auditor homogeneity is restored. However, in common with Cambridge, the link to reality is strained. An important distinction between extreme communication and neoshakespearean is that the meaning launched in the latter type is synthetic, as opposed to quaintly having been selected from the launcher's existing belief set.

The problem is with the neoshakespearean illustration I used -- George Bush's "victory" in 2000. I got it from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, a spokesman for reality whom I normally consider reliable.

But this particular choice of illustration may have been unlucky, since the crucial unreality element is more murky than I expected. Krugman has issued three consecutive corrections; the last has apparently appeared only on the New York Times website, not the print edition, a fact that has riled critics; and, in a very unusual display of internal conflict at the Times, the newspaper's ombudsman, dissatisfied with the corrections, has been openly criticizing Krugman -- and editorial page editor Gail Collins as well, who he says is not enforcing the page's policy:

An Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times who makes an error "is expected to promptly correct it in the column." That's the established policy of Gail Collins, editor of the editorial page.

Two weeks have passed since my previous post spelled out the errors made by columnist Paul Krugman in writing about news media recounts of the 2000 Florida vote for president. Mr. Krugman still hasn't been required to comply with the policy by publishing a formal correction. Ms. Collins hasn't offered any explanation.

As a result, readers of nytimes.com who simply search for "Krugman" won't find any indication that there are uncorrected errors in the columns the query turns up. Nor will those who access Mr. Krugman's columns in an electronic database such as Nexis or Factiva. Corrections would have been appended in all those places if Mr. Krugman had complied with Ms. Collins' policy and corrected the errors in his column in the print version of The Times. (Essentially, to become part of the official archive of The Times, material has to have been published in the print paper.)

A bottom-line question: Does a corrections policy not enforced damage The Times's credibility more than having no policy at all?

[Edited excerpt from Times Ombudsman Byron Calame's Web Journal^[1].]

Who's right? I think Krugman's essential points stand, but, frankly -- it takes time to check these things out thoroughly, and I'm trying to tell my story of Cambridge. I'm also struggling to avoid these persistent diversions. (If you wish, see the "RELATED" items I've listed at the bottom of the urielw.com copy of the Krugman column I cited before -- Don't Prettify Our History. You may also google "byron calame krugman" to see how the blogosphere has been set alight.)

I acknowledge that this sits awkwardly with my counter-Cambridge thesis that the universe does contain discernible truths independent of our perspectives.

All in all, a most unfortunate example to have picked.

Getting back to Cambridge....

But really, the Times is so compelling! Just two days after I bemoaned squash's decline^[2], the Times comes up with this report on an alternative sport whose future, by contrast, seems bright:

GREEN MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST, Vt. - Chomping wad after wad of Bubblicious Strawberry Splash gum and giggling as she tickled people's necks with a piece of grass she pretended was a spider, Samantha Marley could have been any 9-year-old girl.

A couple of things set her apart, though. She was cloaked in camouflage from boots to baseball cap. And propped next to her on the seat of a truck was her very own 20-gauge shotgun.

Samantha, a freckle-faced, pony-tailed fourth grader, was on a bear hunt. Not the pretend kind memorialized in picture books and summer-camp chants, but a real one for black bears that live in the woods of southwestern Vermont and can weigh 150 pounds or more.

"Almost everything you hunt is pretty fun," said Samantha, grinning and perfectly at home with a group of five men, the youngest of whom was nearly three times her age.

At one point, as the group crossed a wooden bridge, Samantha's father, Scott, who had accompanied her, teased her that trolls lived under the bridge.

"Dad," Samantha said with bravado, "I got a gun."

[Edited excerpt from "Girls and Boys, Meet Nature. Bring Your Gun," New York Times, September 18, 2005.]

Even the headlines can make one laugh, and weep -- e.g. today's "Message: I Can't," the one above columnist Maureen Dowd's latest lambasting of President Bush.

Does literature offer such a view of the human panorama, day in, day out? OK, maybe. But (getting back to the story here) it didn't at Cambridge.

Speaking of internet folks being set alight, "grianne" & co. have noticed my noticing them:

Oh, wow. Uriel's watching us.

http://www.urielw.com/cambridge/8.htm

The rejuvenated discussion features the following entry from another troll, this one safe from being blown away by young Samantha -- he calls himself "Winter Troll." If I've got beefs with the Cambridge style, he's got some with mine. Some readers may feel similarly:

Makes me think of someone I know who updates their blog using grandiose hyper-intellectual words to say the most mundane shit. "The band was wretched, so we left and sat in the coffee shop across the street for the rest of the night" becomes "wearying of the sub-par musical entertainment provided by the lackluster musicians, we ventured forth to a nearby cafe, where much coffee was imbibed and merriment was had until the wee hours of morning next."

Returning to Monday, August 15, the day of Alex Lindsay's Emma monologue: That happened to be the same day I'd arranged to meet, for the first time, with summer school director Sarah Ormrod (having failed to gain an audience with the literature program director, Fred Parker). The appointment with her was for 3:30 PM, shortly after Lindsay's class. I met Lindsay afterwards, at 4:30 PM.

I'd requested the meeting with Ormrod to discuss shortcomings of the Cambridge program noted in my "Downside" essay^[3]. I've already related parts of our one-hour talk^[4].

But in the course of our meeting, I also inquired about any guidelines the program might have for instructors, regarding lengthy monologues. She responded that they generally liked to let instructors teach according to their own style. One wouldn't want, she pointed out, to dictate to a teacher that, for example, You must talk for exactly 53 minutes.

This rhetorical technique -- knocking down a straw man -- was one I encountered several times at Cambridge. I suppose it was helpful in defending the ideology that every view is legitimate so long as it's dear to someone's heart. Thus, the absurdity of a hypothetical 53-minute rule showed the undesirability of any guidelines. Similarly, Jill Paton-Walsh's uncertainty about a childhood memory showed that memory was a dicey guide to the past.

Of course, even partisans of universal opinion legitimacy are logically compelled to reject some opinions -- namely, those that deny the reasonableness of certain other opinions. An example would be my view that teacher monologues in a small literature class are kinda nuts.

And yet, mightn't the summer program's own advice to students have led to expectations like mine?

You should also be prepared to participate in classes: classes are not simply a matter of a course director (teacher) reading out a lecture. He or she will encourage you to contribute ideas, to learn from one another and to participate in discussion. As you get to know the people in your class you will feel comfortable in doing this. It is the course director's role to ensure the class stays focused and is not dominated by one or two students only. He or she will also balance the amount of discussion time and time for delivery of information.

Admittedly, that "delivery of information" was ominous. The clever language left teachers free to strike any "balance" they wished.

Except.... Zero discussion time seemed a stretch, unless one was being quite legalistic. If "discussion" involves more than a single person, however, then zero was pretty close to the reality in Lindsay's and Barlow's courses.

Another remark of Ormrod's which I noted, as she argued that a teacher might reasonably wish to exclude questions during a presentation, was that a teacher could "lose his train of thought" -- exactly the words Lindsay had used in class earlier the same day.

Had this subject been discussed by others that day? The answer, it turned out, was yes....

(Continued....)

[1]     see "RELATED" items listed at the bottom of Don't Prettify Our History.

[2]     letter #9, Serving the Market

[3]     letter #2, The Downside

[4]     letter #3, Polls versus Thought