The Ideal English Major

The Ideal English Major

Melinda Beck for The Chronicle Review

By Mark Edmundson

Soon college students all over America will be trundling to their advisers' offices to

choose a major. In this moment of financial insecurity, students are naturally drawn to

economics, business, and the hard sciences. But students ought to resist the temptation

of

those

purportedly

money-ensuring

options

and

even

of

history

and

philosophy,

marvelous

though

they

may

be.

All

students

—

and

I

mean

all

—

ought

to

think

seriously about majoring in English. Becoming an English major means pursuing the

most important subject of all

—

being a human being.

An

English

major

is

much

more

than

32

or

36

credits

including

a

course

in

Shakespeare, a course on writing before 1800, and a three-part survey of English and

American lit. That's the outer form of the endeavor. It's what's inside that matters. It's

the character- forming

—

or (dare

I say?) soul- making

—

dimension of the

pursuit

that

counts. And what is that precisely? Who is the English major in his ideal form? What

does the English major have, what does he want, and what does he in the long run

hope to become?

The English major is, first of all, a reader. She's got a book pup-tented in front of her

nose

many

hours

a

day;

her

Kindle

glows

softly

late

into

the

night.

But

there

are

readers

and

there

are

readers.

There

are

people

who

read

to

anesthetize

themselves

—

they

read

to

induce

a

vivid,

continuous,

and

risk-free

daydream.

They

read for the same reason that people grab a glass of chardonnay

—

to put a light buzz

on. The English major reads because, as rich as the one life he has may be, one life is

not

enough.

He

reads

not

to

see

the

world

through

the

eyes

of

other

people

but

effectively to

become

other people. What

is

it like to

be John Milton, Jane Austen,

Chinua Achebe? What is it like to be them at their best, at the top of their games?

English majors want the joy of seeing the world through the eyes of people who

—

let

us admit it

—

are more sensitive, more articulate, shrewder, sharper, more alive than

they

themselves

are.

The

experience

of

merging

minds

and

hearts

with

Proust

or

James

or

Austen

makes

you

see

that

there

is

more

to

the

world

than

you

had

ever

imagined. You see that life is

bigger, sweeter, more tragic and intense

—

more alive

with meaning than you had thought.

Real reading is

reincarnation.

There is no other way to put it. It is being born again

into

a

higher

form

of

consciousness

than

we

ourselves

possess.

When

we

walk

the

streets of Manhattan with Walt Whitman or contemplate our hopes for eternity with

Emily Dickinson, we are reborn into more ample and generous minds.

life / Were all too little,

magnificence

of

the

world,

who

would

wish

to

live

only

once?

The

English

major

lives

many

times

through

the

astounding

transportive

magic

of

words

and

the

welcoming

power

of

his

receptive

imagination.

The

economics

major?

In

all

probability he lives but once. If the English major has enough energy and openness of

heart,

he

lives

not

once

but

hundreds

of

times.

Not

all

books

are

worth

being

reincarnated

into,

to

be

sure

—

but

those

that

are

win

Keats's

sweet

phrase:

joy

forever.

The

economics

major

lives

in

facts

and

graphs

and

diagrams

and

projections.

Fair

enough.

But

the

English

major

lives

elsewhere.

Remember

the

tale

of

that

hoary

patriarchal

fish

that

David

Foster

Wallace

made

famous?

The

ancient

swimmer

swishes his slow bulk by a group of young carp suspended in the shallows.

water?

but say not a word. The old fish gone, one carp turns to another and says,

hell is water?

The English major knows that the water we humans swim in is not any material entity.

Our

native

habitat

is

language,

words,

and

the

English

major

swims

through

them

with the old fin's enlivening awareness. But all of us, as the carp's remark suggests,

live

in

a

different

relation

to

language.

I'll

put

it

a

little

tendentiously:

Some

of

us

speak,

others

are

spoken.

speaks

man,

Heidegger

famously

said.

To

which I want to reply, Not all men, not all women: not by a long shot. Did language

speak Shakespeare? Did language speak Spenser? Milton, Chaucer, Woolf, Emerson?

No, not even close.

What does it mean to be spoken by language? It means to be a vehicle for expression

and not a shaper of words. It means to rely on cliché

s and preformulated expressions.

It

means

to

be

a

channeler,

of

ad-speak,

sports

jargon,

and

the

latest

psychological

babble. You sound not like a living man or a woman but like something much closer

to a machine, trying to pass for human. You never know how you feel or what you

want in life because the words at your disposal are someone else's and don't represent

who you are and what

you want. You don't and can't know yourself. You don't and

can't know the world.

The businessman prattles about excellence, leadership, partnerships, and productivity.

The

athlete

drones

on

about

the

game

plan,

the

coach,

one

play

at

a

time,

and

the

inestimable

blessing

of

having

teammates

who

make

it

all

possible.

The

politician

pontificates

about

unity,

opportunity,

national

greatness,

and

what's

in

it

for

the

middle

class.

When

such

people

talk,

they

are

not

so

much

human

beings

as

tape

loops.

The essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan catches this sort of sensibility in its extreme form

in

an

essay

about

reality

TV

shows.

There,

verbal

channeling

reaches

an

almost