Ecstasy, Y2K and Camille Paglia

Your observations of the current state of the humanities departments of the modern university reflect my own experiences so perfectly that I felt the need to tell you, "Bravo and keep up the clamor."

I really don't see how the modern university can hope to survive the next 20 to 40 years without becoming a very expensive technical/business school. If it weren't for their massive and ever-expanding general-education requirements, most schools of humanities would wither to a few wizened old professors shoved into tiny, dusty offices with little more to do than train a yearly and dwindling crop of disciples and eccentric budding scholars.

I do have to disagree with you on one point. You seem to ascribe the decline of the humanities to elitism and fatuous adherence to outdated socialist ideals among the faculty. Although these do alienate those attracted to the humanities in the first place, they don't really affect those who decide before ever opening a college handbook that they want to pursue the quick path to suburban wealth. The real problem lies in the marketability of a degree in the humanities. The education requirements of most white-collar jobs in America are dictated by another sort of elitist snobbery -- the educated urban professional. These are people who insulate themselves and their jobs by inflating the importance and difficulty of their positions by taking ever more advanced and specialized degrees, when such advanced education is not really needed to perform their jobs. Thus, the job that 30 years ago required some college now requires a specialized master's degree, as most companies are unwilling to replace their outgoing master in business administration and international communication with a bachelor in European history.

The revolution to save the American university then needs a double focus. It needs to remove the entrenched demagogues who control the humanities, and it needs to educate corporate America to the fact that college teaches people to learn, and unless you are talking rocket science or genetic engineering, it doesn't really matter what you learned so long as you proved yourself able to learn it.

-- Jeff Crook

I am not surprised at the decline of liberal arts colleges and humanities departments. Were I a college student today, the last thing I would do is major in English or history. (I graduated from a liberal arts college in 1978 with a B.A. in English.) I'd steer clear of the humanities and stick with the hard sciences -- still untainted, I hope, at the university level. The anti-intellectual strain on college campuses is frightening and depressing. When he wrote "The Closing of the American Mind," I couldn't help thinking how prophetic was Alan Bloom's criticism of professors who crush the thirst for knowledge and warp the fragile sensibilities of incoming freshmen. The reduction of art, history, culture and literature to mere vehicles for promoting American Marxist chic is a disgusting spectacle.

On the lighter side: Have you noticed how in some ways Bill Clinton resembles George Wickham in Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"? He simpers and smiles and makes love to us all.

Right on with your insight into the diminishing of American pop culture and the elevation of "gangsta vulgarity." Much to our embarrassment, we were hit hard with it during the Super Bowl halftime show. Yuck!

Why is it that the best in black American culture -- spirituals, jazz, R&B, rock 'n' roll -- has been relegated to the sidelines as inner-city crime and prison pop come front and center? And the imitation of all this by liberal-minded white pop stars makes me squirm. This is evidence to me that the current pop scene is starved.

-- Cheryl Hargis, Germantown, Md.

A few comments on James Wolcott. I never paid attention to him until you started writing about him a few years ago. Several months ago, I went to the library and made copies of all his Village Voice writings and many of his other articles (though quite frankly, he has written so much stuff I have not yet found time the to copy all of it).

You are so absolutely correct about him. For instance, that article from 1977 titled "The Cult of the Little Girl," which paired photos of Shirley Temple and Jodie Foster with quotes from the "Satyricon" and lines from underground '70s porn, is just incredible! He puts so much material into that piece, and yet there is nothing weighty or tiring about it at all.

The article "Big Brother Is Trekking You," from Feb. 2, 1976, is another outstanding article. And as someone who was nowhere near the '70s New York punk scene, I am totally grateful to him for his writings on John Cale, Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman and others. Thanks to Napster, I've recently been able to hear all of the music Wolcott writes about in those articles, and if anything stands out it's that Wolcott's assessment of Cale's "Helen of Troy" should be headlined in every magazine ranking the best of rock.

I've also read Wolcott's Vogue articles. Again, magnificent. His essay on Greta Garbo in the December '82 issue reminds me of your meditations on sexual personae. Vogue pulls a particularly delicious quote from the piece: "Nearly all of the sex icons of our time have had this androgynous mystique -- from Kate Hepburn with her tomboyish daring to Mick Jagger with his bitch-queen pout and strut, from Joan Crawford's hard, mannish edge to Elvis Presley's honey-pie curves." I'm also impressed by the article "Hot Stuff ... it begins with languor in the lips," where Wolcott writes about the languid style of early '80s actresses such as Isabelle Adjani, Clio Goldsmith and Blair Brown.

One of the things I like about Wolcott is that his interests spread out into so many areas. He reads important books, enjoys TV, listens to rock, has the eye of a gay aesthete -- and I'm sure he enjoys sports, too.

Again, thank you for drawing my and other readers' attention to Wolcott. It's interesting -- for someone who has had such a long, distinguished career, who writes for one of the most popular magazines [Vanity Fair] and is, according to Inside.com, one of the highest paid journalists in the world because of it, he is someone who seems to have no fame whatsoever. I hope he appreciates your attempt to change all that!

-- Damion Matthews

How right you are about Gloria Steinem. Her brand of feminism had nothing to do with the formation of bossy, opinionated baby-boomer babes.

I remember when she and her kind dropped onto the counterculture in the late '60s. It was the wet blanket of all time. What had been fun became tedious. Whiny dishrags began dominating political meetings, and women not of their ilk were called "male-identified."

Ms. magazine was (and is) a total bore. Nothing but careerism and chlamydia. And Ms. as appellation is an abomination. I still grit my teeth when forced to use it in business correspondence.

-- Mrs. Carola Solomonoff

Thank you for commenting on the essentially false Lifetime Television profile of Gloria Steinem. More than 15 years ago I read a quote from Gloria Steinem in a magazine profile where she spoke about her personal defense mechanism against weight gain and possible obesity.

Prefacing her thoughts with a statement that she had one or more close relatives who were obese, she said that she kept her weight under control by having in her Manhattan apartment a functioning refrigerator -- with no food whatsoever in it. To me, her most telling comment (as best I am able to remember) ran something like this: I control my weight by never eating anything at home. I know me, and I know my own and my family's reactions to food, and if I kept any food at all in my fridge, I would not be able to stop eating until it was gone, and in no time I'd weigh 300 pounds. So I just don't have any food in my apartment.

I was surprised then, and still am, at her remark. I am 51 and grew up in Atlanta, so underlying fear and mistrust of any of the pleasures of life are familiar cultural touchstones to me. However, if for food one substitutes "whisky," she speaks in the absolutes of a religious abstainer, or one for whom temptation is such a distraction that they do in fact pluck their eyes out rather than be cast into the fire.

-- Scott Tomlinson

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