Writing in The Times yesterday, Kevin Maher took to task Lucy Worsley for introducing herself as "Dr. Lucy Worsley" on what he rather high-handedly terms "the BBC's pop-history show" If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home. Evidently the only people permitted to refer to themselves as doctor are those who kiss Kevin's boo-boos and allow him to take a lollypop from the jar.
Naturally it's not that Maher is just bothered about the doctor thing: he has another axe to grind with her and just lampoons her obvious self-importance as a side-swipe. To show that he is no mere sneering oik, however, he does let drop that he is quite au fait with this education business himself and has an M.A. ... but naturally (being the sort of person who sets these gew-gaws at a clear-sighted estimation of their importance) he got over that some years ago and is no longer clinging to it.
Let's just compare those two qualifications then, shall we?
Lucy Worsley is Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces. "She's also a winner of the Royal Historical Society's Frampton Prize, a visiting professor at Kingston University, and one of the few beardless Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries." (God help us ... even Sordel is beginning to go off her!) She is the author of several books about history and her doctoral thesis was written on a subject in the history of architecture.
One might almost think that she introduces herself on her programme as "doctor" to reassure the audience that, unlike many people who present programmes on television, she is actually qualified to speak on her subject with authority. (And let's just leave on one side the additional defence that she was probably encouraged to style herself so by the BBC programme-makers.)
Now, Kevin Maher.
He may not have written his biog on The Times website, but he might have at least proofread it: "Kevin has been a film editor forThe Face magazine, a film pundit for The Big Breakfast, and a film researcher for Channel 4. He now writes about film, because he can" [sic]
Exactly what he "can" is left unsaid, or at least unpunctuated, but at least we have discovered that film is Kevin's metier.
Well, Film Studies is perhaps not the most elevated of academic subject ... but we should certainly congratulate Kevin on sticking to what he loves and making a career of it. A Masters degree is, after all, still a Masters degree and Film Studies need fear no bullying from the likes of Architectural History.
Except Kevin's Masters dissertation is not in Film Studies. Its title - as he mentions in his column - is "Beyond Good and Evil: A Post-Feminist Analysis of Charlotte Brontë's Villette With Respect to Nietzsche". [sic]
Does it perchance become crystal clear why Maher is so opposed to academic willy-waving when he has no relevant qualifications in the field in which he writes? (And this despite the fact that there must be suitably-qualified writers queuing around the block at all nearby Job Centres.)
Moreover, those schooled in reading dissertation titles will be ready to set at nought Kevin's endeavours with even more zeal than he himself modestly brings to bear. A dissertation advancing a "post-feminist" analysis reading one novel by Brontë (1816-55) in the light of the student's almost certainly superficial acquaintance with the work of Nietzsche (1844-1900) ... that's basically university code for "here's a load of crap I made up to look interesting to girls".
A show of modesty when one has so much to be modest about is scarcely virtuous, Mister Maher.
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Hard Times for Dickens
It must be a very slow day at the offices of The Times (and, for that matter, at Sordel Villas) since they've decided to devote an entire article to the decline in readership for the works of Charles Dickens.
Claire Tomalin (whom, probably quite unjustly, Sordel can only imagine as a Miss Flite character, poring over her clippings and promising a large colony of domesticated cats their liberation on the day that the royalties come in on her biography) has popped up to complain that young people have destroyed their attention span by watching television and playing videogames and are therefore incapable of sitting still long enough to sup at the whiskery nipple of her favourite author.
"Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel and I think that’s a pity." So says Claire, but she does not tell us which of those two things is a pity.
What she does tell us is the reasons for reading Dickens in the first place. For example: "You only have to look around our society and everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant — the great gulf between the rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt Members of Parliament, how the country is run by Old Etonians, you name it, he said it."
Of course, if you want to know about any of those things, you could just read about them in some august periodical of the day (such as ... The Times) for, though far-sighted, Dickens did not actually know more details about those matters as they concern 21st Century Britain than Wikipedia. Equally, it might be felt that the little toerags have whittled their attention span to the point at which they could only tolerate a column-inch of newsprint. Is it strictly necessary to read a six hundred page novel for the benefits to the young in terms of their awareness of current affairs?
What else have you got, Claire?
"When he went to America in 1842, one of the points he made was that the ‘unimportant’ and ‘peripheral’ people were just as interesting to write about as ‘great’ people."
Do we really need Dickens to make this point today when we have Eastenders? Surely you were only droning on a minute ago about the country being run by Old Etonians ... it seems to me that you are the one with a disproportionate interest in 'great' people ... but, pray, tell me more.
"He has gone on entertaining people since the 1830s and his characters' names are known all over the world."
... and his reputation is thus surely safe without being read by the lovable ragamuffins of today ..?
Sorry, Sordel's attention span just came down like the blade of the guillotine upon Sydney's Carton's neck. Even a nutshell is proving tiresomely protracted these days.
My point, though, would have been this: there is nothing innately laudable about bringing up the young to read Dickens. Dickens is actually good. Where the work would be required would be ... to get someone to read a biography of Dickens.
Or was that her concern all along?
Claire Tomalin (whom, probably quite unjustly, Sordel can only imagine as a Miss Flite character, poring over her clippings and promising a large colony of domesticated cats their liberation on the day that the royalties come in on her biography) has popped up to complain that young people have destroyed their attention span by watching television and playing videogames and are therefore incapable of sitting still long enough to sup at the whiskery nipple of her favourite author.
"Children are not being educated to have prolonged attention spans and you have to be prepared to read steadily for a Dickens novel and I think that’s a pity." So says Claire, but she does not tell us which of those two things is a pity.
What she does tell us is the reasons for reading Dickens in the first place. For example: "You only have to look around our society and everything he wrote about in the 1840s is still relevant — the great gulf between the rich and poor, corrupt financiers, corrupt Members of Parliament, how the country is run by Old Etonians, you name it, he said it."
Of course, if you want to know about any of those things, you could just read about them in some august periodical of the day (such as ... The Times) for, though far-sighted, Dickens did not actually know more details about those matters as they concern 21st Century Britain than Wikipedia. Equally, it might be felt that the little toerags have whittled their attention span to the point at which they could only tolerate a column-inch of newsprint. Is it strictly necessary to read a six hundred page novel for the benefits to the young in terms of their awareness of current affairs?
What else have you got, Claire?
"When he went to America in 1842, one of the points he made was that the ‘unimportant’ and ‘peripheral’ people were just as interesting to write about as ‘great’ people."
Do we really need Dickens to make this point today when we have Eastenders? Surely you were only droning on a minute ago about the country being run by Old Etonians ... it seems to me that you are the one with a disproportionate interest in 'great' people ... but, pray, tell me more.
"He has gone on entertaining people since the 1830s and his characters' names are known all over the world."
... and his reputation is thus surely safe without being read by the lovable ragamuffins of today ..?
Sorry, Sordel's attention span just came down like the blade of the guillotine upon Sydney's Carton's neck. Even a nutshell is proving tiresomely protracted these days.
My point, though, would have been this: there is nothing innately laudable about bringing up the young to read Dickens. Dickens is actually good. Where the work would be required would be ... to get someone to read a biography of Dickens.
Or was that her concern all along?
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