American Education: "Stuck in Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again"

                                                                                 

Who chooses what we study and why?

     On May 24th, Bob Dylan turned 80. What a surprise to to see how many cockroaches (writer Oscar "Zeta" Acosta's term for Raza and our will to survive) hopped on social media to bid the American musical bard their best wishes. There I thought my cousin Johnny (RIP) and I were but a few Chicano fanatics of Dylan’s work, going back to the 60s, and not just lovers of his most popular songs, but “wordy” gophers mining his lyrics for cultural insights into enigmatic images, even up to his newest albums, including Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020), containing the long, cryptic, Murder Most Foul, a  fragile three-chord spider web spun around JFK’s assassination. 

     Like the Spanish writer Pio Baroja, who continued writing novels up until his death at 85, Bob Dylan defies time and shows us we should not allow the years to define us in any way. The voice of a generation (a phrase Dylan detested) continues to inspire and entertain, for that is the primary job of the artist, to bring pleasure. 

     So, I thought I’d go back into my own personal Bloga archives and tune-up a piece I wrote when Dylan received the Nobel Prize for literature, stirring up a controversy among literary-types, both writers, scholars, and readers, begging the question: what is art and who decides its value?

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     It was a thunderous statement that sounded in Stockholm, when the Swedish Academy bestowed the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature on Bob Dylan, putting the American rocker right up there with names like Mann, Yeats, Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Eliot, Camus, Alexandre, Mistral, Lessing, Garcia Marquez, Neruda, Morrison, Cela, Saramargo, and other literary giants. 

     Since I’ve been a fan of Bob Dylan’s music for five decades, I was delighted with the Academy’s choice. But as a teacher and writer, the honor the academy bestowed on wily "song and dance man," as he refers to himself, left me perplexed. If a rock ‘n roll singer-songwriter can win the Nobel Prize in literature, what does that say about literature? 

     Should educators, literary critics, and readers now consider songwriters of popular music in the same category as novelists, playwrights, and poets? Does it signal a cataclysmic "times they are a changing" moment in classic literature and open the canon to, what some might call, the lowest form of art--rock ‘n roll, the music of  John Lennon's working-class heroes?

     Are Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dr. Dre, Tupac, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Beck, and Carole King now eligible for the Nobel? Is classic poetry, suddenly, relative? What about Chicano/Latino and Latin American idols, like Lydia Mendoza, Ritchie Valens, Los Lobos, Los Tigres del Norte, Chalino Sanchez, Lalo Guerrero, Ruben Blades, or an album like “Chavez Ravine”? Is their oeuvre considered literature? After all, I’d go as far as to say popular music influences more people today than books. 

     More Chicanos would recognize the introductory strains of Lalo Guerrero’s “Pachuco Boogie” to the first words of Rulfo’s classic Pedro Paramo, “I first came to Comala…” 

     The Swedish Academy has maintained literature should not be evaluated by craft alone (art for art’s sake) but by its social impact, as well. Hemingway was a stylist, and an icon for many novelists. He received the Nobel Prize for his contribution to the craft of writing more than the themes of his stories. In fact, his work avoided overt social issues. 

     Yet, critics blasted John Steinbeck’s inelegant prose throughout his career, but according to most studies, Steinbeck’s novels have had a greater social impact on readers around the world than Hemingway’s, and sell more books, even today. “The Grapes of Wrath”, with its stylistic and literary missteps, brought political and public awareness to the plight of farmworkers in the 1930s more than any other piece of writing. In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and East of Eden shone a bright light on labor and unions in this country, moving out of the modern era and into the 1950s.

     If you mention the Joad family, many Americans would immediately recognize the name. Steinbeck made the Okie an American myth. Few, I’d guess, would recognize the name Nick Adams, or even Santiago of the Old Man and the Sea fame. 

     So, is literature in bad shape today? How could downtown Westwood, home to UCLA, a premier world-class university, not have a single bookstore? Is Amazon an indication?

     It’s jarring to hear how few Americans read newspapers, magazines, or books, even electronically. Apparently, most Americans get their news on mobile phones, tablets, and laptops, especially Facebook memes, which many tend to believe without fact-checking sources. All of this would be great if it supplemented, or even replaced, the written word, but it appears as though all of it is displacing literature. 

      A few million Americans watch cable television, a scary prospect, due to a station's bias, sometimes spilling outright lies then claiming it's just opinion. Others receive their news from major television stations, which provide, in a 30-minute segment, not counting commercials, about twenty minutes of sanitized news, so as not to hurt viewers sensibilities. 

     Most world literatures began with sacred books meant to enlighten and lead one to salvation, or, at the very least, educate spiritually and intellectually. After Guttenberg invented the printing press, the wealthy classes read for edification and entertainment, using most of their leisure time, a scarce commodity, if one can refer to it as that, to tradesmen, craftsmen, artists, farmers, and housewives, many who were illiterate. Reading wasn't encouraged among the working classes, in Europe or the so-called New World. During slavery, a literate slave was considered a threat to the system, and he or she could be executed. After emancipation, did the U.S. all of a sudden fill schools with newly freed slaves and teach them to read? Hardly. 

     Jonathan Kozol’s books on American education, beginning with Savage Inequalities, described how public schools in the poorest parts of the country provided the worst educations; yet, in the same towns and cities, public schools in the wealthiest parts provided superior educations. Today, there is even a wider divide between students who study in private vs. public schools. 

     Public education is a privilege and open to everyone, and most Americans beyond the age of seven can read. Yet, when it comes to literature, realistically, how many working-class people who toil eight-to-twelve-hour jobs (sometimes two jobs) each week, come home, sit down, and open the latest novel on New York’s Bestseller’s list? I mean, how many even consider the concept of “leisure” time? 

     Teachers of literature and composition love reading. Of course, unlike everybody else, they are paid to read and study, which gives them an advantage, and the time. Consequently, it is a thrill for teachers to help students navigate the “murky waters” writers often create in their fiction, hoping that when the waters clear, the writer’s words will inspire, enlighten, and entertain. 

      It is difficult for teachers to understand how students can read yet choose not to. How does a literate person ignore the experience of a lifetime: reading the words passed down to us by great minds? Unfortunately, if parents don't read, generally, neither will their children. So, it is no wonder students can’t handle the literature college teachers assign. 

     Joseph Conrad’s novel, “Heart of Darkness” is one of the most assigned books in introductory college English courses and one of the most difficult to read. It was reported that on the book’s publication Conrad told a reviewer his book contained "too much meat for the average reader." If Conrad considered his novel difficult for experienced adult readers in the 1800s, how much more difficult is it for students today, particularly inner-city kids who graduate from the schools Kozol describes in his books? 

     I’ve taken that ride with Conrad up the Congo River many times, and each time I hop aboard, I find the payoff more rewarding than the last trip, but the journey is still difficult. It is the same with Juan Rulfo’s, “Pedro Paramo”, a more difficult and complex challenge than even Conrad’s, yet, even if written in the 1950s, today the novel might be more relevant for a peek into Mexican culture than when it was written. 

     The question is this. Do we continue foisting literature that was meant for literate 19th century readers with plenty of luxury time on their hands to 21st century technology-driven eighteen and nineteen-year-olds, with little time on their hands? Or is it time to transform education and, as the Swedish Academy did by awarding Bob Dylan the Nobel prize, expand the meaning of literature? 

     Is Tupac’s ode to his mother, “Hey, Mama,” any less profound than Dylan Thomas’ ode to his father, “Do not go gentle into that goodnight,” or Bob Dylan’s, “It’s Alright, Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding)”? Should we empower today’s students by letting them read and, yes, watch, “Zoot Suit” along with “The Tempest,” accompanied by a knowledgeable teacher to guide them on their journey? 

     Maybe educators should begin to listen to students, to learn where they encounter deeper thinking, el cante jondo, as Spain's gypsies call their more mystical flamenco. Perhaps students access their own Socrates, Popol Vuh, and Sor Juana Inez de La Cruz in the nooks and crannies of their homes, or even on their mobile phone playlists? Is there magic in a text exchange between two students confronting an overbearing problem? Have they experienced an epiphany in their own answers? 

      In the early 1970s, just as I began college, I recall finding nuggets of gold buried in the racks of college and small independent bookstores, tomes never assigned, like Omar Salinas’ “Crazy Gypsy,” Marcus Duran’s short story “Retrato de un Bato Loco,” Luis Talamantes’ “Life Within the Heart Imprisoned,” and Marta Cotera, “When Women Speak.” 

      Unfortunately, as many educators try to make these changes, movements around the country stifle them, to silence the voices, when we all know America breathes in every corner of the country and not only one, and often it feels as though we're "stuck in Mobile with the Memphis blues again."