Louis Menand
Louis Menand
Louis Menandis an American critic and essayist, best known for his book The Metaphysical Club, an intellectual and cultural history of late 19th and early 20th century America...
mean organization ideas
You want diversity in any intellectual organization. I mean, that's how good ideas arise.
people working-together university
Universities are set up to get people to work together by having them disagree with each other.
careers worry people
I do worry a lot about the time it takes for people to get a PhD, about the difficulty of finding employment, about the difficulty of getting tenure, and generally about the perception that undergraduates have, that this is a very high-risk career to get started.
people professors educated
It's generally sort of sociologically observed that the better educated people are, the more liberal they tend to be, which would suggest that professors are going to be more liberal than the general public.
running writing space
Diminished circumstances had no effect on his sense of what was honorable: after The Spectator sent him a check for a piece it had accepted but was unable to run for a lack of space, he refused to write for the magazine again.
thinking views political
I don't think that you want to see universities in any way trying to have any kind of quota system about political views, or views in general. You want the market to work in the way the market works.
reality slinkies staircases
If time is a staircase, reality is a Slinky.
years long insecurity
The time between Bachelor's degree and a PhD, the median time is over 11 years. So then you're still only on a tenure ladder, you're not tenured. So it generally takes 6 to 8 years after that to get tenure. So that's a very long period of what's essentially apprenticeship, of insecurity.
ideas limits
There are limits, after all, to the idea of limits.
writing sound timing
Writers are not mere copyists of language; they are polishers, embellishers, perfecters. They spend hours getting the timing right so that what they write sounds completely unrehearsed.
giving authority circulation
Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority.
writing thinking discipline
For the kind of places I've written for and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about your audience is to think about somebody who's like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.
puff stories outcomes
The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated.
style trying rabbits
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic. Never, btw, ask that androgynous paper clip anything. S/he is just a stooge for management, leading you down more rabbit holes of options for things called Wizards, Macros, Templates, and Cascading Style Sheets.