Universities are set up to get people to work together by having them disagree with each other.
Louis MenandWriters 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.
Louis MenandLiterature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate.
Louis MenandPublic circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority.
Louis MenandGetting faculties to come to a consensus about something that they've never really thought about or had to worry about in their careers before can be a rather slow process and a long process, it certainly was the case at Harvard, and it's the case with most of the general education curricula that I know of, it takes four or five years just to get everybody on board with one idea.
Louis Menand