On Beauty 4/15

Investigating the Left
In this book, we are given a bleak look of the left. Zadie Smith is, in fact, lionized by the left. In reading her novel, we get the feeling that perhaps she is anti-left. In the scene where Howard is talking to the curators of the museum, he is very snooty and sees them as being quite beneath him.

"To misstate, or merely understate, the relation of the universities to beauty is one kind of error that can be made. A university is among the precious things that can be destroyed." --Elaine Scarry

This quote is at the beginning of the chapter "the anatomy lesson." In this chapter, Zora threatens the Dean into letting her into Claire's creative writing class. In this instance, then, the university is not something that defends beauty. Does the accrediting of grades get in the way of finding and defending grades? YES. The university, then, is not really a defender of beauty. In the conversation between Zora and Carl, the topic of college education comes up. He tells Zora that by going to classes, she is just paying to talk to people about her ideas. Although Carl doesn't have a college education, he produces poetry for the sake of its beauty--not for the grades he could receive for it. Zora is pursuing a spot in Claire's creative writing class because it will look good on her transcript, and will help her get into graduate school. Carl, however, is a bit unusual in his pursuit of knowledge and experience.

Howard is living in a way that makes him feel dead. Perhaps his work life (as well as his romantic life) was dead. He tells his students that "beauty is a mask that power wears." Art, according to Howard, is a Western myth. As we keep reading, we learn that Howard is saying these things for the sixth year in a row. He might not even believe these "memorized" viewpoints anymore...