Confessions of an incurious mind

Last night, my wife and I went to a private showing of the King Tut exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.   The showing was preceded by a very nice party.  We made it through the entire exhibition in fifteen minutes, in keeping with the pace we normally set in museums.  And the rapidity with which we breezed through has me thinking this morning.

This post is not about feminism, masculinity, sex, or God.  It's a confession: I am a bad intellectual.  Heck, I'm not even sure I'm an intellectual at all.

Let me explain:  I grew up in a family of academics.  My mother and father are both retired professors.  My brother is a professor of English and renaissance literature at Exeter.  And I, of course, have never had a job outside of academe, having been at the community college since I was 26.   Growing up, my brother and I were raised to be interested in ideas, politics, and the arts.  When we traveled, museums were almost always our first stop.  And where other members of my family stopped to gaze and reflect and analyze, I impatiently made my way as rapidly as I could.  (It goes without saying I never rent those darned headphones to do an audio tour.)

It hasn't changed.  I've done the entire British Museum (every darned room) in 55 minutes.  I spent three months living and teaching in Florence, and went to the Uffizi -- once, for half an hour. (I lived a mile from the museum.)  I've whipped through the Met and MOMA in New York in under an hour each, the Kunsthistorisches Musuem in Vienna in half that time, and honestly, anything more than forty-five minutes in the Getty here in Los Angeles is painful. It's not that I don't like art; I do.  (I have a particular fondness for the Austrian Secessionists, especially Egon Schiele).  But I like it as decoration, background, not as subject for intense scrutiny and wonder. I am, at my core, a remarkably incurious and  impatient man about some things.

I once read a novel -- I can't remember what it was -- where the protagonist takes a woman on a first date to a museum.  The date makes polite noises, but doesn't seem swept by the same things that move the main character.  The narrator says something like "She was the hopeless sort of museum-goer, the type less interested in the sublime and the magnificent than in knick-knacks from the bookstore and a hot cup of coffee and something sweet from the cafe."    I read that, and thought "Uh oh.  That's me, always has been, likely always will be!"

Growing up in an academic family, there were no greater sins than intellectual laziness and an "incurious" mind.    I have a ravenous curiosity about some things, obviously (like the intersection of sexuality and theology, or college football), but I also am occasionally chagrined by my own lack of profound interest in some of the very things about which I teach.  As a professor whose Western Civ survey classes cover Egypt, should I not have spent more time lingering over the artifacts from Tut's tomb?  (Even if it was my second time seeing Tut's things; I went to see the show as a boy in San Francisco about, oh, twenty-five years ago.)   If for no other reason than to "role-model" (that can be a verb, right?) intellectual and aesthetic enthusiasm for my students, shouldn't I be more eager to spend time with the very old and the very beautiful and the very important?

I do love teaching history, mind you.  But often, my love for teaching is rooted more in the joy at structuring a coherent narrative for students than it is in the subject itself.  I like people better than I like books, and I'd rather try and explain what's in the books than read more of them.  Sometimes, I wonder if I didn't choose my career more to guarantee constant interaction with loads and loads of people rather than out of any particular passion for any particular subject! 

True confession:  I haven't read more than five history books since finishing my Ph.D. six and a half years ago.  I read novels like there's no tomorrow; I read (wince, wince) loads of mass-market popular books on gender and sexuality.  But when I need to brush up on material for my lectures in my European history courses, I go back to the same old battered texts I used as an undergrad and a grad student.  I'm able to create what I believe to be interesting, comprehensible lectures out of those old tomes, but I'm struck by the disquieting feeling that if I were a "serious scholar", I would be giving my kids the latest, cutting-edge research that I ought to be reading in every minute of my spare time.

I am, I suppose, very much a typical ENFP.  (The best summary of the strengths and weaknesses of that type are here.)  It makes for a compassionate youth worker and an entertaining teacher, but I don't think it's the foundation personality for a serious scholar.  In the end, I'd rather have other people tell me what they liked about the exhibit than see the exhibit myself. I would very much like to have a tea towel or an ornament from the gift shop.  (You should see my tea towel collection!) And always, always when in museums, I find myself dreaming of the scone or the cookie (washed down with strong coffee or tea), that I know awaits me after the drudgery of wandering uninterestedly past the important, the magnificent, and the sublime.

Comments

[Mr. Bad]

Hi Hugo, I'm no english or other literature major (I'm just a humble scientist who tries hard to rite gud), but I think that an adequate verb for "role model" might be "exemplify" or "demonstrate," or perhaps even "edify" if one is feeling grandiose. ;)

This statement bothered me: "But often, my love for teaching is rooted more in the joy at structuring a coherent narrative for students than it is in the subject itself."

You sound like the 'anti-G.W. Bush' in that it appears that you care more about how you say something than what you're actually saying. Tell me this ain't so.

And yes, I think that you're doing your student a grave disservice by dwelling on old texts. Such an approach in the hard sciences would be the Kiss of Death for a professor. You really need to get with the program and keep up to date re. the literature.

[Hugo]

"You sound like the 'anti-G.W. Bush' in that it appears that you care more about how you say something than what you're actually saying. Tell me this ain't so."

Well, not quite. What I am most concerned with is how my students are hearing what I'm saying; their reception is more important than my delivery. I try and structure my delivery for maximum effectiveness, and the joy of teaching -- and the challenge -- is constantly tinkering with that delivery.

Mr. Bad, to be fair, the research on, say, the Peloponnesian War doesn't change the "facts on the ground" very often! What we knew about the war in 1985 is more or less what we know now, so the fact that I'm not reading the latest is less deleterious than if I were teaching in the sciences or teaching more recent history.

[Mr. Bad]

Hugo, I hear you re. the history of e.g., the Peloponesian War (of which I know nothing about!), but I still think that you should try to keep up so that you will be aware of, e.g., new interpretations of old texts, archaeological(sp?) evidence, etc. Doesn't the history discipline have professional journals? And if so, don't you think you should at least browse them a few times a term?

I've been reading a bit on ancient Chinese military history and strategy (in conjunction wit Sun-Tsu's The Art of War) and note that recent archeological discoveries have added to the knowledge and interpretation of that classic, which I think is (at least) a couple of thousand years old. Seems to me you might do the same.

Just a thought.

[Hugo]

The way I look at it, Monsieur Mal, is that by teaching an interesting (albeit dated) narrative, I give those teachers at the upper-division level the pleasant opportunity to impress my former students with the latest research! (My tongue is in my cheek, mind you.)

[Adrienne]

There's no shame in breezing through museums, Hugo (although try not to get in the way of those of us who can stand and look at a painting for whole entire minutes!) But given some of your personal and academic interests (the intersection of theology and sexuality, sexual politics, feminism throughout history), don't forget there there are some works of art that speak to all of those areas--and say more than a million-word dissertation ever could. Take Manet's "Olympia", for instance (here)--talk about a picture being worth a thousand words. Art can definitely be appreciated just as background "prettiness," but it can also change how people think about their surroundings.

[LAmom]

Your observation that history texts are unintersting to a people person like yourself probably says as much about the quality of history texts as it does about you. People were just as juicy back then as they are now, and a good text should be able to bring that to life.

[Jeff]

Honestly, I consider the sort of intellectual that you're worried you're not to be a pretentious, disconnected snob. I think it's telling when you said "In the end, I'd rather have other people tell me what they liked about the exhibit than see the exhibit myself." Being an intellectual shouldn't mean forgoing everything that's not "serious" enough (such as the responses of non-intellectuals).

[sophonisba]

Honestly, I consider the sort of intellectual that you're worried you're not to be a pretentious, disconnected snob.

I'd rather be pretentious and disconnected than be someone who puts down other people for caring about books and art. It's more humane. Opinions differ, furthermore, on which of these attitudes is the more snobbish one.

The fact that Hugo can take pleasure from listening to other people tell him what they got out of the exhibit makes it pretty clear that he doesn't consider those people pretentious for enjoying such things, no?

[Hugo]

I am a bear of little brain, and I can't figure out whether Jeff is insulting me or not.

[Rainbow]

OMG, I sort of agree with Mr. Bad. An occasionally flip through the archaeology and new historical texts research might be very interesting to you and your students. For example, I follow native american studies at bit and the recent research regarding whether European diseases doomed the native americans before any significant numbers of Europeans stepped foot in North America is fascinating. Living up to the classic description of a community college prof, good teacher but no scholar? Maybe you should occasionally try art connected to your interests rather than the blockbuster, money raising exhibits.
Maybe Adrienne knows the name of the painting of a picnic where the two women are nude and the men are clothed from head to foot -- talk about gender studies. Don't worry about the pastry and gift shops; even art fanatics love those. As a liberal knee jerk and forgiving Christian, give yourself a break. You are allowed to not like something. Art museums are not a protected class of disadvantage institutions. Interesting revelation.

[Adrienne]

Rainbow-- That would be Manet's "Dejeuener sur l'herbe" (Luncheon on the grass). Again, worth a thousand words.

[Camassia]

When it comes to art and communication (which are ultimately the same thing, really), I think people just respond more to different media. Some like visuals, some like writing, some like speech, some like music, etc. I don't think I've ever known anyone with an equal appetite for all of them. Me, I can do an art museum once in a while but I'm really more of a word person. I was reminded of this while I was at the church retreat this weekend. Everything we did seemed to have some artsy-craftsy project in it, at which I didn't feel terribly adept. It wasn't too surprising that the person in charge of creating the retreat is a professional designer!

[Hugo]

Ah, the famous PMC retreat, Camassia?

Thanks, Rainbow and Adrienne. I took plenty of art history in college, and can tell my Manet from my Monet, my Klimt from my Kokoschka, my Raphael from my Botticelli, my Diego from Frieda. And I understand art has its powerful uses in feminist theory; Berger's "Ways of Seeing" was enormously influential on me when I was younger; I've seen Chicago's "Dinner Party" a couple of times.

It's not that I don't like any art at all! I just want to see it, register it, and then move on rapidly to coffee and crumpets and the knick-knack selection.

[yami]

What you're describing here sounds to me more like chronic museum fatigue, which I think is different from a disinclination to intellectual pursuits - there's something about the typical museum experience that can deaden even the most sublime material. Some people are more sensitive to this than others.

And I hear you on the "if I were a serious scholar I would eat sleep and breathe my subject"... that's my least favorite myth ever. It hurt me as an undergrad, and I expect it to keep hurting me for as long as I have an academic career. It was only during my time in industry that I realized I actually am much more curious than your average bear, I just can't concentrate on one subject for more than 50 hours a week. That the myth of the academic doesn't include this normal human need for variety is the fault of the myth, and not the academic.

[Hugo]

Yami, what a lovely way of putting it. Thanks!

[Viola]

That's interesting.....
In my mind, art and history are deeply related. I think that's the most important source for historians to use, because art work really say a lot about history. And because they are direct images, I think they are more accurate on translating the past than those written documents.

[BritGirlSF]

Can I point something out? The personality type you have described above is precisely the reason you're a teacher rather than, say, a research scientist. People who are good at one are frequently awful at the other. Most serious scholars make very dull teachers, and often resent having to teach at all. Seems to me that you have simply found your perfect niche.
And I'm VERY intellectually curious and frequently obsess over all kinds of things, leading to much reading and a scary level of knowledge about some bizzarely unrelated subjects, BUT I hate museums. When I lived in London I went to the Tate only once, and the only reason I ever went to the British Museum was for the Reading Room (which is beautiful). Put me in any old city, however, and I will wander contentedly for hours. Some people just don't like museums because they crave a higher level of interaction - we're doers, not observers. Some of us simply prefer reading to the more visual mediums.

[BritGirlSF]

Also, here's another thought...I think what I find so offputting about museums is the whole hidden-behind-glass aspect. It bothers me that I can't touch anything. When I'm looking at an oil painting, for example, I want to reach out and feel the texture of the paint. When I see interesting looking objects I want to pick them up and turn them around, feel how they fit into the hand, imagine what it would have felt like to use them. The lack of interactivity bores me, and I think that that may be what a lot of people find offputting about museums.
I second the other who've pointed out that you probably should at least read the journals in your field, thought. Who knows what new information you might be missing out on? Some of it might even help you to put a new spin on things that might help keep the students interested.