Why do I rise in defense of the English major? Heck, it wasn’t even cool when I was one.

For one thing, it was gay. (Well, not masculine. Back in that day, “gay” meant “happy.” Also, most English majors were women. In the present day, as men get ground into the dust of college life by newly empowered women, miseducation, bad role models and terminal testosteronicity, I can only imagine.)

For another, the English major was seen as impractical. We undergraduates were reminded regularly that the highest-paid starting jobs would go to the engineers, followed by the business students, with us liberal arts graduates bringing up the rear. (If English was seen as an impractical major then, how much moreso must it seem today?)

In truth, English was not as impractical as, say, philosophy. Among other occupations, you could teach; you could become a writer or editor; you could become a reporter. I did the latter.

In the early ’60s, a fair number of working journalists still didn’t have college degrees of any kind, let alone journalism degrees. You learned on the job. Now the “J” degree has become something of a credential; but what’s the point of taking editing classes when, on that first job, they’re just going to teach you to do it their way? I thought, and still think, that a degree in English Composition (mine) plus a lot of social science courses (mine) were a dandy background.

I liked being an “English Comp” major. For one thing, the “Comp” part meant I could take whatever Lit courses I fancied. (The Lit majors had to take one from Col. A, one from Col. B, etc. — 17th Century Continental literature and suchlike godawful drudgery.) “Comp” majors also were required to take one year of writing workshops, which didn’t differ significantly from the workshops I took decades later at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda MD. (Big plug for the Writer’s Center: 8 sessions, $275 members / $300 nonmembers. That’s $35 a session or less, and many instructors are big-time talented. Fall workshops forming now; check out www.writer.org.)

And I loved reading those great novels — books I’d never have read otherwise. A partial list of the ones I loved most: Anna Karenina, The Way of All Flesh, The Magic Mountain (grit your teeth through the first half), The Red and the Black, Madame Bovary, and, yes, Ulysses. I remember sitting in the student union, reading Ulysses and chuckling. Other students would walk past me, eyeball the cover, and register shock. But trust me, Ulysses is a lot easier than its reputation; it is also one of the funniest novels ever written.

So I was having fun. Only dimly did I realize that they were teaching me how to think. Papers and exams were exercises in left-brain critical skills. The masters’ prose was shaping my own skills of expression. And the ideas and truths expressed via literature, both directly and indirectly, hit harder and sink deeper than ideas and truths expressed in most other ways.

I realize it now though. My dear son Sam is a theatre major at NYU, studying the same kinds of things I did as an English major at Northwestern (except Sam is reading plays instead of novels). He reports that most of his classmates are careerists who want only to be Hollywood stars. Whenever he tries to start a discussion of ideas, they look at him funny. At this supposedly elite school, political correctness runs rampant these days, and the ideal of a liberal education seems pretty dead.

Poor kid. With my old-fashioned ideas about a liberal education, I’ve ruined him.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Coming big event: The Leonard Lopate show on WNYC-New York City. WNYC is the nation’s largest public radio station. It blankets the NY metro area with both an AM and an FM signal. Leonard Lopate’s weekday-afternoon interview show is influential. All thanks to publicist Michele Sobota of MediaConnections, who bugged the Lopate people into acquiescence. (Yeah, they like the book too.) They’re considering whether to have me on air for 20 or 40 minutes — not bad! No date set yet but the appearance is confirmed. Watch this space.