WE ALL know how the University of
Iowa has helped (and probably continues to help) a lot of our
country's writers through the UI International Writing
Program and its individual members. As we all know workshops
/ seminars have been invaluable to almost everyone of us in
this list when we were young. As we all know too how
universities have made good in maintaining and keeping the
literatures of all generations (the shortcomings in
multicultural consideration notwithstanding).
I am not involved in the fight to
save UI. You could say I don't care about UI, although
indirectly I would for any university dedicated to the
nurturing of writers and their art. Nor, to clarify, am I
discouraging anyone from joining the fight to save UI. By all
means, I'd say, fight to the end.
This message is then simply a
reminder. A reminder to the forgetfulness of our era that,
lest our worries get worse, sometimes certain causes turn out
to be really lost causes and must be given up for lost. Lest
our worries get worse. But lest (also) one think this is
being utterly defeatist, may I now say that a "lost
cause" does not necessarily read someone's having truly
lost! For, after all, it may really just mean someone's
waking up to an opportunity to look in another direction!
Although the contending argument would laugh at this
corniness and say, bluntly though equally corny, "it is always better to lose
while fighting than lose without having fought at all."
That is all well and good. That is honorable, I'll say here.
My concern, actually, is merely the maintenance of
the highlight on the philosophy behind a fight, any fight. For if one is to join any present effort (to save UI) from
a standpoint of mere worry, be it worry for certain literatures and
writers and what may happen to them henceforth should UI go,
I'd say the fight would be ignoble (could win one the Ig Nobel Award for Literature).
A creative director of mine at an ad
agency told me once that a copywriter shouldn't resign simply
because certain influential conservative quasi-execs in an
agency are lobbying against his "poor produce." He
said that would be entirely defeatist. They'd win, he said.
Well, . . . I had a different view. I thought such a
"war" could really be better fought from without
instead of within, and sans the usual necessity of useless confrontation. I resigned before I could be ousted, found
early a place where I would find the freedom to do my kind of
stuff, and went further to -- this is the part where I'll
have to get immodest -- become a creative partner, bidding for accounts against big and medium-size
agencies.
But I don't want to delve into an art
of war issue, no! You could read about that elsewhere,
bookstands at airports sell such books. I've already
suggested a philosophy (with a small "p"). Not an
art but a philosophy. And I believe that literature will
survive the death of universities. I believe that, in spite
of universities' successful safekeeping of our literatures
throughout the last few centuries, literature will continue
to exist -- in the streets and in the bars and corporate libraries and elsewhere --
should all universities ban literature itself (and some
philosophers have actually campaigned for such a ban!). You'd
say, but woe to good literature! Not so fast. I wouldn't say that
to good rock music that continue to be churned out by even
the mainstream recording industry run by profit-motivated
execs. I wouldn't say that to good cinematic works
that continue to process negatives into positives within
profit-oriented institutions. Is there any university
directly handling these artforms? In place of a university to
patronize an alternative cinema, Fox put up its Searchlight production house. Miramax, a pioneer in
alternative film production in eighties and nineties Hollywood, has
quite a website full of Miramax film listings. Robert Redford established the Sundance
Film Festival for independent filmmakers. And he's not a
professor.
And while we're at it, need I mention
the literatures that universities have ignored for decades or
a century before they could be acknowledged for their value
via the changes in the day's cultural vision? These works
didn't cease to exist. Need I mention the literatures that
universities have oppressed; worse than what the University
of the Philippines did to Jose Garcia Villa (for writing an "erotic"
poem); worse than what Manila's illustrious
University of Santo Tomas did to Jose Rizal's novels on to
the early '60s even when the Philippines had already gained
independence from the US in 1945?! Yes. Some literatures survive without universities' help and embrace.
So what is my point, my friends?
Literature is like religion. The burning of churches or
temples won't succeed in killing religion, and the burning of
millions of books have not erased literature. No matter how
many literature professors are brought to the bread lines of
a future neo-Fascist regime, none will eliminate literature.
And no matter how many writers are put in front of a firing
squad, none will be able to kill the rhythm and the rhyme and
the rhetoric that will keep on regenerating in our midst,
within the armies of the time, even secretly within a regime's new
cabinet! Oh, certainly an art may take another shape:
verse drama did become outmoded; opera did become bourgeois;
Neruda has been recited by hypocritical apolitical profiteers
at Hollywood. But literature will move on, renewing itself
for the present, be it in the shape of lyrics disguised under
the noise of industrial rock, or the one on the papyrus
someone rolled into a metal vacuum that he just hid inside his
ass. Or it could be terribly atextual, had the state banned
literacy among the poor.
In the meantime, yes. Yes, go and
fight the war to save UI! But don't forget, my friends. The
streets make quite a dormitory. It is here, here! -- where we can "fuck"
our nostalgia for the university. [VSV]
--finis--
