Publisher's Synopsis
The best way to offer a capsule-impression of this book is to reproduce a few passages. Here Professor Harris defines art: "We might say that art is the science of delusion-which is no doubt one of the reasons that literary art is linked so closely with rhetoric these days.... Such a claim is an utter distortion of critical issues. To delude is deliberately to misguide one's audience from Point A to Point B, A being a valid conclusion and B being an invalid one. Both are points, specific ends. Art does not lead the audience to a destination at variance with empirical evidence: it loosens the hold of empirical evidence upon one's mind so that one senses the proximity of a destination without the certainty of having reached it. Hence to accuse art of lying is a lie."Literary Decline is also an indictment of the academy's failure to respect spirituality as it feels its way ever deeper into utopian ideology. Dr. Harris examines the institutional causes and effects of our spiritual collapse with the unique thoroughness of someone who has studied and worked within the educational system for parts of five decades. On the programming of graduate students: "What these students endure by way of brainwash, then, is really not so much a plangent narrative of devils oppressing angels-they'd already dipped in that baptismal font-as a manner, a style: an irrational intransigence on all doctrinal matters justified by a maniacal faith in superior righteousness. Graduate-school gurus whip their charges into a fanaticism. Through example, they demonstrate that roughing up pro-life protesters and stealing their placards is acceptable, that writing monologues delivered by talking vaginas is tasteful, that dismissing reasoned challenges with ad hominem vitriol is conscionable, and that replacing text-based study with 'act out' assignments around the campus is responsible."The academy is not the sole villain of the piece, however. We should view with particular suspicion the habits that electronic technology has introduced into our lives: "If the television serial was a voyeuristic alternative to going forth in order to acquire life experience, and if the video game was a grotesque amputation of extreme experiences from their necessary real-world miseries, the new 'social media' were yet a third option in non-living. They suspended the motion of time entirely and encouraged their users to condense their very being (as many came to view it) into an image, or at most a scene lasting a few seconds."The absence of the sense of mystery that art imports into our lives has caused undertakings far beyond the Ivory Tower to degenerate, as well. These include everything from our political activity to our understanding of religious faith; and our sexual relationships are a major casualty: "In the absence of artistic experience from our upbringing, we have become demystified beings in a demystified setting. Everything is just as it appears, the sum of its material parts. What I see of you now is all you are now, and also all you are likely to be tomorrow. I can use what I see if you can use what you see... for now. We can make a couple, for the time being. Tomorrow, we will reassess. Perhaps my 'needs' will have changed by then... or yours, of course. We can be very civil about it: we don't have to act like the Sex Posse. Nevertheless, we should rigorously abstain from projecting any romantic 'indefinable' one upon the other. Let's keep our heads on straight. We are two people with two lists of needs that, for the time being, have a significant overlap."Specific sections will be read over and over by those dedicated to our common humanity.
