61 CHRONICLESnPERSPECTIVEnPLACE OF ASYLUM by Thomas FlemingnThe theater is dead, the novel dying, poetry extinct; biographynis the province of graveyard ghouls, and history anbattleground on which disheveled armies of academic theoristsncontend with hucksters and prostitutes for the fate of an entirencivilization. These conclusions of a temperate man in a goodnhumor pretty much sum up the business of hterature innour time, an age that cannot decide between the merits ofnJohn Irving and Tama Janowitz — our own Dickens andnThackeray — and chooses to elevate Prof Bloom to the statusnof reigning Jeremiah. There are exceptions, good writersnwriting good books, but it is hard to escape the conviction thatnthey are as irrelevant to the times as Dante and Thucydides;nwhich is to say that they are highly relevant but largely ignored.nOne review editor of our acquaintance sighs periodicallynover his monthly pile of publishers’ catalogs. The author ofnEcclesiastes probably knew of no more than a few hundrednbooks, but the thought overwhelmed him with weariness of thenspirit. He was unlucky enough to live before the New YorknReview of Books, whose exhausting actual reviews have madenthe reading of books obsolete. Of course the real purpose of allnreview journals has been to displace writers with critics, and thisnwas true even in the days of the Edinburgh Review, when bothnauthors and critics were veritable giants.nThe causes of so much literary mortification? The pessimistncan select his favorite from a list that includes mass literacy.nnnmass marketing, and mass democracy—all have a justifiablenappeal for the aspiring elitist and go a long way towardnexplaining the decline in standards in the literary marketplace.nBut the other side of the literature business is serious writing —nfiction, verse, and scholarship, which is in a worse state than then”knockoffs” designed for the K-Mart book section.nAny attempt to discuss the fate of serious writing must takenaccount of the circumstances in which it is practiced. Here andnthere an independent scholar or poet works between intervalsnof selling insurance or towing shrimp nets; an occasionalnserious novelist may make enough out of a book to supportnhimself for a few years; but for steady living — regular income,nsocial security, and health insurance — the citadels of highernlearning have become the place of asylum for those who wouldnlead the life of the mind.nAsylum is quite the mot juste, since the university is not onlyna refuge from which there is little hope of escaping, but it alsonresembles, as any visitor can tell, a mental hospital in morenways than one. In the film version of One Flew Over thenCuckoo’s Nest, Jack Nicholson seizes upon the resemblance.nWhen planning his fishing trip for the asylum inmates, henexplains that he will tell people the lunatics are just collegenprofessors.nI am not thinking now of the most obvious zanies — thensoft-faced androgynes preaching revolutionary Marxism tonbored students, the lesbians and child-molesters who are eagernto destroy whatever inhibitions American teenagers have left,nthe doddering old liberals who haven’t reexamined a singlenassumption since FDR’s last term (do they even know he’sndead?). No, the bizarre minorities are only the bubbles on thensurface of a stagnant pond. The really bizarre quality ofnacademic life can only be measured by the mainstream ofnnot-too-bright but not downright stupid plodders, who teachnthe same courses year after year and publish two reviews andecade in a journal where they know an editor, who put inn20-hour weeks for eight months and complain of low salaries,nwho introduce themselves everywhere as “Dr. Howard” orn”Dr. Fine,” and who despise the hardworking tradesman,nplumbers, and real estate agents who earn enough to send theirnchildren off to college. Anti-intellectual to the very marrow ofntheir being, they parade their little store of specialized learningnto show that they are scholars, while at the same time wagingnwar against any real work that might be going on. They thrivenon meetings — the institutionalized form of Coleridge’s personnfrom Porlock.nOne vignette should suffice. In payment for the sins of mynyouth, I found myself teaching at Miami of Ohio and fell inn