HIGH-ART AND LOWBROW COMEDY :

I'm not sure how broad are the conclusions we can draw, but it's interesting to note how differently Emily Eakin treats these two stories :
An Invitation Ruffles Philosophical Feathers (EMILY EAKIN, June 29, 2002, NY Times)

The black studies scholar Cornel West, who may be best known for recently cutting a rap album and for feuding with the president of Harvard University, is also the author of a well-regarded book on American pragmatism that includes a section on the philosopher Sidney Hook. So he seemed a natural choice to invite to a conference on Hook that the Graduate Center at the City University of New York is planning to hold in October.

Yet when a group of prominent conservatives--the political essayist Irving Kristol, the art critic Hilton Kramer and the historians Gertrude Himmelfarb and John Patrick Diggins--who had also been invited heard that Mr. West would be attending, they abruptly withdrew. [...]

For his part, Mr. West seemed strangely unaffected by the furor. Reached by telephone on Thursday, he said he had no memory of being invited to the conference and learned of the boycott only when a reporter contacted him last week. Still, he said he was eager to attend. "I have learned much from the art criticism of Kramer, the fine historiography of Himmelfarb, the intellectual history of Diggins and some of the essays of Kristol," he said serenely. "I just see through their nonsense."

and

Into the dazzling light : In his quest to produce the perfect novel, Jonathan Franzen spent four years writing in the dark, wearing earplugs and a blindfold. Judging by the critics' response to The Corrections, it paid off (Emily Eakin, November 11, 2001, The Observer)

[S]uccess has not entirely agreed with Franzen. When Oprah Winfrey selected The Corrections for her book club last month--a decision virtually guaranteeing millions of dollars in additional sales--he publicly questioned her judgment, suggesting to more than one interviewer that his novel's 'high-art' literary qualities made it a dubious choice for a programme normally associated with middlebrow fiction. His remarks started a national scandal. Winfrey disinvited Franzen from appearing on her show, and the literary community rallied to her defence, calling Franzen arrogant and ungrateful. 'That pompous pr*ck' was how one powerful agent referred to him.

Franzen is now busy trying to explain his way out of the gaffe, telling the New York Times last week: 'Mistake, mistake, mistake to use the word "high". Both Oprah and I want the same thing and believe the same thing, that the distinction between high and low is meaningless.'

Whatever his true feelings on the high- versus low-brow debate (and one suspects he was not being entirely honest with the New York Times), Franzen's book is much clearer on this point. The Corrections is as clever as the brainy postmodernists Franzen admires but infinitely more accessible.

She does not say so in so many words, but the heroes of Ms Eakin's two stories are pretty obviously the "serene" Cornel West and the "clever" Jonathan Franzen. Yet, what one can't help notice is that part of what makes Mr. Franzen heroic is his resistance to having his art compromised by participating in the "lowbrow" Oprah Book Club, while part of what makes Mr. West heroic is that he's embattled by conservative scholars who didn't want to help legitimize his "scholarship", which anyone who's ever had the misfortune to read him could tell you is as lowbrow and foolish as it gets. In a moment of especially amusing self parody Mr. West's last published work was even a rap album, the website for which begins with these immortal words of self-aggrandizement : "In all modesty, this project constitutes a watershed moment in musical history." And, yes, that is the extent of his modesty. In his excruciating book, Race Matters, he actually implicitly refers to himself as a "race-transcending prophet".

Not to put too fine a point on this but while Mr. Franzen is a decent novelist who made himself appear somewhat foolish by demonstrating that he was afraid that being seen as "popular" would make others take him less "seriously", Mr. West is simply a buffoon, who no self-respecting scholar should appear on a panel with. One would think that for mere consistency sake it would be the conservatives who would be the heroes of Ms Eakin's piece in the Times today, as they valiantly defend serious scholarship from popular debasement. Wouldn't one?

UPDATE :
Here are some links and responses to points made in the comments section, but they seem of general interest :

Here's the Salon article referred to :
Right-Wing Blacklist : Conservatives tell Cornel West to go to the back of the bus. (Sam Tanenhaus, June 20, 2002, Slate)

As that story indicates, Cornel West is a disciple of Richard Rorty, who notes that fellow philosophers don't read either of their books, and the one academic analysis of Mr. West's philosophy work that's mentioned (mightn't we assume it's nearly the only one that exists) is by a Harvard colleague of both men--that's kind of a closed loop of people who think he has anything worthwhile to say isn't it?

Here's Hilton Kramer's own assessment of Mr. West :
Harvard’s black comedy (New Criterion, February 2002)

Here's the piece from the Voice, a reliably Leftist publication, which shows how West and company cash on their race :
Spinning Race at Harvard : The Business Behind the Gates-West Power Play (Thulani Davis, January 16 - 22, 2002, Village Voice)

Here's a note from The American Prospect, another liberal source that we might expect to support West if he were a serious scholar :
Good Riddance

The Associated Press reports that Cornel West has finally decided to leave Harvard to join the faculty at Princeton. This caps a short, glorious period during which someone -- namely new Harvard president Larry Summers -- finally noticed that West hasn't produced a serious work of scholarship in years, yet continued to be accorded the same level of respect as far more serious and important colleagues, such as Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson. (The Village Voice, believe it or not, actually produced a memorable and critical article on how West made out like a bandit at Harvard.) At Princeton, West will no doubt continue to write self-important popular books (like Race Matters), produce lame attempts at cultural engagement (another rap CD?), and retreat ever closer to the political fringe (Now that he's rallied his vast following to Al Sharpton's banner, we're thinking he'll start showing up at Mumia rallies). Harvard will breathe easier tonight.

Here's the view from another Left bastion, The Washington Post :
A Harvard Education (Fareed Zakaria, January 8, 2002, Washington Post)

[T]he high drama of [Larry Summers's] presidency so far has been the recent controversy over his discussions with Cornel West, a leading member of the Afro-American Studies department. Whatever they talked about -- and there is some dispute about the specifics -- clearly the conversation went badly, with West feeling he had been attacked and insulted.

Summers told me that he "felt bad about the misunderstandings that arose from that first meeting and value the mutual respect that came out of the second one." But he did confirm that he had "encouraged Professor West to write a major academic book." Is this so scandalous? Over the past several years West has done little other than produce a CD of rap music and advise Al Sharpton on his "bid" for the presidency of the United States. West's earlier work is not that impressive, either. In a long review in the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier concluded of his books: "They are almost completely worthless . . . noisy, tedious, slippery . . . sectarian, humorless, pedantic and self-endeared." I have read some of West's work, and Wieseltier's judgment sounds about right.

And here is the final word, the Leon Wieseltier profile of West, that makes it impossible to take the good professor at all seriously :
All and Nothing at All: The Unreal World of Cornel West (Leon Wieseltier, March 6, 1995, The New Republic)

It may be predictable that we on the Right would be so dismissive of Mr. West's racist ravings, but the fact that The Voice, The Post, TAP and TNR are all equally contemptuous leads one to wonder if anyone outside his own circle and the NY Times, though that may be redundant, really pays him any attention. Perhaps more to the point, it seems fair to ask whether anyone at all would listen to him if he weren't black or whether he is a mere quota hire. It certainly seems unlikely that any white professor could quit Harvard just because he was asked to do some work and then be courted by other Ivy League schools.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 29, 2002 10:01 AM