The Message Many Literature Professors are Sending to their Students: Literature Really Doesn’t Matter that Much

Imagine if a teacher of culinary skills, asked what sort of ingredients students would be using in their college courses, answered in this way:

The least expensive--our policy is always to go for the least expensive. Sure, it might make a difference with a lot of dishes to use high quality ingredients—they’re often better for your health, and they’ll often make a dish taste better. But our view is that the only thing that really matters is for you to pay as little as possible.

We would be taken aback by such a policy—and we would surely find it inappropriate. To recognize that cost is important—yes, absolutely. To say to students, “we use walnuts with this dish instead of pine nuts; a dish such as this will taste just about as good and using walnuts saves quite a bit of money”—that makes good sense. But to just always buy the cheapest? That surely sends an implicit but very clear message: the quality of the ingredients in what you eat is not worth bothering about. Food just doesn’t matter that much. It would be a very strange message to be conveying to a culinary class.

Now think of the approach that many professors in English Departments (and other departments that teach literary and other texts) routinely take with their students when they teach a work by Austen, or Plato, or Tolstoy, or Woolf:

There are some really good editions of this book available, including two or three that are quite inexpensive—under $20 for a bound book, under $10 for an e-book that you get with just a few clicks. Those editions offer a reliable text, helpful annotations, and useful historical context in the introductory material and the appendices. But I’m not going to ask you to pay $20 or even $10 for one of those editions. I understand that cost is an issue; that’s why I’ll ask you to go online and read a version that will cost you absolutely nothing. It doesn’t include any notes, any introduction, or any contextual materials, and the text itself may be unreliable in some places. But it’s free, and that’s what matters most when it comes to what text students should use.

When literature instructors say that sort of thing to their students, they are acting with entirely good intentions; they don’t want to add to the financial burden of students who may already be struggling financially. But the unintended message they send to their students is of the same sort as that of the culinary instructor: the particular version of a literary text that you select really isn’t worth bothering about. Literature just doesn’t matter that much.

“Value” is of course a slippery concept—and perceptions of what does and doesn’t hold value are bound to vary widely. Many would argue—and I certainly wouldn’t disagree—that literature is inherently of incalculable value even if we pay no money for it. “Priceless,” one might say. But the reality is that we live in a money-oriented society—a society in which value tends to be seen as being reflected in monetary value, in price. Everyone of course accepts that sometimes items of high quality may be very surprisingly reasonably priced. But many feel that something that’s extremely low-priced (or free) is cheap for a good reason—it’s not very high quality. Does the average first-year student make a clear distinction between rating the edition of a literary work as being of low value and considering the literary work itself to be of little value? My strong suspicion is that many do not make an entirely clear distinction of that sort; I would be astonished if at least some whiff of “low value” didn’t attach in many minds to the literary work itself.

Aren’t some students really struggling, though? Shouldn’t the amount they pay for books be a concern? Of course some students really are struggling, and of course getting good value for money should always be a concern of professors when they decide what books to assign.

I suppose it’s in large part a question of emphasis. Certainly a professor will send a very different message about the value of literature if they frame things this way:

For this course I’ve decided to assign the Broadview edition of this text [or the Norton, or the Hackett, or the Oxford, or the Penguin—whatever it might be], and I’ve done that for several reasons. It’s an edition that provides a completely reliable text, and annotations that I’m sure you’re going to find helpful. It also includes some background material that’s of real interest, some of which we’ll be referring to in class. Plus, it has a good introduction, which fills in some of the historical and cultural background that I won’t have time to go over with you in class. It will set you back $17 for a brand-new copy of the bound book version, but less than $15 for a used copy—and less than $10 if you decide to buy the e-book. Either way, I strongly encourage you to get this edition, which is classed as an assigned text, not a recommended one; I would really, really like us all to be on the same page! At the same time, I recognize that some of you may be finding it truly difficult to make ends meet, and if that's the case it may well be that even $10 may make a real difference. If you really can’t afford the $10, you will be able to find free versions of this text online. I can’t recommend them—having a good edition of a text really does matter—but I know that some students really are struggling, and I will of course understand if financial constraints force you to go that route.

That sends a very, very different message to students—one that can leave students in no doubt that quality does matter, and that literature does have value.

Of course it isn’t just with editions of Austen or Plato or Tolstoy or Woolf that these decisions are made. It’s also with editions of lesser-known works—often ones where the only in-print edition represents an effort on the part of its publisher and its academic editor to “recover” a neglected work—to bring it to the attention of academics and students, and to the attention as well of the reading public. It’s very frequently only as a result of such recovery work that a literature instructor becomes aware of a literary work that they then decide to assign to their students. In such cases, it makes an even bigger difference if literature instructors assign the published version rather than digitized versions of nineteenth-century editions of the work that are often available for free online. If the newly published editions of these neglected works do not sell in at least modest quantities, the publisher inevitably comes under strong financial pressure not to commission editions of other neglected works. In my experience, publishers rarely publish new editions of neglected works in the hope of making large profits from them; it’s a side of the business in which it’s very common for publishers to hope merely to break even, while doing something of real value to the academic and literary communities. But if publishers consistently lose money on such ventures—as is increasingly the case, I’m sorry to say—then far fewer such ventures will be undertaken. And the academic and literary worlds will be much, much poorer for it.

“Let’s Go, Oakland!” Going, going, gone

The Oakland Athletics played their last series this past weekend in Seattle. Hated team-owner John Fisher had refused Oakland’s various offers to help build a new stadium; he will be moving the team temporarily to Sacramento before a planned eventual move to Las Vegas. The same thing happened a very few years ago to Oakland’s football team; the old Oakland Raiders died, to be replaced by the Las Vegas Raiders.

It’s sad and it’s historic when these things happen. I took a ferry to the mainland last Friday and headed down the I5 so I could take in Oakland’s final three games.*

“Unforgettable” is the word that many people have been using the past few weeks to describe the great moments in the Oakland A’s history; it’s the word that we always use when an era ends. There were indeed great moments:

• a young (and mustache-less) Catfish Hunter pitching a perfect game just a month into the A’s first season in Oakland in 1968;

• Dallas Braden pitching his hungover-on-Mother’s-Day perfect game in 2010 (google “Dallas Braden’s perfect game” for the full story);

• Rickey Henderson breaking Lou Brock’s record for most stolen bases, literally stealing the base that he had stolen and holding it triumphantly above his head, and then later in his speech thanking God and his mother and the fans before concluding, “Today, I am the greatest of all time”;

• Rollie Fingers—he of the world’s greatest 1970s mustache—fielding the game’s last ball himself and throwing to first to clinch the A’s third straight World Series win in 1974;

• Texas outfielder Josh Hamilton missing a routine fly ball cleanly, and thereby allowing the go-ahead two runs to score as the A’s won the AL West title in 2012;

• Mark Kotsay’s hitting the two-run, inside-the-park home run that sent the A’s ahead to stay in the 2006 ALDS.

Memorable moments all—but unforgettable? The reality is, of course, that none of it is truly unforgettable. The Athletics franchise began in Philadelphia in 1901; it moved to Kansas City in 1955, and then moved again in 1968 to Oakland. Just about everyone has forgotten just about everything about the Kansas City A’s and the Philadelphia A’s—even the 1929 A’s team that may have been the greatest baseball team of all time. You’ve maybe heard of Lefty Grove and Mickey Cochrane, but how many people know anything of the other players on that team—of Al Simmons and Bing Miller and Howard Ehmke and George “the Mule” Haas? (I didn’t—I just looked them up a moment ago.) That's what will happen to Henderson and Hunter and Eckersley, Fingers and Jackson and Bando, Blue and Braden and Butler. That’s what will happen to the Coliseum. That’s what will happen to us all.

Many may want to forget the stadium in which the A’s played for all of their 57 years in Oakland (though I confess I very much enjoyed everything the one time I was there). The Coliseum opened in 1966 and is now the second-oldest in the American League, the fourth oldest in baseball; only Fenway, Wrigley, and Dodger Stadium are older. It’s the last of the circular, dual-purpose stadiums that for a while in the 1960s seemed to be the wave of the future. Washington started the trend in 1961; later would come Riverside in Cincinnati, Three Rivers in Pittsburgh, Shea in New York, Qualcomm in San Diego. They’re all gone now—and for the most part they’re unlamented. It never really worked; if you were going to accommodate football as well as baseball, you had to have the sort of absurdly large foul territory that the Oakland Coliseum was famous for.

The Coliseum was famous too for its fans—the rabid Raiders fans and the endlessly loyal A’s fans, with their chants and their drumming. The drumming at the Coliseum was always done by real fans who brought real drums to the stadium; it wasn’t the canned noise of stadium machines, but real drumming--thumping, relentless.

* * *

Oakland’s last series had almost everything—everything, that is, except a win for Oakland. The Friday might game was a 2-0 shutout for the Mariners, a well-played game with a great deal of good defense. The best moment—particularly for those like me who were seated in the right-field bleachers—may well have come on the game’s first pitch, as Oakland’s exciting young right fielder Lawrence Butler leapt to make a superb catch near the wall on a long drive by Seattle’s young star, Julio Rodriguez.

Screenshot from the mlb telecast of the Friday-night game; Lawrence Butler is leaping to make a great catch of the game’s first pitch. In the crowd, you can make out a standing figure in a light brown jacket and a yellow shirt, wearing a green and gold A’s baseball cap similar to that of Butler; this is me. At right, in another screenshot from the mlb telecast, Butler is pictured again, smiling at the far-away Rodriguez.

The Saturday night game was a classic. The Mariners were up by one going into the ninth; the A’s were down to their last out before Shea Langeliers turned the game around on a three-run homer. But in the bottom of the ninth Mason Miller, the A’s brilliant young closer, couldn’t summon his best stuff; he recorded just his third blown save of the season as Luke Raley hit a two-run homer to tie things up. It ended with a play at the plate in the bottom of the tenth—with a little grounder from Seattle’s Justin Turner, and with pinch runner Leo Rivas just managing to beat Langeliers’ tag. A walk-off win for the Mariners, another heartbreaking loss for the A's.

Sunday’s game was a good one too. Seattle gradually amassed a 6-0 lead, but then Oakland clawed their way back. With two out in the ninth inning, A’s rookie outfielder Darell Hernaiz smoked a two-run double past Randy Arozarena in the Mariners’ outfield, scoring Seth Brown and Zack Gelof and bringing the A’s to within two runs of the Mariners. Hernaiz smiled from second base and swept one hand from left to right, underlining the word “Oakland” on his jersey. The hundreds of Oakland fans seemed briefly almost as loud as the thirty thousand Seattle fans; “Let’s go, Oakland!” Max Schuemann was coming up to bat next; he represented the tying run. But it was not to be. Schuemann ran the count full, three balls and two strikes; then, with a mighty swing, he struck out. He was the last-ever Oakland batter; Gelof had scored Oakland’s last-ever run, and Hernaiz had recorded Oakland’s last-ever hit and last-ever RBI.

When almost all the players from both teams had left the field there were still a number of people milling around: staff, media, and several little kids were running around on the field—it wasn’t clear who they belonged to. From the third base side a couple of hundred Oakland fans kept sporadically chanting “Let’s go, Oakland! [boom, boom, boomboomboom]” and several waved their signs, “We Love You, Oakland" and “Oakland Baseball Forever.” No one wanted to leave.

The last Oakland A on the field was their great young outfielder, Lawrence Butler, perhaps their most colorful player, and certainly one of their most skilled. (It had been Butler who had robbed Seattle's Julio Rodriguez of an extra base hit on the first pitch of the Friday night game.) After the Sunday game Butler seemed to have a reason for standing around out on the field; he made a phone call, and then he waited. A couple of minutes later Julio Rodriguez appeared. After the two had greeted each other, they exchanged signed jerseys—Butler took quite a little while writing a message on the A’s #4 jersey he gave to Rodriguez. They smiled a little and talked a little and then they embraced—twice—before leaving the field. The season was over for both of them. (After having led their division by ten games or more back in June, the Mariners ended up one game out of a playoff spot; they’d been officially eliminated from playoff contention even before the three-game series with the Athletics began.)

A few other moments from the weekend series:

• The two men with their huge Jesus signs outside T-Mobile Park and their megaphones blaring “Pride Comes before destruction! Repent!”

• The box office staff being wonderfully accommodating with someone such as me who doesn’t have a smartphone. Like many sports events nowadays, Mariners’ games are all digital; “your ticket is your phone,” is what it says online. Not so good for those of us without a smartphone on which e-tickets can be downloaded. But as it turned out, the nice people at the box office were very happy to provide a physical “location pass”—essentially a very large ticket—that was accepted at the gate with no fuss whatsoever. It strikes me that there may be only a handful of people who were provided with physical tickets of any sort for the last-ever Oakland A’s game; at any rate, I’m one of them—and I’ve kept the ticket.

• Rickey Henderson throwing the ceremonial first pitch of the last game, dressed in a half-half uniform—the left side Seattle, the right side Oakland. (Though Rickey is associated above all with the A’s, he played for nine teams during his 25-year career—including Seattle.)

• Justin Turner, after he’d been hit by a pitch in the second inning of Sunday’s game, still managing to joke around with the first-base umpire.

• The “Let’s Go, Oakland” chants growing louder and louder in the ninth inning in Seattle. And, for a brief while, louder than ever after the game was over.

• Getting a baseball autographed—something I hadn’t done for decades. I got only two autographs, but I was very happy to have them: Daz Cameron, who played right field in Oakland’s last game, and Dallas Braden, who pitched a perfect game for Oakland—perhaps the most memorable of all the 24 perfect games that have ever been pitched. (None of the current Oakland players came out of the clubhouse to sign before Sunday’s final game, but the team had arranged for Braden to greet fans and sign autographs beside the dugout.)

• The sun shining bright before Sunday afternoon’s last game for Oakland but, with rain predicted, the roof slowly closing an hour or so before game time. There was still a tiny strip of sky visible—and for a while in the third inning, there was a rainbow.

• The vendor up on the third level Saturday night, calling out in a gentle, world-weary voice, “It’s Saturday, night, folks. Saturday—it’s a good night for beer drinking.”

• The Hempler’s Hot Dogs promotion that the Mariners run during the seventh-inning stretch. After “God Bless America” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” there’s something more: “Hot Dogs from Heaven.” Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven is a Place on Earth” blares from the loudspeakers as dozens—hundreds—of aluminum-foil-wrapped hot dogs drift down to the crowd from the upper deck, each with its little parachute. Some get caught in guy wires, but every dog makes it down eventually. Fans love it. Sadly, there seem to be no veggie dogs.

• The woman in front of me in the line-up waiting for the stadium gates to open Friday, saying “nice hat” with reference to my green and gold A’s baseball cap, and thereby getting us into a short conversation during which we both agreed how moving the final game at the Coliseum in Oakland had been the previous night. “I cried,” she said as the line started to move forward. “I really did. There was Rickey, and all the old…. I couldn’t help crying.”

There were numerous other people—Mariners’ fans—who in one way or another acknowledged my evident Oakland allegiance sympathetically. They would nod and say “it’s a real shame,” or “I’m sorry,” in rather the same way that people say “I’m so sorry for your loss” to an acquaintance when they hear that someone close to the person has died. “I can’t even begin to comprehend what it would mean,” said one young man. “And the Raiders too….” He walked away shaking his head as he tried to imagine what it would be like if Seattle lost both its Mariners and its Seahawks.

“No, I’m not from Oakland,” I had to say to several people. “In fact, the A’s have never been my absolute favorite team. But I’ve always liked them—and it’s just sad to see the end of something that was great for a long time.” “Amen to that,” I heard in reply.

One final thought: a lot of the famous old Oakland A’s—Reggie Jackson, Rickie Henderson, Barry Zito, even José Canseco—had some of the world’s biggest egos, but they all were pretty harmless. Larger than life characters who it was always fun to listen to. And always it was fun to watch them play—especially Rickey, who loved baseball so much that even when he was past 45 and no longer good enough to play in the major leagues he kept playing for a while in the independent leagues, for peanuts. For teams like the Newark Bears and the San Diego Surf Dawgs. Just because he loved baseball. Just because he never wanted it to end.

*The thought back in the summer had been that my son Dominic and I would take in Oakland's final series together. Dominic (who is a sports enthusiast and incredibly knowledgeable about sports generally) had to bow out, for the happiest and best of reasons. He was hired in August for what for him is a dream job--Senior Manager of Business Operations and Corporate Partnerships for a Major Junior A hockey franchise--a wonderful development in many ways, but it did mean that he couldn't take a few days off for a baseball trip in late September!