[lit-ideas] Re: le hip-hop
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:38:55 -0400
> [Original Message]
> From: Robert Paul <guimbarde9@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 6/15/2005 12:38:10 AM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: le hip-hop
>
>
> > I wonder who's funding this thing.
>
> I believe it's l'Ecold Normale Supérieure in
> conjunction with Rhino Records.
>
> "Existentialism means no one can take a bath for you."
>
>
> ?Delmore Schwartz
>
I want to thank you for submitting this quote. It prompted me to look up
Delmore Schwartz. (That's what I love about this list, it's a variation on
where in the world will you go today, I'm serious.) I pulled this up off
of Google about Schwartz. It's interesting in its own right, but also as
an illustration of one of our earlier discussions about the prevalence of
mental disorders in the U.S. as opposed to the rest of the world,
specifically as opposed to China. Someone had said, and I agreed, that our
bar is set higher than the rest of the world . This quote regarding
Delmore Schwartz perfectly illustrates the extent to which this
understanding is in the air, in the water of American society:
Schwartz's relationships with women were marked by over-idealization (read,
an unanswerable demand for love coupled with insecurity) and consequent
disappointment with actuality, as well as by a fear of failure which he
understood was, as much as the desire for success, a central motivating
impulse in American life. His life itself was complicated by a tendency to
paranoia (characteristically, he originated the quip that ?even paranoids
have real enemies? and later, without irony, accused his second wife of
being involved in clandestine affairs with the cultural critic Hilton
Kramer and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller). His psychiatric
instability was exacerbated by an enormous appetite for and continuing
dependence on alcohol and amphetamines, perhaps in an effort to manage
symptoms of manic-depressive syndrome or bipolar disorder. [Earlier in the
article is an acknowledgement of the instability of the family, including
father's abandonment of the family.]
http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3971
I'm sure a country such as China would have a very different explanation of
Schwartz's problem. I doubt even that Schwartz would have been seen as
having a problem. In Russia the alcoholism might be seen as manly. I've
heard discussions on Russia regarding mental disorders and I know that
professionals do see home life, in particular the absence of the father, as
a major cause of psychiatric disturbances, but it hasn't to my knowledge
filtered down to Ivan Average. There's a big push now in the U.S. to
address bullying in schools. That is taken as a fact of life in most
places. Even in this article on Schwartz, this is written for literary
people, presumably by literary people, not by and for the psychology
profession. We've begun identifying the problem, which means we stand a
chance of improving our society. Unfortunately, pharma sees in this an
opportunity to make money, so inappropriate medicalization will be part of
the scenario as well. But that's pharma, another issue.
Andy Amago
> Robert Paul
> LakeOswego OR
>
>
>
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