“For the kind of places I've written for and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about your audience is to think about somebody who's like yourself, but in a completely different discipline.” ThinkingWayWritingKindDifferentDoneAudienceWrittenLike YouDisciplineLike Yourself Author:Louis Menand
“When I was young, I went to college, had a teacher who was, had been a student of Trilling's at Columbia, this was in California. And he, I started reading him around that time, and then I went to Columbia as well, Trilling was still teaching there, I took a course with him. He was not a great teacher, but he was, when I was younger, he was a good model for the kind of criticism I wanted to do, because he thought very dialectically.” WellsKindStillsWantedYoungCoursesReadingTeacherTeachingStudentsCollegeModelsCriticismCaliforniaGreat TeacherColumbia Author:Louis Menand
“The job of the critic, as it might have been conceived in the 1950's or 1960's, was some kind of role of moral arbiter for people, not a huge number of people, but people who were, you know, fairly educated, well-placed people.” PeopleKnowsWellsKindHas BeensMightJobsNumbersMoralRolesHugeCriticsEducatedMight Have Been1960sArbiterHuge Numbers Author:Louis Menand
“My own view is that the general education curriculum that a college picks has to be appropriate for the kind of student body that it has.” KindBodyMy OwnViewsStudentsCollegePicksAppropriateCurriculumGeneral Education Author:Louis Menand
“I think at a place like Harvard, our experience, I was involved with, at various stages, in trying to implement a new general education curriculum, our experience was that Harvard's all about specialization, that's not just true of the professori, it's also true of a lot of the undergraduates, too, and they come, they kind of know what they want to do, they select it because they have a strong aptitude for something in particular.” ThinkingKnowsWantTryingKindStrongStageParticularInvolvedVariousSelectHarvardCurriculumAptitudeSpecializationGeneral Education Author:Louis Menand
“Harvard has something that manages, I think, to provide a lot of options for students, but still fairly prescriptive about the kinds of subjects that the courses ought to cover.” ThinkingKindStillsCoursesSubjectsStudentsOughtManageHarvard Author:Louis Menand
“I don't think that you want to see universities in any way trying to have any kind of quota system about political views, or views in general. You want the market to work in the way the market works.” ThinkingWayWantTryingKindPoliticalViewsUniversityQuotaPolitical View Author:Louis Menand
“Cognitive science is a rapidly developing area, so it could be that there are some surprises around the corner. That does seem to be kind of where the trend line is leading.” KindDoeSeemsLinesAreasSurpriseCornersDevelopingBe KindTrendsCognitiveAround The CornerCognitive Science Author:Louis Menand
“If you write for the New Yorker, you always get people critiquing your grammar, you can count on it. So, because a lot of New Yorker readers are kind of, you know, amateur grammarians and so you do get a lot of that.” PeopleIfsKnowsWritingKindReaderGrammarNew Yorkers Author:Louis Menand
“I'm not one of the people who has a kind of scholarly hat and writes in a certain way for an academic audience and then puts on a public intellectual hat and writes a different way for a different kind of readership. I generally write the way I write, no matter what and it seems to have worked for me.” PeopleWayWritingKindDifferentMatterSeemsCertainAudienceIntellectualNo Matter WhatDifferent WaysHatsAcademicDifferent KindsScholarlyReadership Author:Louis Menand
