One is from The New Yorker: “Creativity Creep” (It’s not a great title, but the article makes interesting points about how “creativity” is increasingly valued by what it produces — and these days in terms of what it can produce that people will want to buy. As a writer who writes but doesn’t seek to make money from it, this is always an interesting topic to me.)
The other link is from my novel, U-town. I’ve been thinking about funerals, and I wanted to link to the funeral that I wrote about, a long scene that still pleases me. This is smack in the middle of a very long novel, and there are a ton of characters, so it will probably be pretty thick going, but I wanted to post the link in case anybody would want to peek in.
To set the scene, Marshall (assistant to Jan Sleet, who was not invited — she’s about the only significant character who won’t be there) is going to pick up his friend Vicki, who is going to the funeral with him. Vicki works in a club called The Quarter, so he’s going to meet her there. The funeral is at midnight, so the club is closing at 11:30pm, because all the regular clientele will be at the funeral anyway.
The funeral is for Carl, who was the drummer in a band called Kingdom Come, and Jenny, who was the girlfriend of the guitarist in the band. The funeral is being put on by a local motorcycle gang called The Jinx.
Just like education is only valued if it leads to a high-paying job. Learning for learning’s sake isn’t as important anymore.
Very true. This reminds me of a friend of mine from high school. He was going to be a doctor (I think his parents had decided on that when he was born 🙂 ), but he didn’t immediately select Pre-Med when he went to college.
He’d done some research, and he’d learned that for a few years many med school applicants had been on a strict Pre-Med course as undergrads, and the medical schools were starting to learn that this narrow focus was not producing good doctors. So, they were looking for undergrads who had taken the necessary courses for medical school, but who had learned a lot of other things, too.
And that’s just from the relatively narrow perspective of “what makes a good doctor,” as opposed to what makes for a vibrant and educated society.