Word: giamatti
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...answer is probably yes on both counts. Giamatti has a highly refined passion for paradox, a humanist sensibility that is both invoked and evoked repeatedly in every essay, and on nearly every page of this elegantly written book. Winning and bit-time athletics have apparently gone hand-in-hand, but Giamatti is capable of drawing a sharp distinction between the two, and pointing out a hidden incompatibility. Yet perhaps the primary weakness--as well as the primary strength--of this collection is the difficulty the reader shares with Giamatti of reconciling the conflicting notions he posits...
...Give Giamatti his due credit. Here he is, out front, trying to persuade government on the one hand that private universities deserve extensive funding because they contribute to the public interest; and on the other that government has proved too excessive in its regulatory requirements. In "The Apocalyptic Style," he urges Yale freshmen to pursue a liberal education for its own sake, warning against a "retreat into self-interest"--a not-so-thinly veiled reference to growing pre-professionalism. He says in the book's first essay. "The Private University and the Public Interest," that "the purpose of education...
...hard pressed to disagree. But this trend to pre-professionalism at private universities can be described as nothing more than an attempt by students to be "winners" in Giamatti's terms, an attempt to deal with the current economic situation--as the Yale alumni who heard his speech on athletics doubtless did. In their time--and experience that intrinsic satisfaction (I imagine) that comes from being rich. The "civic effort" can come later--as it does from "winning" Yale alumni who can afford to be generous...
...both a chastisement of humanities faculties for allowing standards to slip, and a series of recommendations for coping with economic pressures. He calls for organization of interdisciplinary programs which place language in a historical, philosophical or sociological context--"Let the curriculum follow the mind, not restrain it." Clearly Giamatti feels most comfortable when discussing his own field (before assuming Yale's presidency in 1978, he was Whitney professor of English and comparative literature...
...Giamatti's ideas are welded together by his forceful yet delicate style. Nearly every paragraph is quotable. Though his highly-publicized condemnation of the Moral Majority does not appear in this book (it doubtless will in his next), and though he is more concerned with the civic than the social dimension of education. Giamatti does not stay mute on contemporary problems. In "Power, Politics and a Sense of History"--a remarkably presumptuous title for a 4000-word essay--he declares...