It All Comes Together in the End. . .Kind of

I had my last class on Monday, and throughout the semester, I had been consistently messing up in interpretations of a particular literary critic/philosopher. Time after time, I would claim an understanding, and my professor would look at me, and then the class, and then in a tone that left no uncertainty as to how everyone should think, she would ask “What do you all think of David’s idea.” David’s idea. You don’t even need to read between the lines: by it being my idea, it is clearly not the idea of the philosopher (and therefore not the correct idea).

And yet, there’s a stubbornness innate in my being, and if anything, you could praise my “if at first you don’t succeed” attitude. But the idea with that sentiment is that eventually you will get it.

I didn’t get it.

And so in our final review class, I once again asked a question about the philosophy, but I did so by first positing “I think I understand what he means when he says . . . .” In a consistency the envy of your grandmother’s gravy, I had not understood, so once again the class had to endure an explanation of how I’m an idiot. Amazingly though, all that is just a preface to the actual problem.

Because, as I’m wont to do, once I did understand it, at least as far as my professor explained it, I then had to go ahead (and perhaps a little defensively, at least in tone), I asked: But who actually lives their lives like that?

I think I pissed her off. She then proceeded to explain exactly who lives this way: people who take her class. Apparently, one of the main issues she was trying to tackle with this course was the specific concept I simply wasn’t able to grasp. I would speculate that her anger and disappointment stemmed from two possible causes. First, because she didn’t do a good enough job teaching the subject, or at least delineating the goals of the course. While I would definitely contend this is partially a reason, I don’t think it was a big part, and therefore don’t think that was the pressing matter on her mind. The second reason, though, is that she can’t understand how someone in a graduate program can hear and read something at least three times, and not only not understand, but then act “offended” when he finally does.

In hindsight, I don’t think I’ll be requesting a letter of recommendation from her. It would be kind of hard to ask a question after I’ve already put my foot in my mouth.

Sadly enough, I told that whole story to get to idiom “foot in my mouth” (and seeing how I’m pretty tired, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in reading this, my use of the phrase doesn’t really make sense—but hey, it’s the Internet, so . . . whatever). But I really have a cultural point here; I’m not just trying to tell an anecdote about my life (because even I’m not that interested in my tale).

What caught my attention about “foot in my mouth” is that people say it a lot, but no one really thinks what it means. What does putting a foot in your mouth have to do with embarrassment, in a literal or figurative sense? I think I’d actually be pretty impressed if someone could put their foot in their mouth. In today’s world of Pilates, it may not be such a novel maneuver, but even if you could get your foot to your mouth, you’d need to dislocate you jaw like a boa constrictor to get it in there (unless, perhaps, you are a Chinese woman in an incredibly repressive household):


Snake Eating An Egg

This in turn led me to think about a discussion I had with my friend. We were walking home from another friend’s house, and my one friend, I’ll call him Esteban, was complaining about the snacks that our other friend, I’ll call him Tiberius, had provided. I (I’ll call myself “I”) said “you shouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth,” and he asked what that meant. After explaining what the proverb meant (yes, that’s the level of intellect I’m talking about with Esteban), he still wanted to know what it meant. I explained to him that one way a prospective horse-buyer would determine if a horse was in good condition was by examining the horse’s teeth. The idea was that if a horse’s teeth were healthy, then the owner had clearly taken care of the animal. Hence, “looking in its mouth” (disturbingly and yet not surprisingly, this was also done in determining the health of slaves). Therefore, for some reason, the horse-fairy leaves you a present under your pillow (and you haven’t refused an offer from Don Corleone), the idea is that you should be happy someone gave you a horse, and not worry if it’s healthy or not.

On the flipside, considering how expensive horses are (stabling, food, vet bills), this may be more like a curse than a blessing.

Horses tend to smell, too.

Regardless, the saying, like many proverbs and idioms that we use, are taken for granted. Perhaps ironically, it is this very idea, of reading “texts” for what’s on the surface, that was at issue for me with my professor. To end your suspense, the philosopher we were reading was Emmanuel Levinas, who was talking about . . . never mind. I doubt you want my interpretation of a philosopher I’ve already admitted to misinterpreting on multiple occasions. What’s important to know though, is that my professor’s point was that we have to approach reading in the same ethical style that Levinas proposes (okay, so I guess just ignore the previous sentence), where we can only know about ourselves in relation to the Other, and that is because the Other puts us into question. Now I’ll say I don’t really know what this means. But when reading a book (or any text), it’s not a good idea to go into it by thinking “I’m going to understand everything this book is going to tell me,” because that’s impossible. Books have infinite depth, but too often we care about plot and characters. While I personally see nothing wrong with that, because I think most books should be read to get what you want out of it, as a student, I concede the point. And, to be honest, it can make reading a much different activity than simply curling up in your chair and enjoying the story. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another question. But if you want to see reading in a Levinasian manner, take this exchange from Bull Durham:

“Crash” Davis: “You have to approach the game with fear and arrogance.”
“Nuke” LaLoosh: “Fear and ignorance. Got it.”

There are two things to note here. First, LaLoosh’s position is the one akin to Levinas’ because we should come to texts not thinking we know everything and be a little apprehensive about what that lack of knowledge means about us. It is also (and in my contention, rightly so), the position the movie is telling us is wrong – LaLoosh is misinterpreting the Wise Mentor (albeit to get a rise out of him).

Second, the movie is about baseball, and not about “texts.” But it’s a great movie anyway, perhaps one of the greatest sports movies ever, but overall one of the better movies period. It’s very funny, has a sense of depth beyond character and plot (so there), and loving embraces baseball. For one thing, it stars a Kevin Costner who isn’t pee-drinking douche. For another, it shows that although you may be insufferable liberals in person, such as the other two stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, you can still be good actors, as opposed to, say, Sean Penn.

(I should note that part of my antipathy to Penn has to deal with the fact that I can’t really name any movies he’s been in, and the ones I can, I wasn’t impressed. My roommate swears by him, especially in 21 Grams, but even she couldn’t think of any other movies where Penn was good. I think maybe she’s thinking of Penn Jillette, which I could then understand. On the other hand, Robbins, if only for The Shawshank Redemption alone deserves praise, but he was also great in the aforementioned Bull Durham, had a great, smaller role in Arlington Road, was charming in Hudsucker Proxy (a highly underrated movie—check it out!), and of course was part of the classic Howard the Duck. In the case of Sarandon, it definitely doesn’t hurt that she’s very attractive—which is true of many insufferable liberals. Hell, if Ann Coulter was super-hot, I’m sure less people would call her a “Nazi-Devil-Bitch”—although that may just be my pet-name for her).

It’s also got the second best use of “Try a Little Tenderness” of any movie (although why they don’t use the Otis Redding version is unconscionable):



But mostly the movie’s great because it’s about baseball, and baseball is the greatest sport on the face of the Earth.

I know this may sound grandiose, but what other sport is both entertaining and poetry? Basketball is ballet with power, hockey is flying on ice, and football is war, but baseball. . .baseball is poetry. It is the greenest grass and the brightest sun. It is spring and summer and hot dogs and beer. The gliding outfielders, the slick infielders, the arc of a long fly ball to deep left. It is Yankee Stadium and history, it is Fenway’s Big Green Monster, it is Wrigley’s ivy.

It’s also a thinking mans’ game, in which the beauty of numbers comes to bear more than any other sport. Sabermetrics is the other piece of the poetic puzzle, because more than just a “game of inches,” it’s a game of statistics. The funny thing is, though, that too often, experts don’t even recognize this, hence the greatest sports blog of all time, Firejoemorgan.com. It is dedicated to being snarky to sports reporters who seem to get paid to know absolutely nothing about the sport they cover. How they can talk about “hustle” and “determination” and “clutch” as if these are quantitatively provable elements, and yet have no idea about why a pitcher’s win/loss record is says relatively nothing about how good that pitcher is (the reason, if you aren’t sure, is because wins are just as dependent on the team’s offense and defense as they are on the pitching performance. Case in point: Jason Marquis, of the St. Louis Cardinals, won 14 games last year, generally considered pretty good, but he had an ERA of over 6. That means for every one of those 14 wins, his team needed to score 7 runs. That’s a tall order for most baseball teams, which goes to show that all those wins were more because he was on a great offensive team and not because he was a great pitcher). How they can talk about how “good” David Eckstein is

Baseball is fantastic. If you don’t think so, listen to this and see if you don’t smile. And I don't really like the Mets (but at least I don't hate them like the Red Sox.

Which all goes to show you: Maybe if Levinas had taken some time to buy some peanuts and Cracker Jacks, he wouldn’t care so much about “defining himself.” Or maybe, the question he would be answering about himself is: Why can’t I be out there on the field, shagging flies?

And the answer? Because you don’t have the stats, Manny.

Probably won’t get an A in that class, though.