I was reading
Franny and Zooey the other day when I came across a passage that really struck me:
Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day.
J.D. Salinger was no great shakes in the realm of academia, and was quick to call pretty much
anyone a phony. (Poor Holden. So misunderstood.)
But he
did attend NYU and Columbia. Salinger's novels have gone down in the cannon as "American classics." So what gives?
Salinger isn't the only critically-acclaimed author to voice his disdain for institutionalized education. In a letter to
Conrad Aiken in 1914, T.S. Eliot himself wrote:
"I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books, and hideous pictures on the walls...Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead."
It's not like Eliot was exactly new to the "university" scene either. The guy studied at Harvard, Oxford, AND the Sorbonne. Not to mention his grandfather was one of the founders of Washington University in St. Louis.
What is it that makes these authors scorn college? Is it insulting to imply their talents weren't the product of solely their
own cultivation? Or is it just a tried-and-true brushoff of "the establishment?"
Interesting questions to ponder. Maybe it's the trademark author-viewpoint: the road to artistic success is the road less-traveled by.
Listening: 
