Fact-checking Larry Summers
Posted on January 23rd, 2012 in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
The blog Rough Type catches Summers in an embarrassing mistake.
“Before the printing press,” writes Lawrence Summers in the Times’s Education Life section today, “scholars had to memorize ‘The Canterbury Tales’ to have continuing access to them.” That has to be one of the most dunderheaded sentences ever written by a former Harvard president and former Treasury secretary. The bound book was invented more than a thousand years before the printing press came along, and people were writing stuff down - on scrolls, tablets, blocks of wood - long before the book was created. In the 100 or so years between the writing of Chaucer’s masterpiece and the establishment of a printing trade in England, handwritten copies of “The Canterbury Tales” were fairly abundant…..
Interestingly, the version that I look at now says “scholars might have had to memorize ‘The Canterbury Tales’….”
The article has clearly been corrected, but that correction is not noted. Bad New York Times! (One other correction is noted…but you’ll have to read the article to see.)
It’s a funny mistake, but it’s worth pointing it out—and thank you, Rough Type, for doing so—because it’s typical of two characteristics of Summers’ “brilliance.” One, it consists more of the accumulation of facts than any particularly interesting or profound interpretation of them. And two, it is bolstered by Summers’ mode of presentation by certitude, his utter conviction that everything he says is incontestably right.
Even when it isn’t.
By the way, here’s a great Larry Summers story someone told me the other day. This person, an accomplished financier, was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania who wanted to major in economics. (This was about 30 years ago.)
This guy was pretty intellectually precocious, so he asked the department advisor—who happened to be Larry Summers’ father, Robert Summers—if he could skip intro econ and proceed right to the intermediate level.
Robert Summers replied, “The only student I know who is smart enough to do that is my son, Larry.”
Which, if you think about it, is a very odd thing to say.
6 Responses
1/23/2012 8:56 pm
What an interesting essay in the Times on the need to reform higher education. Particularly given that Summers did not act on any of the recommendations he makes there while he was president at Harvard. Obviously these were afterthoughts to his presidency. But why publish them now? He is not working on higher education, he is not giving speeches on higher education. Is this essay addressed to the committee that is currently reviewing Drew Faust’s presidency?
1/24/2012 8:15 am
what committee is that, anon?
1/24/2012 10:49 am
I think this mistake is defensible, but only barely. The bottom line is that before Gutenberg books were very expensive, and “CONTINUING access” to even a popular text like the Canterbury Tales, which was written for the court, would have been hard to come by as a practical matter. You can’t take it home and read it on the futon.
Here is Chaucer’s own Clerk — a scholar — dreaming of the wealth to allow him to get a hold of texts in a continuing way.
A clerk from Oxford was with us also,
Who’d turned to getting knowledge, long ago.
As meagre was his horse as is a rake,
Nor he himself too fat, I’ll undertake,
But he looked hollow and went soberly.
Right threadbare was his overcoat; for he
Had got him yet no churchly benefice,
Nor was so worldly as to gain office.
For he would rather have at his bed’s head
Some twenty books, all bound in black and red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy
Than rich robes, fiddle, or gay psaltery.
Yet, and for all he was philosopher,
He had but little gold within his coffer;
But all that he might borrow from a friend
On books and learning he would swiftly spend,
And then he’d pray right busily for the souls
Of those who gave him wherewithal for schools.
The ‘black and red’ bindings go along with the fact that production of the text was expensive. You just couldn’t get cheap copies until Gutenberg.
But Summers’s mistakes here are real. For one thing, I’m pretty sure no scholar of the day would have thought of “studying” the Canterbury Tales. Studying any literature less than a hundred years old was a novel and horrifying idea as late as the early twentieth century. The Clerk studies philosophy and theology.
More importantly, Summers is wrong to imply that memorizing the Canterbury Tales would DETRACT from the resources one had to spare for studying it. In fact, the tendency to quickly pull up a text one is supposed to be close-reading deeply undermines the skill acquisition of a literary scholar. One does not consult the poetic text to extract information from it; better one should be forced to memorize it. As tedious as it might seem, it is at the heart of the real work of scholarly reading in the field of Summers’s better half.*
On balance I guess I agree that this is a sloppy sentence. I don’t think it quite rises to the level of ‘howler’ though — the printing press did indeed allow for MUCH more “continuing access” for reading, and was part of the general multi-century trend in which reading culture came to exist for those other than courtiers. The modern university, with its generous financial aid, although everywhere scorned as “elitist,” is very much a part of that trend. Internet
SE
* For example! Despite having studied the Canterbury Tales in at least five different high-level settings, I gave nary a thought to cut-and-pasting the text above into my post. I didn’t slow down to notice that it’s OBVIOUSLY not in Chaucer’s English, but is a “translation” into modern spelling and diction. Here is the text I should have grabbed — but then of course we all would have had to slow down to read.
A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also,
That unto logyk hadde longe ygo.
As leene was his hors as is a rake
And he nas nat right fat, I undertake.
But looked holwe and therto sobrely.
Ful thredbare was his overeste courtepy;
For he hadde geten hym yet no benefice,
Ne was so worldly for to have office.
For hym was levere have at his beddes heed
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reed,
Of Aristotle and his philosophie,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie.
But al be that he was a philosophre,
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre
But al that he myghte of his freendes hente,
On bookes and on lernynge he it spente,
And bisily gan for the soules preye
Of hem that yaf hym wherwith to scoleye.
I would note further, slowing down further, that Summers’ financial-aid initiative (with the publicity it engendered to influence other schools), coupled with the huge political accomplishment of removing for-profit middlemen from higher-ed loans during Obama’s first two years, yaf many people wherwith to scoleye. That redounds to the credit of Summers’s soul, and puts him on the right side of cultural history.
And I think, contrary to the first commenter, that Summers was indeed highly focused on the future of the academy as it adapted to new technology. I would add three words: TO A FAULT. He paid too little attention to the FAS’s present and the College’s traditional strengths, and delegated poorly with regard to the College.
1/24/2012 11:48 am
Another error in the original version (now evidently corrected):
Summers cites Derek Bok, his “immediate predecessor.”
A revealing slip.
1/25/2012 9:03 pm
Fairy Tale, Interrupted…surely you have read it? Did Caroline approve it?
1/27/2012 10:55 am
Summers gets defensive (slightly but not entirely OT):
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/27/summers-inside-job-had-essentially-all-its-facts-wrong/