I find this idea strangely hilarious -- it turns out that the US Naval Academy has a literary magazine, Labyrinth. Here's a poem about Jesus.
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Labyrinth
29 Oct 2006 08:20 pm
Comments (29)
The Labyrinth was also the name of high school literary magazine, in which I published inscrutable poems about darkness and sleep and falling. The Jesus poem is better than anything I ever wrote...which says nothing about it really. It's not very good.
But I'm puzzled as well. The Naval Academy takes in some smart people, who are mostly inclined towards the sciences, but really include all types. During my days as a Navy officer I (I was ROTC) I met some really brilliant fellows with degrees (and advanced degrees) in philosphy, English, history, and one dude who had his eyes set on a career on Broadway. The guy could sing. The sense that the academies institutionalize a more conservative attitude towards higher education is, I think, accurate.
Quite a few of the military officers I've met have had literary aspirations. Why on earth would you think the idea funny?
I actually find the idea of a literary magazine at an service academy somewhat comforting.
Can anyone think of any Naval Academy graduates with literary aspirations who have been in the news lately?
That sawed-off head is very daniel johnston-esque...
"Can anyone think of any Naval Academy graduates with literary aspirations who have been in the news lately?"
Heh.
I dunno what things were like where y'all went to college, but the folks at The Advocate when I was in school were more-or-less the least military people imaginable, even on a campus not exactly bristling with likely candidates for the naval academy.
I'm not really getting what's funny about it.
Well, not about the magazine itself, but per the poem, Jesus doesn't root for the Naval Academy.
That's kind of funny.
Well, methinks that you might be stereotyping middies and filtering out a quirky but tenacious strain of liberal intellectualism in military education. It's not their stock and trade, but it's almost ubiquitous in American military academia. Which, as others have noted, is a comfort of sorts.
There's something wrong with using that many exclamation points at once.
Matt, you need to read Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory -- poetry and combat are old, old friends.
But point taken re Advo.
I suspect the nature of their respective literary magazines is the least of the differences between Harvard and the Naval Academy.
There's something wrong with using that many exclamation points at once.
Right, that was the other funny thing. All those exclamation points make you sound like a 12 year-old girl!!!!
Well, methinks that you might be stereotyping middies and filtering out a quirky but tenacious strain of liberal intellectualism in military education.
Well, sure, the humor relies on crude stereotypes, but since when are crude stereotypes inadmissable in the field of joke-making?
The last year before my final year of undergraduate, the editor of the school paper (also named The Advocate) had come back from a tour in Iraq. He contributed quite a lot of very thoughtful articles and even a few literary selections (though only when the regular columnists couldn't get it done on time).
I was in attendance for that Chomsky lecture (at West Point) and if I recall correctly it was a subtly brilliant performance. The cadets clearly came in with something of an attitude, which Chomsky defused both by some well-chosen hypothetical situations (concerning just war theory) and by his professorial, grandfatherly nature.
I only briefly taught at West Point, but I agree with Petey's observations about the service academies; the academic departments at USMA go to some effort to get speakers who challenge both insitutional orthodoxy and the preconceived beliefs of the student body. Oh, and there were literary and fine arts competitions too.
Iambic Pentorpedo
But would you be surprised to find that MIT has a literary magazine?
Seems that the population there might be even narrower (to the sciences) than a class of Middies. This post, combined with your post a few weeks ago about Navy deaths in Iraq, makes me wonder if you have ever even met anyone who's been to a military academcy (what does your facebook profile say?). There is most-definitely a wide range of people at these schools.
PS: the literary mag at MIT is called e.merging. Now that is funny!
http://web.mit.edu/emerging/
It's healthy that the rot is just in the political leadership, not in the underlying institutions.
Well, as long as we focus on West Point and Annapolis, and ignore Colorado Springs. Remember, the administration at the Air Force academy think that Jewfolk need to be vigorously proselytized, in between paeans to Raghead-nuking Jesus. Somehow I don't expect Chomsky to show up on the invite list any time soon. But Army and Navy... yeah, there's a genuine tradition of critical thinking. I too find this comforting, in the sense that I doubt that most of the military leadership would support the dissolution of the republic by George W. "Martial Law" Bush, no matter what sweeping powers the MCA gave him to invade US states where "conspiracies" are taking place.
But would you be surprised to find that MIT has a literary magazine?
Well, I was surprised when I learned it, but that was several years ago. Just about everything about MIT is pretty funny.
A good friend of my parents was a philosophy prof at thye Academy for years. Big focus on ethics.
He would teach truth, knowledge, and epistemology using cruise missile analogies: "Aristotle said there are many ways to be incorrect - like the many ways an arrow can miss the target, but only one way to be correct and hit the bullseye."
Of the three service academies, I liked the guys (midshipmen? Midshippeople?) at Annapolis (naval academy) best. They were the most serious -- the most likely to write for a literary magazine. Really good guys.
West point kids were awful -- spent most of the days (at the conference) secretly drinking. Which they were not allowed to do.
Never got to know anyone from the Air force academy.
Matthew captured brilliantly the callow, snotty arrogance and elitism of Harvard liberals, lampooning their ignorance and narrow world view with precision. Very funny.
Yes, Gary Imhoff, you nailed it. This is a nice parody of the condescending view some people have of the military. Strangely hilarious.
I prefer the Annapolis tradition of everyone boxing. It is the only admirable thing about the squiddies unless you count they steer well.
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Comments closed November 12, 2006.
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Heads in the Sand
I'm not really getting what's funny about it. In a weird way, it seems more appropriate at the Naval Academy than most other schools; I think of the military schools as the late holdouts of old-timey college experiences. Is the humor just one of those things you either see or you don't?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 29, 2006 8:49 PM