James called home a couple of days ago and mentioned that he was taking a class that required him to read a lot of Marxist theory along with Baudrillard, etc., etc. Later I said to Tom that this must be some kind of liberal-arts-college hazing that every youth still must undergo. Tom, in turn, reminded me that sometimes badly written stuff does have value. And I sighed.

Baudrillard et al. is why I spent so many years believing that I was a non-intellectual idiot. Somehow I had managed to get into a top-notch college, but when I was presented with Foucault and Lacan and Derrida and Cixous and their ilk, I could not keep my mind on whatever it was they were saying. I could not bear the way the stuff sounded in my head. It took me many years to figure out that I read by ear and that badly written stuff is a torment to my perceptions because I am both a poet and a prose stylist.

But James isn't interested in being a writer, I thought. He can probably manage to overlook the awfulness.

And then last night, while I was making dinner, the phone rang. It was James. "Mom, I really hate that class and I need your advice about a literature class to take as a replacement."

Turns out that the boy has decided he'd way rather read Dostoevsky and Dickens than Baudrillard and Foucault. I am ridiculously gratified.