One Writer’s Testimony

I am honored to have been asked to testify at this [House committee] hearing on the bill calling for a White House conference on the humanities: and that is the first piece of testimony I have to offer. We in the humanities, whether we call ourselves men of letters or men of scholarship, are fascinated and charmed by power, and anxious to please it. In the week after I accepted the invitation to speak here for five minutes today, I received from the National Endowment for the Humanities in a succession of envelopes at least two pounds of Xeroxed material, ranging from biographies of Chairman [Joseph] Duffey to appreciations of the paintings of Paul Cézanne, much of this material duplicatory and even triplicatory but all of it testifying to Brobdingnagian resources of secretarial labor and photocopying equipment. Now, a freelance writer, working in a corner of his own home, producing his manuscripts on his own twenty-year-old manual typewriter, operates on a Lilliputian scale, and must view even a marginal governmental interest in his work with the mingled gratitude and alarm of a wren whose nest is being appraised by an eagle.

The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is as essential to the one as privacy is to the other. Can these two realms, then, be conjoined without distortion? Is it true, as Joint Resolution 639 states, “that the development and encouragement of national strength in the humanities is of the utmost importance to the life and heritage of the United States,” and “that it is appropriate to encourage maximum participation by citizens”?

JU

About the Author

John Updike

I am honored to have been asked to testify at this [House committee] hearing on the bill calling for a White House conference on the humanities: and that is the first piece of testimony I have to offer. We in the humanities, whether we call ourselves men of letters or men of scholarship, are fascinated and charmed by power, and anxious to please it. In the week after I accepted the invitation to speak here for five minutes today, I received from the National Endowment for the Humanities in a succession of envelopes at least two pounds of Xeroxed material, ranging from biographies of Chairman [Joseph] Duffey to appreciations of the paintings of Paul Cézanne, much of this material duplicatory and even triplicatory but all of it testifying to Brobdingnagian resources of secretarial labor and photocopying equipment. Now, a freelance writer, working in a corner of his own home, producing his manuscripts on his own twenty-year-old manual typewriter, operates on a Lilliputian scale, and must view even a marginal governmental interest in his work with the mingled gratitude and alarm of a wren whose nest is being appraised by an eagle.

The essence of government is concern for the widest possible public interest; the essence of the humanities, it seems to me, is private study, thought, and passion. Publicity is as essential to the one as privacy is to the other. Can these two realms, then, be conjoined without distortion? Is it true, as Joint Resolution 639 states, “that the development and encouragement of national strength in the humanities is of the utmost importance to the life and heritage of the United States,” and “that it is appropriate to encourage maximum participation by citizens”?