"Tom,"  Huck said, scratching his match over the pipe bowl, "what's
liberal humanism?"

Tom Sawyer jerked his head to stare at Huck, eyes wide in
astonishment.  "Why, how you talk, Huckleberry Finn.  Everyone
knows what those people are, not that there are many left.  Why,
you could ride the whole lenghth of the Mississippi and only eye a
handful, all ports put together.  What makes you ask?"

"Well, it was a conversation I heard at Judge Thatcher's, listening
to him and the school board arguing over deconstructing the
schoolbooks.  They sounded like a convention of preachers trying to
out wangdangdoodle each other into perdition. They was saying you
can't just read a book without deciferying some kinda codes, codes
even the author didn't intend, codes only a degredated man could
read."

"Degredated?  Are you sure they didn't say degreed?"

"yea, maybe, but they sure was degradating a lot of people, like
those liberal humanists I heard about.  Somehthing about those
folks not knowing enough to publish a pissertation, not able to
read the tea leaves for the forest or something.  Was they talking
French, Tom"

"Nah," Tom replied, a look of confidence growing in his eyes.
"What they was talking about is the importance of theorizing as
being more important than the library books themselves.  It's like
this--Huck, can you read the Bible?"

"Well, sure, enough to get by with.  Ain't done much memorizing.
I recall `Honor thy father and mother for they know not what they
do' and `Judas went out and hung himself, go ye and do likewise.'
But I read it, sure."

"Do you understand it?"

"Only after the preacher spins something about it in church."

"Exactly!  That's how preachers make their money, explaining what
you or I can't make heads nor tails of.  A boot maker can't make no
money if everyone can make boots, and a pilot can't be a pilot if
everyone knew the steamhouse.  Them reading and writing teachers
gotta make money too, so they gotta build ivory towers that are
secret and arcane and sorta religous unless you know whole books of
passwords to enter.  Besides, if everyone could read a book, who'd
need all them graduate students in St. Louis?"

"Yea, I heard about them special students.  Are they like liberal
humanists, Tom?"

"Well, they used to be.  Then this disease came cross the ocean,
called Publishorparish, I think, and then folks had to start making
up gobs of stuff just to stay alive.  Take Dicken's _Great
Expectations_, for example.  Did you read it and understand it?"

"How you talk!  Course I did, about an orphan like me in England in
the Dark Ages."

"That's where you're all wrong, Huck.  You think you got your facts
straight but in fact the book has nothing to do with what you or I
or most people think.  You were right about the secret codes--Judge
Thatcher and folks like him think the book is about such things as
mail discourse, the oppresion of women, the way people say things
they didn't know they said that reveal things only preacherfolk can
cipher.  For example, do you recall any black people in the book?"

"No, can't say I do.  Are there black people in England, Tom?"

"Only black knights and such, but they was all gone by Dicken's
time.  But that ain't the point.  There aint't no black people in
_Great Expectations_ and that makes Dickens a rascist."

"No!  How can that be?"

"Well, anybody who don't write about a group is what they call
politically incorect.  If a slave ain't the king somewhere in the
novel, you're a rascist.  If the queen don't get to boss the king
around, you're a chauvinist.  That's where the word chivalrous
comes from--men putting women on pedestals instead of being mayor."

"Man I must be lower than the Duke of Bilgewater--I didn't see
anything like that in the book."

"Nobody does cept the schoolteachers and that ain't all.  There's
other codes too, numerology, rumorology, linguistic linguini,
pedaphilicology, homochurchsocials, and the whopper is--soon as you
think you know what's going on, someone comes along and has whole
new theories and folks gotta grab them or get lost in the dust.
There's a place called graduation schools where folks drink theorys
like watermelon juice everyday and the important thing is--what
THEY write is more important than what they READ."

"What's all this got to do with liberal humanists?"

"Ah, see, thems the folks that like to talk plain, talk about who
Charles Dickens was, what circumstances he came from, how his
characters show his experiences and knowledge, and how you and me
can relate to his chapters and stories. But that ain't right
anymore, you gotta know what paper he wrote on, what his prejudices
were, why he really didn't understand his own characters at all,
and stuff so secret even an alchemist can't devine it, define it,
or even make sense to another alchemist unless they read the same
studies of the book.  There's even folks out there now called pre-
deconstructionists.  They think you don't have to wait for a text
to criticize it, you can go ahead and publishe important articles
even before the writer thinks it up!  I read something about that,
`Secondary Sources as the New Belles Lettres: Why Wait for the
Text.'"

"What's bell's lettuce, Tom?"

"What you ain't got time to read anymore Huck--remember, it's more
important to read what people SAY about a book than the book
itself.  That's what makes a great mind."