Enjoy This Dramatic Reading Of Peggy Noonan's Harvard Study Group Syllabus

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan is leading a study group at Harvard, just like Joel McHale does in the new NBC show Community. Her offering, a part of the Fall 2009 study groups at Harvard's Institute of Politics, is titled "Creativity In Journalism, In Politics And In Life: A Writer's Perspective," and she has offered a syllabus for your perusal.

Obviously, it is MAGICAL... the dream of a crystalline dust mote in the eyelash of a woodland faerie! Noonan says, "It is often said that writing is a solitary act, and that is true - it's you and your brain, your soul and your response to something that's happening either in the world or in your head." Sometimes, the "world" is full of crazies, and your "brain" is spiked with Adderall and your "soul" is being crushed to death by cynicism over the fact that no one is hiring you or purchasing your writing, but I'm sure Noonan is going to cover all these vagaries. At least I hope so! Her sentence-fragment-strewn syllabus reads like this:

Session Six: "What It Is to Write A book?"
To write a book is to swing for the fences. Books last. The great CBS News anchor Charles Kuralt once said in my presence, gesturing toward the television, "That doesn't last, but this" - he gestured toward a book case - "does." (Actually if Google has its way maybe this will change; maybe they'll delete us.) But until they do, books are forever. I've written eight. All nonfiction. Let's talk about them, about the writing of them, and let us have as a guest a great book writer. I have someone very specific in mind, and he's said yes.

And that's the incredibly true story of how Charles Kuralt advised on the purchase of a bookcase, adding, "None of that cardboard Ikea crap, either."

Noonan hopes that various sessions will include various guests like "a great book writer" and "a great columnist," which adds a lot of dramatic suspense to this whole affair. But you will have to wait for that!

What you can enjoy now is the audio of Chris Lehmann giving Noonan's syllabus a dramatic reading, with a "few improvements." This will allow you to feel like YOU ARE THERE, learning to laugh and love and write again, with Peggy Noonan, only much much better.

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Comments

[section9]

Couldn't happen to a more pretentious gal!

As a Sarah Palin supporter, let me say that what goes around, comes around, Peggster. Maybe if you call Meghan McCain you can have her help you out to fill out that syllabus.

Peggy was under the illusion that the liberal fascisti were her friends. Peggy needs to grow up.

[muffler]

She left out the session "How to be a pundit in America and represent only 2% of the population" or "How to throw a cocktail party and have persons of color other than the help"

[levibatgirl]

Noonan is so boring!

[kickatthedarkness]

"But Mr. Jones is not my concern. All early administrations draw to their middle and lower levels a certain number of activists from the edges—flakes."

"Flakes" like this woman, Ms. Noonan?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/make-it-happen-on-purpose/

[kickatthedarkness]

"It's hard for me to look at a great nation issuing these documents and sending them out to the world and thinking, oh, much good will come of that." - Peggy Noonan

How much good will come of this, Ms. Noonan?

"Multiple blunt force injuries. Abrasion in upper right forehead. Abrasion on right lower forehead above eyebrow. Multiple contusions on right cheek and lower nose, left upper forehead, back of head. Abrasions on chest, lower costal margin. Contusions on arm, elbow, forearm, wrist, upper inner arm, groin, inner thigh, right back of knee and calf, left calf, left lower leg. Cause of death was pulmonary embolism due to blunt force injuries."

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/do-the-right-thing/

[kickatthedarkness]

“Some things in life, you wanna just keep walkin’. Some things in life need to be mysterious.”

- Peggy Noonan

Keep walkin', lady.

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/confess/

[RoughGhost]

Chris Lehmann's "dramatic" reading was hard to enjoy. Noonan's syllabus is written perfectly (for her). A proper reading of it should suggest the zest and self involvement with which she tackles every task. Can't we get some Orson Welles in here?

[Dbos]

Hubris personified. She is a legend in her own mind.

[JayDDrew]

You nailed it.

[schildpad]

She writes nonfiction?!!! I thought she was writing in response to things happening in her head.

[Shayrae]

Peggy, it's so ''boorish'' to look down your intellectual nose at the president of the United states. BTW, Reagan was of the 80's. We've moved on as a country. You should too.

[rose1123]

Peggy Noonan is still trying to find a place for herself in the 21st century. Most Americans, I hope, are as turned off by her, as I am. She is still stuck in an idealogy that does not lend itself to forward thinking, and her input to the present dialogue serves no purpose. Ronald Reagan is gone. Peggy needs to get a new schtick. When she said President Obama was boorish, when he decided to appear on all five networks, thinking that we would not know the words' meaning, I was completely turned off, because I then realized that she was inches away from calling him an "uppity N@##%!. Thus, that idealogy reared its ugly head. All those Black people are.......... I'm African-American, and I learned a great deal in Word Power.

[JayDDrew]

But she'd be more than willing to prostitute herself by appearing as part of five round tables to criticize Obama, wouldn't she?

[flydoghead]

she should change her name to Peggy Numbing, because my brain goes numb whenever I hear her droning.

[emdeebee]

Hilarious.

[vt1991]

I think she would have a better career in Broadway. Just watch her her facial expressions carefully and you will see it is just cartoonish.

[BlueDog1]

As she said on ABC regarding water boarding prisoners(or as they call it, enhanced interegation methods) .

She saw no need for reporting that information to the American public, instead she recommended we just keep on walking.

I think she was part of Chamberlin's planning group prior to wolrd war II which allowed Hitler do what ever he wanted to do.