MAKE ME A GENIUS

The word "genius" is bandied about so frequently it has become nearly meaningless ("He's a marketing genius!") but what is "genius?" Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, and Goethe would rank high on anyone's list, but how do we ascertain the gifted, exceptional mind in the present day? What attributes are we looking for? Sheer intelligence? Creativity? MacArthur Grants? High IQs? Financial success? Problem-solving ability? Wit? Chess-playing acumen?

Susan Polgar, world's first female Grandmaster

Can we create genius?

Psychologist László Polgár thought so. He believed that genius was “not born, but made." Noting that even Mozart received tutelage from his father at a very early age, Polgár set about teaching chess to his five-year-old daughter after she happened upon a chess set in their home. Susan Polgar (born Zsuzsanna Polgár in Budapest in 1969) became the top-ranked female player in the world at the age of fifteen, and went on to become the world's first female Grandmaster, belying the common assumption that men’s brains are better at understanding spatial relationships, giving them an advantage in games such as chess. By the way, her sisters are also world-ranked chess champions.

Susan Polgar now teaches at Texas Tech, having recently moved from Forest Hills, New York, where she ran the Polgar Chess Center which gives chess training to children, especially girls.

GOD AND MAN AT YALE

One of my favorite courses at Yale was "The American Novel Since 1945" taught by Amy Hungerford. The course traced the formal and thematic developments of the novel, fiction's engagement with history, and the changing place of literature in American culture. Professor Hungerford--Amy--was never less than inspiring, and you always felt excited and ill-prepared as you slipped into place before her watchful eye.


1st Class: The American Novel Since 1945, with Amy Hungerford

You probably didn't go to Yale. Odds are you attended a crowded state school where getting a class on Registration Day was like grabbing the last chopper out of Saigon. You probably missed Yale, and never lugged books across its autumn leaf-strewn quad, never screamed your lungs out at the Yale-Harvard game, or burned a hole in its residential college system modeled after Oxford where even the phone booths look like Neo-Gothic confessionals. You probably never studied late at the SML, or took a date to Pepe's on Wooster for the white clam pizza.

More importantly, you probably didn't get a first-rate education from the greatest minds of your time. That would have been Harvard. Even so, you missed Yale. Now you have a chance to breathe that rarefied air, smell the chalkdust, rustle into place with all the other beaming students and listen to Amy--dear Amy, well-scrubbed Amy, radiant Amy, hard-grader Amy, sensibly-dressed Amy--Hungerford, as she walks you through the post-war novels of Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, Maxine Hong Kingston, Toni Morrison, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, Philip Roth and Edward P. Jones.


Review for the Final Exam: American Novel Since 1945, with Amy Hungerford

Okay, I didn't really go to Yale either. Big deal. I can pretend, and so can you, with the help of this wonderful online lecture series. In fact, we can soak up the same education Yalies paid a fortune for, and more importantly, we can impress our shallow friends with the sheer snob appeal of having attended one of the finest schools in the land. Watch the video. Afterward, puff on your Meerschaum in a darkly wooded study and drift down memory lane through the tables at Mory's to the place where Louis dwells, hoist a frothy pint with the assembled Whiffenpoofs and sing the songs we loved so well: "Shall I, Wasting" and "Mavourneen" and the rest. Raise your glass, old bean, and let us never forget those halcyon hours we spent online at Yale, we poor little lambs who have lost our way.

For the entire wonderful course, please click here.