WHAT MAKES IT GOOD?

Left: CAGED SKYLARKS




Maybe I hate golf. At least I’m uninterested in it. How can you make me care about the game in general or your particular interest in it? What makes three or four hours on a golf course worth a story? Worth an essay? To some withered nerd of a skeptic?

Soon I’ll be back in the classroom, teaching Basic Composition. In an attempt at a unifying, useful, thought-provoking question for the course and for the rest of our days, I’ll probably offer this to the students: “What makes it good?”

Whether we are evaluating a golf outing, or a blog, or a poem, or the architecture of a building, or a car, or a C.D., or an assist in basketball (only assists and defensive moves are interesting), or a strategy for starting up a business, or choosing a prospective date, or approaching her or him, or finding a restaurant or movie, or decorating a home (dorm room or house), the question arises, “What makes it good?” Isn’t it possible that there are at least a couple of answers that would apply to any human endeavor?

Surely the question of what is good might also include, "What makes it beautiful?" Or, "What makes it functional?" Must it include those? Surely it would include the question of what is important.

Or would it? Is there something I’m not seeing about the question? Or the nature of eighteen-year-olds? How much would, and should, answers change according to age, gender, ethnicity, and background (suburban, urban, small-town, farm), or region (Northeast, South, Midwest, West Coast)? And those factors don’t even take into account, as they might, parts of the world other than the U.S.

Have I gone totally pie-in-the-sky to think this is, and should be, more interesting than golf? Or brands of beer? Or models of cars? Far, far beyond a course in basic composition?

And if all this sounds elementary or condescending, if you’re thinking I should just re-take Dormitory Bull Session 101, please think back to conversations or other social situations (like poetry readings, concerts, golf outings) you’ve recently been involved in. Were you a participant, an interested spectator, or a victim? Why?

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