My life is currently devoted to 3 things: finishing my thesis, getting a job, and graduating. The short description of my thesis is that I am analyzing the rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke, with a focus on his theory of the negative, to shed light on the negative theology promoted by St. Thomas Aquinas. If you’ve ever taken a Communication Arts and Sciences (CAS) class, you likely have heard of Burke before. He has really profound theories of communication and is seen a revolutionary in the field. He was also a little crazy. If you’ve heard the lyric in the musical Hamilton “why do you write like you’re running out of time,” just know that Kenneth Burke shared that level of literary hysteria with Alexander Hamilton. What prompted me to write this blog in the first place was a quote from Malcolm Cowley, a successful writer and editor who was also one of Burke’s childhood friends. The two men corresponded through letters for decades, and their letters were published in a book that I am now reading for thesis insight. Cowley described Burke as “the very keen-nosed but undertrained hound dog – he starts out a-helling after a rabbit, almost tracks in down, but gets turned aside by the strong scent of a fox, runs into a place where the fox scared up a partridge, hints for the partridge, feels hungry and digs up a field mouse” (the Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and Malcolm Cowley, 1988)
It’s the nearly disastrous combination of ambition and distraction that build Burke’s career because he followed every lead while writing. He has influenced rhetoric, philosophy, political science, psychology and many other fields because he chose not to box himself into one domain. That quote really resonated with me because I have been feeling like Burke lately, like that keen-nosed but undertrained hound dog. In this time of frantic planning hoping to have a clear path for my future before I graduate, I sometimes look at my life feeling like I’m both rolling with the punches but also running directly into the punches. For every one apartment I look at, there are a dozen more that are similar and also require my attention so that I find the best one. For every job I apply to, I keep my eye on job platforms looks for others and comparing them. And for my thesis research and writing, it has been fascinating rabbit hole after fascinating rabbit hole leading to lots of learning but loss of direction.
I say all of this to share how my life has felt non-stop, and my fear has been that it would all be for nothing. I rely on my faith in God’s plan for me and the fact that I don’t know (and can’t know) what God has in store for me, but this quote also offered a level of comfort. This scholar whom I have been desperately trying to understand spend his career running around learning while trying to understand himself. It’s ok if I do the same thing. Distraction can be productive and growth can come by following random leads to see where they take you. Something I have learned in college is that there are more paths in life than what I could even imagine for myself. I know one of the infinite potential paths will be the one that works out for me, and I don’t have to know what that path is to be confident in my future.
P.S. for anyone trying to imagine Kenneth Burke, here is a photo of him with his bust in the Pattee and Paterno Library. I think it pretty perfectly represents how he is described.
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