Veritas
Postscript No. 12 | Isabel Mehta on the humanities at Harvard
THE NEW CRITIC
—
POSTSCRIPT
*What follows is a conversation between Isabel Mehta and the founding editors of The New Critic. The Postscript is a supplement to Isabel’s essay “Beauty, The Last Taboo.”
Below we discuss what it was like studying English at Harvard University in the early 2020s and the trade-offs of postgraduate life. Isabel graduated in May 2024 and is an Assistant Editor of The New Critic.
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.*
*Our essays are always online and always free, but we rely on individual donors to keep The New Critic alive.
Postscript, our interview series, can be accessed with a paid subscription. The $30 annual rate costs as much as a couple paperbacks or movie tickets. Our $250 founding members are our most ardent patrons, those who wish to advance our wildest editorial ambitions.
If you read The New Critic and take delight or solace in our project, please consider a paid subscription to this flesh-and-blood gen z magazine.*
ELAN You were at Harvard when that piece in The New Yorker by Nathan Heller came out, right? About the death of the English major?
ISABEL Yeah it’s funny, I am quoted in that article.
ELAN What did you think of it? I remember talking about it with people at Dartmouth.
ISABEL When the article came out, I remember thinking it made sense. It felt like the humanities were dying at the time. Everyone was thinking about the job market and about how to prepare themselves professionally.
That was something that people would say to me a lot, “It’s a good thing you studied the humanities. When you’re a consultant, you’ll need to be good at writing.” But what I cared about was the aesthetic experience of studying the humanities. No one said, “I study math because it’s beautiful.” Some people definitely do, but in Nathan Heller’s article, it didn’t seem like students cared too much about beauty, which was something I cared about.
ELAN You studied with James Wood and Jesse McCarthy at Harvard. Can you talk about the James Wood class? How was that?
ISABEL The greatest moments of change I experienced encountering literature have often come when I was suffering personally. There was a period in college where I was mentally very unwell. It happened to coincide with having all my core classes behind me. And so here I was, struggling to get by, and then I’m plopped in front of James Wood and told to read Saint Augustine’s Confessions. I remember reading that in the dining hall one morning and just crying, feeling a sense of being completely seen by Saint Augustine. It wasn’t a magic wand, but I think I started to realize the humanities are more than understanding history and learning how to think critically and public speak and whatever. There was something deeper to why I was devoting myself to reading and writing.
ELAN Augustine — that’s an interesting choice — because it’s not like you read Mrs Dalloway or something like that. Augustine is confessing to God, and he’s leaving behind a sinful life.
ISABEL I was raised Hindu, I lived next to an Episcopalian church, and I also went to Quaker school. I was raised by a conglomeration of faith. I’m a friend of God in whatever form he or she takes.
I do think that the reason why I was so drawn to especially book one of Confessions was, and I don’t think this is an exaggeration to say, that I thought, at that time in my life, I was falling short of my own potential, not because I had done anything terribly morally wrong, but because I didn’t feel particularly successful or important. I wasn’t doing very well in my classes; I wasn’t a particularly great athlete; mentally, I struggled; and so I felt like a failure. There’s this line in Confessions where Augustine lists all these things that are wrong with him, and then he goes, “Moreover, they are good, and they all together constitute myself.” I interpreted it as he had done wrong but that he ultimately may not be able to change, and that may just be who he is, and that’s okay. That’s what I felt like he was saying — “It’s okay.” No one in my life at the time was really telling me, “It’s okay.”
What was bothering me was a deep conflict about what I wanted to be. It was junior year. The shiny Disney world of Harvard had faded. Now everyone was sort of set on their paths — “I’m pre-med, I’m pre-law, I’m pre- this, pre- that.” And I also care a lot about what other people think. I have not worked to cultivate this sort of indifference toward what other people think of me, especially my family. I care a lot about what my family thinks of me, if they’re proud and happy with the choices I’ve made. My mom said, “You should try consulting and banking. You’re at Harvard. These opportunities are not afforded to everybody. They are potentially afforded to you, and you should take advantage of them.” So I waltzed around to all these info sessions, and you know, I’m good at things, so I was good at it.
RUFUS A lot of people go through this experience, and they do consulting or banking. Some people at Dartmouth are genuinely delighted by those jobs and love it. Other people feel deeply alienated, but they would never say it, and they would certainly never cry in the dining hall about it. It seems as if there was something quite literally grating against the fibers of your soul. Do you think Confessions revealed something about having failed yourself?
ISABEL I’ve always known that I’m a writer, but there’s a deep fear that I have, and that I especially had in college, that I was going to ultimately abandon that project to please other people. There’s nothing that terrifies me more than living a life for somebody else. Since I’ve graduated, I’ve realized how easy it is to give in.
When I’m not writing, I feel completely directionless and empty. That semester, I was not writing at all, so I think that was also part of it. I was casing, or I was doing discounted cash flows. The McKinsey framework is “mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive,” so when you solve a problem, you want to create all the options — you’re essentially covering all the bases.