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Popular Culture Review
“Think of the interpretive freedom that allows,” says Martin, w4io takes
Chris’s analysis of Thayer’s poem as an example. Casey is not just a .400
slugger, argues Martin. He’s [Friedrich] Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. Chris agrees,
explaining that the poem’s Mudville fans waiting for Casey to knock the ball out
of the park are like the countries in the rest of the world waiting for the United
States to solve their problems.
“Hermeneutic license at its best,” exclaims Martin, but Schuster fails to
see the benefits of this license.
“In one fell swoop,” he complains, “you and your car-jacking protege
there have put two thousand years of accumulated knowledge into a rhetorical
osterizer and grinded it into oblivion.”
Heated by the argument—and several glasses of wine—^both professors
become increasingly agitated by the discussio