This item goes into the file: "Discretionary Logic."
Here's a tip. I just figured it out myself.
According to semiotics, an "equals" sign (=) means "equals." Okay. No problem.
It doesn't matter what numbers or letters are before or after it. "Equals" means "equals." Duh.
Obviously, Einstein realized this. I mean, think about it: e=mc(squared). Hahahaha. What a kidder. He just made that up out of nothing.
The really cool thing is this: after he made it up out of whole cloth, probably in a dream after drinking something revelatory, the universe began behaving that way. That's why the atom bomb was possible. Simple cause/effect. Anyone will tell you that that equation led to the atom bomb. Ergo . . .
The "equals" sign is as valuable in the modern world as "if" was for Touchstone.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Foreign Cars in the Motor City
Those dark and snowy nights and those frigid early mornings.
For ten years or so, I commuted from southern California to Detroit to teach at Center for Creative Studies (now called College for Creative Studies).
During good weather, this was not much of a problem. I kept an old Toyota Celica hatchback parked in various out-of-the way locations near the airport (mostly at a hotel I could get a shuttle to). The feat was to start up the car after its days of inactivity, sometimes over a winter break, which could be as long as a month.
During the seasons of snow and deep darkness, when I would arrive either very early in the morning (after a redeye flight), or late at night (after a noon or later departure from LA), and there could be a foot or more of snow on the ground, I was always anxious about the car. Would it be there? Would it start? What a relief to see it, even with snow mounded on and around it. Every time I turned the key in the ignition and it fired up, I patted the dashboard in gratitude and promised to treat the car to a good dinner in Greektown. That, of course, meant treating myself and my daughter while the car bided its time nearby, but that’s okay. The monumental dependability of that car deserved its reward.
Like my VW van—the car I drove cross-country from Berkeley to Detroit, and which I had sold several years earlier to a young woman about to embark on her own cross-country odyssey to Colorado for college, this Toyota, over the years, showed more and more signs of wear, especially from rust. I caught on to a technique of using special ignition spray—where, early in the morning, or in the dead of night—whenever I arrived and made it through the snow to the car, waiting patiently under its layer of snow—I’d open the hood, expose the carburetor, and spray this stuff in, and the car would start up, deserving another good dinner. I just had to remember to always keep a can of that starter in the car (and hope the weather wouldn’t be so frigid that I couldn’t turn the key in the door lock).
Eventually, the hotel tightened up its parking surveillance so I couldn’t just leave the car in the lot, and I had to unload the car. A CCS student bought it for $350 to use around campus, and I started renting vehicles every other week. It was more costly, but it was also a relief—no more wondering whether I would have a ride that weekend, or whether the car would start, or whether it would have been towed away somewhere. Renting a car wasn’t as colorful, or as exotic, but it was much less potentially treacherous. I hated to join the ranks of ordinary long-distance commuter monotony in that small way, but at the same time, it made life a little easier and left my mind free for the more important things—seeing my daughter and teaching my classes.
I probably don’t need to make an issue of this but I will: I had two Volkswagen vans, and then I had Toyotas. This in Detroit, and during the years when a group of drunken thugs beat a Chinese man to death, mistaking him for Japanese and wanting to take out their anger and frustration that the Japanese were so far outstripping American automakers in sales and product quality. We are now in a near-recession, American automakers have lost some 30-40% of sales, but foreign carmakers are holding their own. This current situation reaches back at least twenty-five years. I owe some debt of gratitude to Toyota, who made a car that withstood years, weather and semi-neglect, and kept running.
For ten years or so, I commuted from southern California to Detroit to teach at Center for Creative Studies (now called College for Creative Studies).
During good weather, this was not much of a problem. I kept an old Toyota Celica hatchback parked in various out-of-the way locations near the airport (mostly at a hotel I could get a shuttle to). The feat was to start up the car after its days of inactivity, sometimes over a winter break, which could be as long as a month.
During the seasons of snow and deep darkness, when I would arrive either very early in the morning (after a redeye flight), or late at night (after a noon or later departure from LA), and there could be a foot or more of snow on the ground, I was always anxious about the car. Would it be there? Would it start? What a relief to see it, even with snow mounded on and around it. Every time I turned the key in the ignition and it fired up, I patted the dashboard in gratitude and promised to treat the car to a good dinner in Greektown. That, of course, meant treating myself and my daughter while the car bided its time nearby, but that’s okay. The monumental dependability of that car deserved its reward.
Like my VW van—the car I drove cross-country from Berkeley to Detroit, and which I had sold several years earlier to a young woman about to embark on her own cross-country odyssey to Colorado for college, this Toyota, over the years, showed more and more signs of wear, especially from rust. I caught on to a technique of using special ignition spray—where, early in the morning, or in the dead of night—whenever I arrived and made it through the snow to the car, waiting patiently under its layer of snow—I’d open the hood, expose the carburetor, and spray this stuff in, and the car would start up, deserving another good dinner. I just had to remember to always keep a can of that starter in the car (and hope the weather wouldn’t be so frigid that I couldn’t turn the key in the door lock).
Eventually, the hotel tightened up its parking surveillance so I couldn’t just leave the car in the lot, and I had to unload the car. A CCS student bought it for $350 to use around campus, and I started renting vehicles every other week. It was more costly, but it was also a relief—no more wondering whether I would have a ride that weekend, or whether the car would start, or whether it would have been towed away somewhere. Renting a car wasn’t as colorful, or as exotic, but it was much less potentially treacherous. I hated to join the ranks of ordinary long-distance commuter monotony in that small way, but at the same time, it made life a little easier and left my mind free for the more important things—seeing my daughter and teaching my classes.
I probably don’t need to make an issue of this but I will: I had two Volkswagen vans, and then I had Toyotas. This in Detroit, and during the years when a group of drunken thugs beat a Chinese man to death, mistaking him for Japanese and wanting to take out their anger and frustration that the Japanese were so far outstripping American automakers in sales and product quality. We are now in a near-recession, American automakers have lost some 30-40% of sales, but foreign carmakers are holding their own. This current situation reaches back at least twenty-five years. I owe some debt of gratitude to Toyota, who made a car that withstood years, weather and semi-neglect, and kept running.
The Van in All of Us
VW van story: thinking of Arthur’s Days
I finally got a VW van of my own in 1968. Red and white. The perfect vehicle for—what? Obviously, carrying drums and vibes. But also, “just looking the part”—ready for the road trip, which I was soon to make, off to Detroit and my first teaching job—at Wayne State University, the last place a Berkeley hippie wanna-be with a VW van would fit in. (And, in the long run, I didn’t.)
But there I was, and I continued to drive that van during throughout my years at WSU, and into my years at Center for Creative Studies. This was a van from California—no rust, perfect exterior. But the years in Detroit began to take their toll. My first big snowstorm, which I learned from a gas station attendant was an honest-to-gosh blizzard, and the car ploughed right through it, no problems, carrying me to my destination, my apartment off East Jefferson, two bedrooms, one converted into a darkroom, the other painted dark maroon, a block away from a genuinely dilapidated and perhaps dangerous neighborhood. (I had scavenged my kitchen table from the apartment building basement, where someone else had abandoned it. My bed, from a thrift store, sat on the floor and doubled as a couch. This was my first time really on my own, and I brought with me the mindset of the penurious grad student who had spent his last three months living in a frat house bedroom with books and lps piled on the floor awaiting transport to their next destination.)
But six years or so later, my classic VW van was showing signs of wear: rust, a rebuilt engine (there’s another story—throwing a rod in Canada, on the way to Toronto, leaving it at the repairman’s shop in a small Canadian town), heater working best during the summer, air conditioning not working at all. In fact, the car was a virtual sauna during the hot and humid summers—I don’t remember being able to turn the heater off.
I was going to have to do something, replace the van eventually, but I drove it and drove it, not wanting to give it up any more than I could give up my beard and long hair.
Finally, one dark, cold, stormy, sleety January night, Mother Nature forced my hand. I was on my way to teach a WSU extension course at the Canfield Center—not far from WSU, but through a pretty dicey neighborhood. The rain was icy, gathering in large puddles in the potholes that made the streets like minefields. I went through an intersection. I slowed, but not enough: dirty water splashed up through the rusted floor into the cab, drenching my pants and shoes. I was chilled in class.
At that point, I knew I had to give up the car. I went out and bought my first Toyota Tercel—I didn’t see the point of a van any longer—and wound up selling the van for $300 to a girl taking off for University of Colorado. Her dad and brother came over to check it out, since they were going to have to fix it up for her, and they wound up driving it away. I bade it sadly good-bye, but she was thrilled and told me, as she drove out, “You’ve made me really happy.”
So, the tradition continued—I had made my first road trip coming east in that car. She made her first road trip in the opposite direction. Just like Kerouac, back and forth across the country--only he was usually hitchhiking.
I finally got a VW van of my own in 1968. Red and white. The perfect vehicle for—what? Obviously, carrying drums and vibes. But also, “just looking the part”—ready for the road trip, which I was soon to make, off to Detroit and my first teaching job—at Wayne State University, the last place a Berkeley hippie wanna-be with a VW van would fit in. (And, in the long run, I didn’t.)
But there I was, and I continued to drive that van during throughout my years at WSU, and into my years at Center for Creative Studies. This was a van from California—no rust, perfect exterior. But the years in Detroit began to take their toll. My first big snowstorm, which I learned from a gas station attendant was an honest-to-gosh blizzard, and the car ploughed right through it, no problems, carrying me to my destination, my apartment off East Jefferson, two bedrooms, one converted into a darkroom, the other painted dark maroon, a block away from a genuinely dilapidated and perhaps dangerous neighborhood. (I had scavenged my kitchen table from the apartment building basement, where someone else had abandoned it. My bed, from a thrift store, sat on the floor and doubled as a couch. This was my first time really on my own, and I brought with me the mindset of the penurious grad student who had spent his last three months living in a frat house bedroom with books and lps piled on the floor awaiting transport to their next destination.)
But six years or so later, my classic VW van was showing signs of wear: rust, a rebuilt engine (there’s another story—throwing a rod in Canada, on the way to Toronto, leaving it at the repairman’s shop in a small Canadian town), heater working best during the summer, air conditioning not working at all. In fact, the car was a virtual sauna during the hot and humid summers—I don’t remember being able to turn the heater off.
I was going to have to do something, replace the van eventually, but I drove it and drove it, not wanting to give it up any more than I could give up my beard and long hair.
Finally, one dark, cold, stormy, sleety January night, Mother Nature forced my hand. I was on my way to teach a WSU extension course at the Canfield Center—not far from WSU, but through a pretty dicey neighborhood. The rain was icy, gathering in large puddles in the potholes that made the streets like minefields. I went through an intersection. I slowed, but not enough: dirty water splashed up through the rusted floor into the cab, drenching my pants and shoes. I was chilled in class.
At that point, I knew I had to give up the car. I went out and bought my first Toyota Tercel—I didn’t see the point of a van any longer—and wound up selling the van for $300 to a girl taking off for University of Colorado. Her dad and brother came over to check it out, since they were going to have to fix it up for her, and they wound up driving it away. I bade it sadly good-bye, but she was thrilled and told me, as she drove out, “You’ve made me really happy.”
So, the tradition continued—I had made my first road trip coming east in that car. She made her first road trip in the opposite direction. Just like Kerouac, back and forth across the country--only he was usually hitchhiking.
Copernicus Redux
We’ve known since the beginning of the scientific revolution that the large features of the universe (moon, planets) move in orderly and predictable paths. The Biblical story of Joshua notwithstanding, the sun does not slow its orbit (a mistake in the thinking of Biblical writers) to allow anyone a chance to slaughter more enemies, and the moon, which actually has an orbital path, does not ordinarily swerve for any known reason.
However, I can personally testify, on the basis of my own eyewitness experience, to a distinct aberration in the moon’s celestial motion on the first night of a Bible as Literature class several years ago.
This was an introductory meeting, in a basement classroom—i.e., below ground level. The windows looked out upon the bushes. I was explaining the whats, whys, and wherefores of the class when I noticed a movement outside one of the windows. Some passerby, in a moment of idle whimsy, dropped his pants and exposed his white anterior globes to the class. Their rapt attention was entirely fixed on me, of course, but one or two happened to catch the same glimpse I did.
Then the moon, as it always does, after its brief appearance, disappeared once again into the night and left us to light our way by intellect alone.
However, I can personally testify, on the basis of my own eyewitness experience, to a distinct aberration in the moon’s celestial motion on the first night of a Bible as Literature class several years ago.
This was an introductory meeting, in a basement classroom—i.e., below ground level. The windows looked out upon the bushes. I was explaining the whats, whys, and wherefores of the class when I noticed a movement outside one of the windows. Some passerby, in a moment of idle whimsy, dropped his pants and exposed his white anterior globes to the class. Their rapt attention was entirely fixed on me, of course, but one or two happened to catch the same glimpse I did.
Then the moon, as it always does, after its brief appearance, disappeared once again into the night and left us to light our way by intellect alone.
The Will to Live: That is the Question
I have a colleague who delights in the controversy aroused by his frequently contrarian positions: there should be no affirmative action, for example, or no special consideration for Americans with disabilities. He denies that there is such a thing as “academic freedom,” given how frequently politically incorrect expressions are hounded or outlawed on college campuses. He argues that the “women’s movement” is a hypocritical sham.
What I don’t understand is this: he arouses ire. I don’t. Yet, the literature I teach, it seems to me, often goes beyond the merely politically incorrect: it destroys the will to live.
At the end of Gravity’s Rainbow (though I haven’t taught it for a number of years) an audience sits in a Santa Monica theater blithely singing a follow-the-bouncing-ball song while a nuclear weapon heads toward them.
In Waiting for Godot, which I teach all the time, the two main characters wait endlessly for a character who will, apparently, bring them all they could ever have wanted. A reappearing messenger tantalizes them with false hope. Of the two other characters, one is an occasionally malicious, otherwise incoherent artist/intellectual treated like a slave; the other is full only of pompous self-assurance—he goes blind in the second act.
I have often taught 100 Years of Solitude, in which a town and its people live their insignificant lives, filled with sex and good humor, civil war and politics, and are then wiped from the face of the earth by a whirlwind.
I’m currently teaching Roberto Bolano’s 2666, set in a Mexican town which seems to be the image of hell: unsolvable murders, incompetent or apathetic police, characters whose loves and quests come to nothing. There are some characters who offer hope, but they are very unusual, hard to use as life models: a journalist, two self-educated people (one a seer), and a writer, the central figure of the whole book, whose World War II experiences are shattering but give him the material for a series of books that form the raison d’etre for many of the other characters.
Then there is the Iliad, a monument to rage and mayhem; when the city is razed, the warriors dead or all gone home, the cause fought so intensely leaves no trace in the sand. Or The Odyssey, in which a man finally arrives home, to find that he must slaughter a houseful of young men who have been boorishly hustling his wife and then defend himself against their fathers, who are determined to avenge their sons’ deaths until Athena calls a halt to this new slide toward chaos.
From the ancient world to the modern: violence, mayhem, people fighting their causes against formidable odds, going crazy (King Lear), being duped and committing suicide (Othello), dying in the fight against injustice (Hamlet), suffering horribly for incomprehensible reasons (Job). For most of his career Shakespeare followed the traditions of genres and partitioned joy off into comedies, isolating human misery in tragedies—the tragic-comedies are his attempt to integrate the joy and wretchedness of real life into a single literary work.
Maybe this is why humanities are having a hard time of it: the grimmest realities of the human condition are graphically exposed, and there is not often much to redeem existence. Why suffer the slings and arrows of Hemingway, Faulkner, Homer, Shakespeare, Bolano, Cortazar, et al when you can get an MBA and enjoy the good life? Who wouldn’t rather prepare for a life that leads to a vacation home and a cheerful family existence than read “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or a novel by Toni Morrison, or Gunter Grass, or The Divine Comedy, two thirds of which is about punishment and suffering, and one third of which is about the blessedness awaiting a very select deserving few?
I have begun to explain to students that I ask for my classes to be scheduled in the basement because students who jump out the window can’t hurt themselves, unless they bump their heads on the casements. Suicide attempts from the third floor, on the other hand, are more likely to be successful. Bolano makes the interesting point that the grimness of reality was not fully admitted into language until the later 20th century, though it was fully present to the Greeks, who wrote about cannibalism, family murder, incest.
There is a genre that inspires hope: narratives by immigrants to America. But the hope and success are not consistent, and sometimes they seem cheesy—another version of Horatio Alger, who is firmly in one version of the "American tradition."
But what is the "American tradition” anyway? Success from hard work, the courage of pioneering, forging a new civilization based on the principles of democracy? Or destruction, humiliation, and devastation wrought upon the undeserving—like Hester Prynne—by the agents of morality. Moby Dick is often represented as one crazy man's attempt to take revenge on the evil in the world represented by "the whiteness of the whale," and its destructiveness. But looked at another way, the book could well be an extension of the Job story—in which a man is made to suffer (Ahab), tries to take revenge on the agent of his suffering (the whale), and is destroyed, along with many innocents, in the process. Ahab is Job militantly taking arms against the arational, amoral force that brought him pain. At least when his period of tribulation is finished, Job's fortunes are (to some extent--his family isn't returned to him) restored. It's important to note that he isn't "rewarded," as the more pious traditional apologists for God would have it. His fortunes are just restored. And God praises him for saying what is true. Hint: if you look at what Job has said, it's not very reassuring. His friends are always quoted by the pious, but God says they're wrong. Where does that leave the pious?
Now, back to this question of the will to live.
What I don’t understand is this: he arouses ire. I don’t. Yet, the literature I teach, it seems to me, often goes beyond the merely politically incorrect: it destroys the will to live.
At the end of Gravity’s Rainbow (though I haven’t taught it for a number of years) an audience sits in a Santa Monica theater blithely singing a follow-the-bouncing-ball song while a nuclear weapon heads toward them.
In Waiting for Godot, which I teach all the time, the two main characters wait endlessly for a character who will, apparently, bring them all they could ever have wanted. A reappearing messenger tantalizes them with false hope. Of the two other characters, one is an occasionally malicious, otherwise incoherent artist/intellectual treated like a slave; the other is full only of pompous self-assurance—he goes blind in the second act.
I have often taught 100 Years of Solitude, in which a town and its people live their insignificant lives, filled with sex and good humor, civil war and politics, and are then wiped from the face of the earth by a whirlwind.
I’m currently teaching Roberto Bolano’s 2666, set in a Mexican town which seems to be the image of hell: unsolvable murders, incompetent or apathetic police, characters whose loves and quests come to nothing. There are some characters who offer hope, but they are very unusual, hard to use as life models: a journalist, two self-educated people (one a seer), and a writer, the central figure of the whole book, whose World War II experiences are shattering but give him the material for a series of books that form the raison d’etre for many of the other characters.
Then there is the Iliad, a monument to rage and mayhem; when the city is razed, the warriors dead or all gone home, the cause fought so intensely leaves no trace in the sand. Or The Odyssey, in which a man finally arrives home, to find that he must slaughter a houseful of young men who have been boorishly hustling his wife and then defend himself against their fathers, who are determined to avenge their sons’ deaths until Athena calls a halt to this new slide toward chaos.
From the ancient world to the modern: violence, mayhem, people fighting their causes against formidable odds, going crazy (King Lear), being duped and committing suicide (Othello), dying in the fight against injustice (Hamlet), suffering horribly for incomprehensible reasons (Job). For most of his career Shakespeare followed the traditions of genres and partitioned joy off into comedies, isolating human misery in tragedies—the tragic-comedies are his attempt to integrate the joy and wretchedness of real life into a single literary work.
Maybe this is why humanities are having a hard time of it: the grimmest realities of the human condition are graphically exposed, and there is not often much to redeem existence. Why suffer the slings and arrows of Hemingway, Faulkner, Homer, Shakespeare, Bolano, Cortazar, et al when you can get an MBA and enjoy the good life? Who wouldn’t rather prepare for a life that leads to a vacation home and a cheerful family existence than read “The Yellow Wallpaper,” or a novel by Toni Morrison, or Gunter Grass, or The Divine Comedy, two thirds of which is about punishment and suffering, and one third of which is about the blessedness awaiting a very select deserving few?
I have begun to explain to students that I ask for my classes to be scheduled in the basement because students who jump out the window can’t hurt themselves, unless they bump their heads on the casements. Suicide attempts from the third floor, on the other hand, are more likely to be successful. Bolano makes the interesting point that the grimness of reality was not fully admitted into language until the later 20th century, though it was fully present to the Greeks, who wrote about cannibalism, family murder, incest.
There is a genre that inspires hope: narratives by immigrants to America. But the hope and success are not consistent, and sometimes they seem cheesy—another version of Horatio Alger, who is firmly in one version of the "American tradition."
But what is the "American tradition” anyway? Success from hard work, the courage of pioneering, forging a new civilization based on the principles of democracy? Or destruction, humiliation, and devastation wrought upon the undeserving—like Hester Prynne—by the agents of morality. Moby Dick is often represented as one crazy man's attempt to take revenge on the evil in the world represented by "the whiteness of the whale," and its destructiveness. But looked at another way, the book could well be an extension of the Job story—in which a man is made to suffer (Ahab), tries to take revenge on the agent of his suffering (the whale), and is destroyed, along with many innocents, in the process. Ahab is Job militantly taking arms against the arational, amoral force that brought him pain. At least when his period of tribulation is finished, Job's fortunes are (to some extent--his family isn't returned to him) restored. It's important to note that he isn't "rewarded," as the more pious traditional apologists for God would have it. His fortunes are just restored. And God praises him for saying what is true. Hint: if you look at what Job has said, it's not very reassuring. His friends are always quoted by the pious, but God says they're wrong. Where does that leave the pious?
Now, back to this question of the will to live.
Hot Academic Topic
Here’s a lurid one: sex between teachers and students.
In the schools where I have taught (all college-level), this does not happen often. It does happen, but not as often as the stories might lead one to believe. There is relatively little predatory behavior, and relationships that develop between teachers and students can as often be serious and lasting as transitory. They generally do not start until the student is out of the class, but continues to be in touch with the professor. That said, there is nonetheless the attitude represented by the colleague who is supposed to have said, during his first week on the job, “Where do you go to f—k the co-eds?” (He earned his male and female colleagues’ lasting disdain for this query.) By the same token, there are co-eds for whom some professors can be like rock stars to get into bed with. There is also the genuine problem that a relationship between a professor and coed, especially if it becomes serious, but even if it doesn’t, can jeopardize or destroy the marriage of either or both of them.
As I say, the lives of professors mostly aren’t public because who would care? They’re busy teaching and/or doing their research and raising their families, not indulging in seamy sex.
However, there are those occasional scandalous situations, and they yield stories one can’t forget.
I had a colleague whose wife knew danger signs: when he started teaching a Henry Miller novel, there could be trouble afoot. She was used to his escapades, apparently. At one point, he was called into the department chair’s office and warned, in front of witnesses, “Not with students, ----!” This colleague once made the mistake of signing a note to the effect that he would reward a student with an A if she slept with him. She slept with him, and he gave her a C. She went to the university ombudsman with the signed note and her grade. That error of judgment on his part led to the chairman’s reprimand. If he hadn’t allowed his proclivities to be taken public, he might have flown indefinitely under the radar. In the mean time, he was known to have offered his wife once to a friend who was feeling depressed. He wound up not getting tenure, and, indeed, not staying in the academic world. After a stint returning to graduate school to become a creative writer, he became a jobbing professional writer in another city.
The wife of another colleague, who kept a sleeping bag in his office, became suspicious whenever he took up obsessive housecleaning, vacuuming, dusting, etc., as though he were trying to assuage some guilt. They later divorced under circumstances unknown to me.
Another colleague got involved with a student, divorced his wife, with whom he fought incessantly, and married the student, with whom he fought incessantly. They had a wonderful daughter and are married to this day. He also left the academic world and became a professional writer with a much better income than any academic position would have paid, and he was happier.
The most venal situation was not between a professor and a student, but involved a female department chair and a prospective professor in her own department. She never revealed, during the deliberations over hiring him, that they had not only been involved previously, but that they had a son. She hired him for a position that was not exactly in his area of specialization. The information about their real relationship surfaced after he had been employed in the department for several years and resulted in his dismissal, over which he protested loud and long on the grounds that he was being mercilessly harassed, implying that it was an issue of racial discrimination. Another department member dug up the information, for who knows what reason, and circulated it. The chair had lied to the college president about her relationship with the new professor, and she was dismissed as well. She went on to become a dean at another institution.
In another case, perhaps innocent, a married female undergrad was known to be regularly sneaking up to the fourth floor office of a male professor with a large office and a couch, where, behind closed doors, long hours of visitation took place. When asked about this once, she protested that her reputation could be harmed if anyone knew.
And, after nearly forty years of teaching, this is pretty much the extent of my bedtime stories. Whatever other incidents I might have heard about have been few and far between, and not enough known to me to recount.
For the rest of it, I meet my colleagues in the halls and at parties, and they’re quite uniformly devoted to their families and their work and/or hobbies. If you’re looking for salacious tales, read the Decameron or the Canterbury Tales, or a lot of modern fiction. Tales from the academic world are more conducive to sleep.
In the schools where I have taught (all college-level), this does not happen often. It does happen, but not as often as the stories might lead one to believe. There is relatively little predatory behavior, and relationships that develop between teachers and students can as often be serious and lasting as transitory. They generally do not start until the student is out of the class, but continues to be in touch with the professor. That said, there is nonetheless the attitude represented by the colleague who is supposed to have said, during his first week on the job, “Where do you go to f—k the co-eds?” (He earned his male and female colleagues’ lasting disdain for this query.) By the same token, there are co-eds for whom some professors can be like rock stars to get into bed with. There is also the genuine problem that a relationship between a professor and coed, especially if it becomes serious, but even if it doesn’t, can jeopardize or destroy the marriage of either or both of them.
As I say, the lives of professors mostly aren’t public because who would care? They’re busy teaching and/or doing their research and raising their families, not indulging in seamy sex.
However, there are those occasional scandalous situations, and they yield stories one can’t forget.
I had a colleague whose wife knew danger signs: when he started teaching a Henry Miller novel, there could be trouble afoot. She was used to his escapades, apparently. At one point, he was called into the department chair’s office and warned, in front of witnesses, “Not with students, ----!” This colleague once made the mistake of signing a note to the effect that he would reward a student with an A if she slept with him. She slept with him, and he gave her a C. She went to the university ombudsman with the signed note and her grade. That error of judgment on his part led to the chairman’s reprimand. If he hadn’t allowed his proclivities to be taken public, he might have flown indefinitely under the radar. In the mean time, he was known to have offered his wife once to a friend who was feeling depressed. He wound up not getting tenure, and, indeed, not staying in the academic world. After a stint returning to graduate school to become a creative writer, he became a jobbing professional writer in another city.
The wife of another colleague, who kept a sleeping bag in his office, became suspicious whenever he took up obsessive housecleaning, vacuuming, dusting, etc., as though he were trying to assuage some guilt. They later divorced under circumstances unknown to me.
Another colleague got involved with a student, divorced his wife, with whom he fought incessantly, and married the student, with whom he fought incessantly. They had a wonderful daughter and are married to this day. He also left the academic world and became a professional writer with a much better income than any academic position would have paid, and he was happier.
The most venal situation was not between a professor and a student, but involved a female department chair and a prospective professor in her own department. She never revealed, during the deliberations over hiring him, that they had not only been involved previously, but that they had a son. She hired him for a position that was not exactly in his area of specialization. The information about their real relationship surfaced after he had been employed in the department for several years and resulted in his dismissal, over which he protested loud and long on the grounds that he was being mercilessly harassed, implying that it was an issue of racial discrimination. Another department member dug up the information, for who knows what reason, and circulated it. The chair had lied to the college president about her relationship with the new professor, and she was dismissed as well. She went on to become a dean at another institution.
In another case, perhaps innocent, a married female undergrad was known to be regularly sneaking up to the fourth floor office of a male professor with a large office and a couch, where, behind closed doors, long hours of visitation took place. When asked about this once, she protested that her reputation could be harmed if anyone knew.
And, after nearly forty years of teaching, this is pretty much the extent of my bedtime stories. Whatever other incidents I might have heard about have been few and far between, and not enough known to me to recount.
For the rest of it, I meet my colleagues in the halls and at parties, and they’re quite uniformly devoted to their families and their work and/or hobbies. If you’re looking for salacious tales, read the Decameron or the Canterbury Tales, or a lot of modern fiction. Tales from the academic world are more conducive to sleep.
Wit and Wisdom from the Academic Life
Well, sort of an academic. I started my career as an aspiring scholar/critic, but parted ways with the real scholarly world decades ago (the world of graduate and research institutions). Anyone who wishes may construe my memories as the sour grapes of someone who did not get tenure at my “starter” institution.
But several pithy remarks have stuck in my memory (N.B. I have put the remarks in quotes for dramatic effect. The words may not be exactly what the speaker said, but the substance is accurate. Thucydides is my precedent.):
a. “Never give a position to someone who wants it.” Overheard from a senior department member who was worried about the overheated competition and intense lobbying among mid-level faculty for the soon-to-be-open department chair’s position.
b. “In the academic world, the lower the stakes, the more ferocious and bitter the conflict.” In the context of department meetings at Wayne State University, where the English Department had meeting after meeting trying to hash out the terms of a department charter, the writing of which had been “assigned” by the dean of liberal arts. The discussions were quite rancorous, especially as regarded the participation of junior faculty in the selection of the most qualified tenure candidates. Senior faculty felt their turf was in danger of usurpation, when they were the ones who had most at stake in the decision. Junior faculty who aligned themselves with senior faculty later got tenure recommendations, but also later left the institution anyway for more fertile and hospitable institutions. This happened in many cases.
c. “The junior faculty are acting like a bunch of spoiled children.” A tenured faculty member in one of the above-mentioned meetings.
d. “In a meeting the first item on the agenda, important or not, will get 75% of the discussion time. Therefore, the way to organize the agenda is to put relatively minor issues first, chew up the time on them, and then push the important issues to a vote at the last minute to limit discussion.” The same tenured faculty member, considering strategy for an upcoming meeting on participation of junior faculty in the tenure-deliberation process.
e. “You’ve heard that tenure depends on research, teaching, and publication. What it really depends on is publication, publication, publication.” Dean of Liberal Arts to a meeting of tenure-track junior faculty at Wayne State University, sometime between 1970 and 1974.
f. “Dr. Smallenburg will never be one of our major scholars.” Dr. Ralph Nash, in a confidential evaluation of yours truly. On the principle that it’s a good idea to have recent evaluations entered into one’s job-application folder, I had Nash’s evaluation entered before I knew what it said. A friend in the business world offered to request my folder from the UC Berkeley job-placement office (claiming that I was a prospective employee), so I agreed, and there was this comment. I had the evaluation removed shortly thereafter.
The above constitute the “wit” section. Now, for the wisdom.
In the academic world (and other jobs as well, I suppose), you should not only always have an exit strategy, you should have a strategy for knowing what’s being said about you. The “confidentiality” canard is that an evaluator must be able to be honest. However, the candidate is always, under such a system, potentially the victim of someone else’s unsuspected ill will. The dishonesty involved in getting hold of my own application portfolio and looking at “confidential” evaluations is entirely justified. In my case, the evaluator was giving his honest opinion without any malicious intent. And he was right: it was already becoming apparent that I was not a good fit for an academic department of Wayne’s stripe. I hold no grudges about Nash’s comments. He was doing his job.
But confidentiality can also mask outright betrayal. You can’t depend on your sense of trust for an evaluator.
This happened to a friend, who asked two professors to write on his behalf when he was looking for a job after graduating with his PhD from the UC Berkeley English Department. From his relations with both these professors, he had no reason to expect anything but glowing reports. At least one, however, attacked him savagely, and this “recommendation” was among the documents sent to institutions my friend was applying to. He wound up getting a job in spite of it, but discovered what had happened several years later. He went on to contribute solidly and creatively to the world of letters, but harbors intense bitterness about UC Berkeley.
In another case, when I was on the hiring committee at Wayne State, an applicant for a position in anthropology was unaware of a terrible letter in his folder. I was still under the impression that the confidentiality system had to be supported (this before I discovered the breach in my own fortifications), but a colleague of mine said he was going to tip off the candidate because the professor had been very unfair to him in the recommendation. Although I would not have done so myself, I appreciated the sense of fairness this covert revelation involved, and I began to change my own opinions.
This same colleague mentioned, in the case of this same candidate, that in our hiring interviews, he had observed that the candidate was becoming the victim of a prejudice over which he could have no control. The candidate was a soft-spoken southerner, from a southern university. He spoke slowly, with a drawl. Apparently, my colleague had overheard remarks to the effect that the candidate was inferior because he wasn’t “quick” in his answers—they didn’t come out with the readiness northerners and people from the east associate with a “bright,” “energetic” person, someone with “chutzpah,” as an associate chair said.
Though I am rarely in a position to write recommendations for jobs, I am frequently asked to write recommendations for scholarships. My policy is not to write a recommendation I would not want to give to the candidate. This is only fair. If an evaluator can’t, in honesty, write positively, he/she should not write at all, concealing under the cover of “confidentiality” reservations that could well hurt the candidate.
Another, perhaps more insidious consequence of the confidentiality rule (though it could as well be unrelated, and I just bring it up here because I recall thinking this was an egregious violation of a candidate’s trust): a professor writes on behalf of several students. From my service on a recent hiring committee (not in English, this time), I noticed that the same CSULA professor had written on behalf of three different candidates. Comparing the remarks, I discovered that she (the writer was female) had practically boiler-plated each evaluation: professing in all three to have a close and professional relationship with the candidate that enabled her to assess the candidate’s excellent qualifications and recommend him without hesitation. The same claim was made in each case, but none of the candidates could be distinguished on the basis of the letter, which could as well have been printed out from a computer file copy by an assistant who had been advised to make the appropriate name changes.
(This is similar to the candidate who forgets to change the name of the institution he/she applied to last in a letter addressed to another institution. This has led to instant rejection.)
One final word of wisdom: never place commitment to an institution ahead of your own self-interest. The institution will not hesitate to sacrifice you when its self interest is at stake.
I suspect people more closely and continuously involved in the academic world, especially four year and graduate institutions, have much more to contribute in the way of wit and wisdom.
But several pithy remarks have stuck in my memory (N.B. I have put the remarks in quotes for dramatic effect. The words may not be exactly what the speaker said, but the substance is accurate. Thucydides is my precedent.):
a. “Never give a position to someone who wants it.” Overheard from a senior department member who was worried about the overheated competition and intense lobbying among mid-level faculty for the soon-to-be-open department chair’s position.
b. “In the academic world, the lower the stakes, the more ferocious and bitter the conflict.” In the context of department meetings at Wayne State University, where the English Department had meeting after meeting trying to hash out the terms of a department charter, the writing of which had been “assigned” by the dean of liberal arts. The discussions were quite rancorous, especially as regarded the participation of junior faculty in the selection of the most qualified tenure candidates. Senior faculty felt their turf was in danger of usurpation, when they were the ones who had most at stake in the decision. Junior faculty who aligned themselves with senior faculty later got tenure recommendations, but also later left the institution anyway for more fertile and hospitable institutions. This happened in many cases.
c. “The junior faculty are acting like a bunch of spoiled children.” A tenured faculty member in one of the above-mentioned meetings.
d. “In a meeting the first item on the agenda, important or not, will get 75% of the discussion time. Therefore, the way to organize the agenda is to put relatively minor issues first, chew up the time on them, and then push the important issues to a vote at the last minute to limit discussion.” The same tenured faculty member, considering strategy for an upcoming meeting on participation of junior faculty in the tenure-deliberation process.
e. “You’ve heard that tenure depends on research, teaching, and publication. What it really depends on is publication, publication, publication.” Dean of Liberal Arts to a meeting of tenure-track junior faculty at Wayne State University, sometime between 1970 and 1974.
f. “Dr. Smallenburg will never be one of our major scholars.” Dr. Ralph Nash, in a confidential evaluation of yours truly. On the principle that it’s a good idea to have recent evaluations entered into one’s job-application folder, I had Nash’s evaluation entered before I knew what it said. A friend in the business world offered to request my folder from the UC Berkeley job-placement office (claiming that I was a prospective employee), so I agreed, and there was this comment. I had the evaluation removed shortly thereafter.
The above constitute the “wit” section. Now, for the wisdom.
In the academic world (and other jobs as well, I suppose), you should not only always have an exit strategy, you should have a strategy for knowing what’s being said about you. The “confidentiality” canard is that an evaluator must be able to be honest. However, the candidate is always, under such a system, potentially the victim of someone else’s unsuspected ill will. The dishonesty involved in getting hold of my own application portfolio and looking at “confidential” evaluations is entirely justified. In my case, the evaluator was giving his honest opinion without any malicious intent. And he was right: it was already becoming apparent that I was not a good fit for an academic department of Wayne’s stripe. I hold no grudges about Nash’s comments. He was doing his job.
But confidentiality can also mask outright betrayal. You can’t depend on your sense of trust for an evaluator.
This happened to a friend, who asked two professors to write on his behalf when he was looking for a job after graduating with his PhD from the UC Berkeley English Department. From his relations with both these professors, he had no reason to expect anything but glowing reports. At least one, however, attacked him savagely, and this “recommendation” was among the documents sent to institutions my friend was applying to. He wound up getting a job in spite of it, but discovered what had happened several years later. He went on to contribute solidly and creatively to the world of letters, but harbors intense bitterness about UC Berkeley.
In another case, when I was on the hiring committee at Wayne State, an applicant for a position in anthropology was unaware of a terrible letter in his folder. I was still under the impression that the confidentiality system had to be supported (this before I discovered the breach in my own fortifications), but a colleague of mine said he was going to tip off the candidate because the professor had been very unfair to him in the recommendation. Although I would not have done so myself, I appreciated the sense of fairness this covert revelation involved, and I began to change my own opinions.
This same colleague mentioned, in the case of this same candidate, that in our hiring interviews, he had observed that the candidate was becoming the victim of a prejudice over which he could have no control. The candidate was a soft-spoken southerner, from a southern university. He spoke slowly, with a drawl. Apparently, my colleague had overheard remarks to the effect that the candidate was inferior because he wasn’t “quick” in his answers—they didn’t come out with the readiness northerners and people from the east associate with a “bright,” “energetic” person, someone with “chutzpah,” as an associate chair said.
Though I am rarely in a position to write recommendations for jobs, I am frequently asked to write recommendations for scholarships. My policy is not to write a recommendation I would not want to give to the candidate. This is only fair. If an evaluator can’t, in honesty, write positively, he/she should not write at all, concealing under the cover of “confidentiality” reservations that could well hurt the candidate.
Another, perhaps more insidious consequence of the confidentiality rule (though it could as well be unrelated, and I just bring it up here because I recall thinking this was an egregious violation of a candidate’s trust): a professor writes on behalf of several students. From my service on a recent hiring committee (not in English, this time), I noticed that the same CSULA professor had written on behalf of three different candidates. Comparing the remarks, I discovered that she (the writer was female) had practically boiler-plated each evaluation: professing in all three to have a close and professional relationship with the candidate that enabled her to assess the candidate’s excellent qualifications and recommend him without hesitation. The same claim was made in each case, but none of the candidates could be distinguished on the basis of the letter, which could as well have been printed out from a computer file copy by an assistant who had been advised to make the appropriate name changes.
(This is similar to the candidate who forgets to change the name of the institution he/she applied to last in a letter addressed to another institution. This has led to instant rejection.)
One final word of wisdom: never place commitment to an institution ahead of your own self-interest. The institution will not hesitate to sacrifice you when its self interest is at stake.
I suspect people more closely and continuously involved in the academic world, especially four year and graduate institutions, have much more to contribute in the way of wit and wisdom.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
I Can't Believe You're Still Doing This . . .
Again, from College for Creative Studies.
At one point, we had a sociology instructor--he was a very nice guy, MA from Marygrove University (a very small, very parochial four-year institution in Detroit), and when he'd tell me (I was Chair of Liberal Arts) about class trips and projects he was doing, it sounded like the students were getting a good introduction to the social realities of a city in the throes of all kinds of urban blight and decay (regardless of how often newscasters extolled Detroit's beauty and vitality). This was what sociology should be about, I thought, the nitty-gritty that affluent suburbanites never knew existed. And he didn't seem to have any political or social ax to grind. He just wanted to broaden students' awareness and sympathies.
But there was a problem. I was alerted by the girl in the media center (who typed syllabi and exams for him) that he was nearly illiterate. She was correcting all his spelling and grammar errors, as well as errors in phrasing, etc. She showed me an original he had brought, and she showed me the finished product after her labors.
I had to have a meeting with him. I told him I loved the classes he was teaching, thought highly of his approach, and wanted him to continue, but that he was going to have to clean up his act when it came to writing. He was entirely agreeable--he would take some classes and solve the problem.
Several months later, the typist came to me again. Apparently, the instructor had not gotten the draft to her early enough to make sufficient corrections, and she was now angry that he was using her to cover over all the mistakes he was still making, despite the promise to correct them. He had even given the class an uncorrected assignment, syllabus, or exam--I can't remember which--but it must have made him look utterly ignorant, since we had students who were very sharp.
I told him I couldn't continue to hire him.
It was a shame. I liked him, and I liked his courses. In a way, it wasn't even his fault. He should have taken steps to improve his writing, of course. But what about the program which let him through with a master's degree? How could he have passed even a single freshman composition class, let alone graduate classes and a graduate thesis (if one had been required)? Either he had someone else write every paper he submitted (or he purchased them)--but he didn't strike me as a dishonest person at all. Or, and I suspect this to be the case: Marygrove University, in its desperation to get students and their private-college tuition, sometimes paid by goverment assistance, took them in, passed them along, and claimed success regardless of fundamental areas of incompetence. (We're not talking about the occasional misspelling or grammatical goof here--we're talking about wholesale incompetence with mechanics, punctuation, spelling, etc. He might have had an undiagnosed learning disability, but that didn't stop him from getting his degree and putting it on his resume.)
Or, the claim to have a degree was a fraud. If that was the case, he betrayed himself as soon as he put something on paper.
But he was affable, understood the problem--perhaps even realized that the cat being out of the bag (again) he was going to have to move on.
The potential for such frauds--not only at College for Creative Studies--has since led all institutions to require the provision of official documents that establish degree earned.
At one point, we had a sociology instructor--he was a very nice guy, MA from Marygrove University (a very small, very parochial four-year institution in Detroit), and when he'd tell me (I was Chair of Liberal Arts) about class trips and projects he was doing, it sounded like the students were getting a good introduction to the social realities of a city in the throes of all kinds of urban blight and decay (regardless of how often newscasters extolled Detroit's beauty and vitality). This was what sociology should be about, I thought, the nitty-gritty that affluent suburbanites never knew existed. And he didn't seem to have any political or social ax to grind. He just wanted to broaden students' awareness and sympathies.
But there was a problem. I was alerted by the girl in the media center (who typed syllabi and exams for him) that he was nearly illiterate. She was correcting all his spelling and grammar errors, as well as errors in phrasing, etc. She showed me an original he had brought, and she showed me the finished product after her labors.
I had to have a meeting with him. I told him I loved the classes he was teaching, thought highly of his approach, and wanted him to continue, but that he was going to have to clean up his act when it came to writing. He was entirely agreeable--he would take some classes and solve the problem.
Several months later, the typist came to me again. Apparently, the instructor had not gotten the draft to her early enough to make sufficient corrections, and she was now angry that he was using her to cover over all the mistakes he was still making, despite the promise to correct them. He had even given the class an uncorrected assignment, syllabus, or exam--I can't remember which--but it must have made him look utterly ignorant, since we had students who were very sharp.
I told him I couldn't continue to hire him.
It was a shame. I liked him, and I liked his courses. In a way, it wasn't even his fault. He should have taken steps to improve his writing, of course. But what about the program which let him through with a master's degree? How could he have passed even a single freshman composition class, let alone graduate classes and a graduate thesis (if one had been required)? Either he had someone else write every paper he submitted (or he purchased them)--but he didn't strike me as a dishonest person at all. Or, and I suspect this to be the case: Marygrove University, in its desperation to get students and their private-college tuition, sometimes paid by goverment assistance, took them in, passed them along, and claimed success regardless of fundamental areas of incompetence. (We're not talking about the occasional misspelling or grammatical goof here--we're talking about wholesale incompetence with mechanics, punctuation, spelling, etc. He might have had an undiagnosed learning disability, but that didn't stop him from getting his degree and putting it on his resume.)
Or, the claim to have a degree was a fraud. If that was the case, he betrayed himself as soon as he put something on paper.
But he was affable, understood the problem--perhaps even realized that the cat being out of the bag (again) he was going to have to move on.
The potential for such frauds--not only at College for Creative Studies--has since led all institutions to require the provision of official documents that establish degree earned.
How Many Ways do You Have to Say "No"?
College for Creative Studies.
For a number of years, I chaired the Liberal Arts Department. As Chair, I received job inquiries to teach liberal arts classes (i.e., all non-studio classes).
One day, I received a letter that I have ever since used as a model of the worst, most counter-productive job application I have ever seen.
This was an application to teach sociology.
The letter was handwritten, in pencil, on yellow lined paper, torn from a pad.
I understood that the person was applying for a teaching job, but the incompetence with not only grammar and mechanics, but clarity of expression, made that a difficult message to decipher. Of course, a college-level teaching position was absolutely out of the question. If the tone hadn't been serious, the letter might even have been a joke. It was a joke, but unintentional.
However, knowing how cold institutional silence can seem, or a form-letter response, I decided to do the writer a favor. I wrote tactfully (a formal, typed letter in my most polished chairmanly prose) that in the future, the writer should type the application on good paper and make sure to proofread carefully for grammar, mechanics, and clarity of expression. I sent my reply off, feeling that I had helped someone along the way to her career.
A week or so later, however, I received another letter. Again, it was handwritten--I should say scrawled--in pencil, on yellow lined paper, torn from a pad. The writer said she was sorry if there was any misunderstanding in her previous letter and requested, with what seemed like blithe and clueless self-assurance, a convenient time for an interview. My account of this letter completely misrepresents its miserable confusion and virtual illiteracy. It was an utter disaster that no human resources director would look at for a second.
Most appalling to me was that my own letter had made no impression whatever. There was no acknowledgment of anything I had said. In fact, just the opposite. It was as though I had complimented her on her training and suggested that she was perfect for the job. I had heard of surrealism, but never before experienced it.
This time, the yellow, scrawled page, torn from a pad, went into the trash.
For a number of years, I chaired the Liberal Arts Department. As Chair, I received job inquiries to teach liberal arts classes (i.e., all non-studio classes).
One day, I received a letter that I have ever since used as a model of the worst, most counter-productive job application I have ever seen.
This was an application to teach sociology.
The letter was handwritten, in pencil, on yellow lined paper, torn from a pad.
I understood that the person was applying for a teaching job, but the incompetence with not only grammar and mechanics, but clarity of expression, made that a difficult message to decipher. Of course, a college-level teaching position was absolutely out of the question. If the tone hadn't been serious, the letter might even have been a joke. It was a joke, but unintentional.
However, knowing how cold institutional silence can seem, or a form-letter response, I decided to do the writer a favor. I wrote tactfully (a formal, typed letter in my most polished chairmanly prose) that in the future, the writer should type the application on good paper and make sure to proofread carefully for grammar, mechanics, and clarity of expression. I sent my reply off, feeling that I had helped someone along the way to her career.
A week or so later, however, I received another letter. Again, it was handwritten--I should say scrawled--in pencil, on yellow lined paper, torn from a pad. The writer said she was sorry if there was any misunderstanding in her previous letter and requested, with what seemed like blithe and clueless self-assurance, a convenient time for an interview. My account of this letter completely misrepresents its miserable confusion and virtual illiteracy. It was an utter disaster that no human resources director would look at for a second.
Most appalling to me was that my own letter had made no impression whatever. There was no acknowledgment of anything I had said. In fact, just the opposite. It was as though I had complimented her on her training and suggested that she was perfect for the job. I had heard of surrealism, but never before experienced it.
This time, the yellow, scrawled page, torn from a pad, went into the trash.
The Things I've Carried
This topic deserves broader attention--I've carried many things physical and emotional--but I'll just get in a note now.
My wife was looking for a tray of some kind to set in the window sill so she could start some herbs.
I remembered: I have some trays. They're in my darkroom. They're all I have left from my first teaching job, at Wayne State University, which ended 33 years ago.
That means that in several moves, and in a cross-country return-to-land-of-my-birth trip(who says you can't go home again), I carried those trays, originally from the Wayne State University cafeteria, to use in darkroom work, probably lifted at a time when, on a beginning teacher's salary in a foreign city, I couldn't afford to buy darkroom trays.
If WSU wants them, and contacts me, I'll be glad to ship them back. Otherwise, these plastic trays, with their Wayne State University logo, are my best memory of the place. 1970-1976. RIP
My wife was looking for a tray of some kind to set in the window sill so she could start some herbs.
I remembered: I have some trays. They're in my darkroom. They're all I have left from my first teaching job, at Wayne State University, which ended 33 years ago.
That means that in several moves, and in a cross-country return-to-land-of-my-birth trip(who says you can't go home again), I carried those trays, originally from the Wayne State University cafeteria, to use in darkroom work, probably lifted at a time when, on a beginning teacher's salary in a foreign city, I couldn't afford to buy darkroom trays.
If WSU wants them, and contacts me, I'll be glad to ship them back. Otherwise, these plastic trays, with their Wayne State University logo, are my best memory of the place. 1970-1976. RIP
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Gods May Be Crazy, But . . .
The gods may be crazy, but sometimes they confer an unexpected boon. Only if you weigh such a boon against the thousands of boners they pull, might you consider divinities benign. But that is a subject for another blog. (See "Biblo-O-Phile.")
But, to the immediate story.
At the Center for Creative Studies, where I was teaching English, I conceived a course that I called "The Essential Unity of Nearly Everything." The title was designed to allow me to include anything I wanted to read, from the Odyssey, to Gargantua and Pantagruel, to Twelfth Night, to Joseph Andrews, to The Tin Drum. I didn't know offhand what the "essential unity" would consist of, though I had faith that a creative imagination will find connections among seemingly unrelated works of literature from a variety of times and places.
Here is the boon. On my way to the first class meeting (I was on the plane, commuting at this time from Southern California), I picked up the in-flight magazine to browse through the pictures. I believe I randomly opened to a page with an article about string-theory. An article about string-theory? In an airline magazine? Along with the usual puff stuff about places to go, eat, and tourize? The advertisements for vacation packages? For Berlitz language schools? For the Rosetta Stone?
I read the article and discovered that string-theorists do, indeed, believe that there is an underlying unity to everything. Strings are those tiny, tiny theoretical things that connect all. As soon as I got to school the next day, I xeroxed the article for the class, and there was the theoretical foundation, provided by the unimpeachable world of science, for the next fifteen or sixteen weeks.
By the way, as the class progressed, we also discovered other kinds of unity, not the least of which is that these works were often about feasts, about over-indulgence, and about the mayhem that over-indulgence can lead to (think of Polyphemus in the Odyssey, or the eels in The Tin Drum). The class was delicious--the students and I both had a lot of fun. They learned, and as my former dean has said, no humans were injured--pedagogically or intellectually or nutritionally--in this small segment of the ever-unfolding course of human affairs.
But, to the immediate story.
At the Center for Creative Studies, where I was teaching English, I conceived a course that I called "The Essential Unity of Nearly Everything." The title was designed to allow me to include anything I wanted to read, from the Odyssey, to Gargantua and Pantagruel, to Twelfth Night, to Joseph Andrews, to The Tin Drum. I didn't know offhand what the "essential unity" would consist of, though I had faith that a creative imagination will find connections among seemingly unrelated works of literature from a variety of times and places.
Here is the boon. On my way to the first class meeting (I was on the plane, commuting at this time from Southern California), I picked up the in-flight magazine to browse through the pictures. I believe I randomly opened to a page with an article about string-theory. An article about string-theory? In an airline magazine? Along with the usual puff stuff about places to go, eat, and tourize? The advertisements for vacation packages? For Berlitz language schools? For the Rosetta Stone?
I read the article and discovered that string-theorists do, indeed, believe that there is an underlying unity to everything. Strings are those tiny, tiny theoretical things that connect all. As soon as I got to school the next day, I xeroxed the article for the class, and there was the theoretical foundation, provided by the unimpeachable world of science, for the next fifteen or sixteen weeks.
By the way, as the class progressed, we also discovered other kinds of unity, not the least of which is that these works were often about feasts, about over-indulgence, and about the mayhem that over-indulgence can lead to (think of Polyphemus in the Odyssey, or the eels in The Tin Drum). The class was delicious--the students and I both had a lot of fun. They learned, and as my former dean has said, no humans were injured--pedagogically or intellectually or nutritionally--in this small segment of the ever-unfolding course of human affairs.
Pioneers on the Frontier
It was 1977 or '78. I was a new faculty member at what is now the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Under then President Walter Midener, the school had transformed itself from a 2-year arts and crafts vocational school to a 4-year college awarding bachelor degrees.
Under these august new conditions, the faculty had begun to meet as a body to decide matters of mission, curriculum, standards, etc.--all the things faculty typically do.
It must have been difficult for the faculty members to determine the appropriate level of dignity to attach to all these proceedings. At one of the faculty meetings, one committee report went as follows: the faculty member elected chair stood up and announced that the committee felt its first act had to be a change of name for the committee: from "Faculty Affairs" to "Faculty Concerns." Then he waited while amused laughter rippled through the rest of the faculty present. Then he sat down and we went on to the next committee report.
There were some who took the meetings very seriously, though. At the first meeting I remember attending at my new institution, as soon as the meeting was "called to order" (Robert's Rules seemed like new and unfamiliar institution in and of itself) a shout was heard from the middle of the room: "When are we actually going to do something creative at this school?" I wondered what I had gotten myself into, but have since discovered that obstreperous behavior can be a sign of health and vitality.
These carryings-on were a complete breath of fresh air after my previous institution, Wayne State University, where the English Department seemed driven (as a department) by bitter rivalry, squabbles, back-stabbing, pretentiousness, and mid-level scholars with the air of international intellectual superstars. Much as I liked individuals there, the department was pretty sorry.
Under these august new conditions, the faculty had begun to meet as a body to decide matters of mission, curriculum, standards, etc.--all the things faculty typically do.
It must have been difficult for the faculty members to determine the appropriate level of dignity to attach to all these proceedings. At one of the faculty meetings, one committee report went as follows: the faculty member elected chair stood up and announced that the committee felt its first act had to be a change of name for the committee: from "Faculty Affairs" to "Faculty Concerns." Then he waited while amused laughter rippled through the rest of the faculty present. Then he sat down and we went on to the next committee report.
There were some who took the meetings very seriously, though. At the first meeting I remember attending at my new institution, as soon as the meeting was "called to order" (Robert's Rules seemed like new and unfamiliar institution in and of itself) a shout was heard from the middle of the room: "When are we actually going to do something creative at this school?" I wondered what I had gotten myself into, but have since discovered that obstreperous behavior can be a sign of health and vitality.
These carryings-on were a complete breath of fresh air after my previous institution, Wayne State University, where the English Department seemed driven (as a department) by bitter rivalry, squabbles, back-stabbing, pretentiousness, and mid-level scholars with the air of international intellectual superstars. Much as I liked individuals there, the department was pretty sorry.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Get Out and Stay Out!
At an art college where I taught, there were people with strong opinions.
I was chatting with the professor in a History of Photography course one morning--I had casually dropped in prior to the beginning of class to say a friendly morning hello. The class was about to be lectured on the early 20th century French photographer of nightclubs. I'll edit his name in later.
I commented, somewhat offhandedly, and not publicly, that his photographs constituted a kind of nightmare-scape. The professor, bridling, said he didn't want "that kind of talk" in his classroom. Photographs represent facts about the world: if they were "art"--i.e., a medium that might rightly deal in such things as dreams--one could perhaps say what I'd said. He was ordinarily rather mild-mannered, so it took me a moment to realize that he was really angry. He drove the point home, however, by summarily, in front of the students, throwing me out of his classroom with the memorable words: "Get out of my classroom. And stay out"!
This certainly goes down in the annals of intellectual infamy. He may have been small, but he was Pompous. They often go together.
I was chatting with the professor in a History of Photography course one morning--I had casually dropped in prior to the beginning of class to say a friendly morning hello. The class was about to be lectured on the early 20th century French photographer of nightclubs. I'll edit his name in later.
I commented, somewhat offhandedly, and not publicly, that his photographs constituted a kind of nightmare-scape. The professor, bridling, said he didn't want "that kind of talk" in his classroom. Photographs represent facts about the world: if they were "art"--i.e., a medium that might rightly deal in such things as dreams--one could perhaps say what I'd said. He was ordinarily rather mild-mannered, so it took me a moment to realize that he was really angry. He drove the point home, however, by summarily, in front of the students, throwing me out of his classroom with the memorable words: "Get out of my classroom. And stay out"!
This certainly goes down in the annals of intellectual infamy. He may have been small, but he was Pompous. They often go together.
Anna Rides Again
I spoke in an earlier blog about my favorite student, Anna Chronism.
My first encounter with her was in a humanities class. After a discussion that included reference to the pre-Christian world, she came up after class and asked innocently, "How did people who lived before Jesus know to count backwards to his birth?"
I may have written about this before. Very few experiences have stood out in my mind as indelibly as this.
Part of its force is that I had to think a minute: either all the ancients knew intuitively that the Savior of Mankind would be born on such-and-such a day (most likely from inerrant Biblical prophecy [which, of course, they knew nothing about]) or there had to be some other explanation. I opted for the "other explanation": the ancients counted forward, just like we do. It didn't take too much research to discover that, in the Jewish calendar, the counting still goes forward, the Messiah not having appeared yet. Likewise, in the Muslim calendar, the counting is some 600 years "off," Muslims beginning their dating with Muhammed. Then I found out that one of the popes changed the whole counting system sometime in the sixth century in honor of the Savior of Mankind's birth.
And here we are.
My first encounter with her was in a humanities class. After a discussion that included reference to the pre-Christian world, she came up after class and asked innocently, "How did people who lived before Jesus know to count backwards to his birth?"
I may have written about this before. Very few experiences have stood out in my mind as indelibly as this.
Part of its force is that I had to think a minute: either all the ancients knew intuitively that the Savior of Mankind would be born on such-and-such a day (most likely from inerrant Biblical prophecy [which, of course, they knew nothing about]) or there had to be some other explanation. I opted for the "other explanation": the ancients counted forward, just like we do. It didn't take too much research to discover that, in the Jewish calendar, the counting still goes forward, the Messiah not having appeared yet. Likewise, in the Muslim calendar, the counting is some 600 years "off," Muslims beginning their dating with Muhammed. Then I found out that one of the popes changed the whole counting system sometime in the sixth century in honor of the Savior of Mankind's birth.
And here we are.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Why Do We Have to Read Such Depressing Literature?
This was a question from a student in a 20th Century Lit. class long ago at College for Creative Studies. I have to confess that I had not keyed in on the consistent darkness. Maybe I was inured to it from having been to those books several times.
But her question woke me up on the spot, and I realized some important things: the 20th century was a pretty dreadful time: an Armenian genocide, two world wars, the Holocaust, the dropping of the atomic bomb, mass deaths, all continuing into the 21st century with fanaticism, terrorism, the facing off of world views, the continual threat of coercion, either by force or by the manipulation of democratic processes.
The student in question said she'd lived with enough ugliness and horror in her life, and she didn't want to read about it too. But it's hard to find great writers who are also blithely happy, or even grudgingly happy. There's Hemingway, and the great disillusion of expatriotism. There is Beckett--well, there's anguish for you. There's Faulkner, living among the ruined lives of the south. There's Pynchon and the imminence of nuclear devastation. Where does one look? Romances? Westerns? Detective novels? Books where justice prevails and people live happily ever after? Those are escapist books.
And now, one of the great books of the beginning of the 21st century--Roberto Bolano's 2666. Random murders, quests that come to nothing. The book feels like real life, but it makes real life feel pretty dark. Fate's (a journalist sent to Mexico to cover a boxing match) journey south is made to sound like a descent into Hell, and Santa Teresa seems to be a metaphor for the worst imaginable existence--murder, lethargic, ineffectual police, innocent people vanishing, bodies found with horrific mutilations. Hard in a short paragraph to explore everything in the book, but it's like looking into the void in any number of ways. Its redeeming character is the writer at its center, the object of the initial quests, the one character who survives unbelievable experiences and turns them into works of literary art--as though this is where salvation lies, in the creation of art out of, or in spite of, life. Maybe this is where Beckett, Faulkner, Pynchon, et al, found their salvation.
But her question woke me up on the spot, and I realized some important things: the 20th century was a pretty dreadful time: an Armenian genocide, two world wars, the Holocaust, the dropping of the atomic bomb, mass deaths, all continuing into the 21st century with fanaticism, terrorism, the facing off of world views, the continual threat of coercion, either by force or by the manipulation of democratic processes.
The student in question said she'd lived with enough ugliness and horror in her life, and she didn't want to read about it too. But it's hard to find great writers who are also blithely happy, or even grudgingly happy. There's Hemingway, and the great disillusion of expatriotism. There is Beckett--well, there's anguish for you. There's Faulkner, living among the ruined lives of the south. There's Pynchon and the imminence of nuclear devastation. Where does one look? Romances? Westerns? Detective novels? Books where justice prevails and people live happily ever after? Those are escapist books.
And now, one of the great books of the beginning of the 21st century--Roberto Bolano's 2666. Random murders, quests that come to nothing. The book feels like real life, but it makes real life feel pretty dark. Fate's (a journalist sent to Mexico to cover a boxing match) journey south is made to sound like a descent into Hell, and Santa Teresa seems to be a metaphor for the worst imaginable existence--murder, lethargic, ineffectual police, innocent people vanishing, bodies found with horrific mutilations. Hard in a short paragraph to explore everything in the book, but it's like looking into the void in any number of ways. Its redeeming character is the writer at its center, the object of the initial quests, the one character who survives unbelievable experiences and turns them into works of literary art--as though this is where salvation lies, in the creation of art out of, or in spite of, life. Maybe this is where Beckett, Faulkner, Pynchon, et al, found their salvation.
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