I suppose I should tell the story of how I've ended up in bed in the middle of a Monday afternoon hopped up on percoset and valium, but your imaginations are probably much better than the truth.
So I'll give you a few moments to think up the scenario...
Time's up.
The correct answer is not that I've chucked it all to the wind having been utterly and entirely and absolutely rejected in my job search during the past year's MLA extravaganza. In fact, in the relative calm of an empty house, I've managed to do a little reading in the direction of my hopes for next fall's job search.
Neither would it be correct to answer that I've become depressed by the post-holiday lull that is early January, that dead and dreary space following the outrageous excesses of December. January is merely a precursor to my birthday, and far from being depressed about yet another year rolling by, I still look forward to getting free stuff in the early days of February.
The correct answer would have something to do with the National Gallery of Art and that infernal skating rink that sits in the middle of the sculpture garden. Of course, it would also have something to do with the beautiful spring-like weather we had yesterday and the fact that my daughter, not yet three years old, is about the right height to make me bend over close to eight inches to support her while she tries skating for the first time.
A few times around the choppy ice at the NGA rink (sorry folks, but they aren't too careful with the zamboni at the NGA), bent at the waist to keep a toddler on her feet, and you'd be hurting, too. However, the real pain didn't manifest itself last night or even overnight...no, it waited until I was walking to pick up a few croissants this morning on Columbia Road. Two blocks from the house and I'm walking briskly to get home in time for the kids to eat before school, and bam my back seizes up like someone fused all the moving parts. Luckily, I could hobble around and complete my morning errand, but it only got worse until I ended up in the emergency room at GW Hospital...where they were able to see me sometime around 1:30 p.m. (this tactic being used after I'd called the GW Medical Faculty Associates' "Urgent Care" appointment center and secured an "urgent" appointment for tomorrow. Sorry, but my back hurts today. Now. Intensely.) and filled me up with prescriptions for percoset and valium.
So I suppose it isn't all bad.
I may have to add to my one resolution for the year (remember it: publish publish publish) the following important resolution to stretch stretch stretch in the mornings and maybe at night, too, lest I find the gum band in my back has finally snapped for good.
07 January 2008
04 January 2008
Predictable, not an "Earthquake."
What a load of crap we can read in the papers this morning. The Washington Post, sitting here on the table, asserts that "Change in the Air" and "Conventional Wisdom Defied," as if it was such a big surprise that Huckabee and Obama won the Iowa Caucuses. The online edition is even more hyperbolic, claiming "An Earthquake in the Midwest." "Change" and "Defiance" might have been in the air if, say, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich won the Caucuses, but those two finished so far off the map it's probably safe to say that most readers won't find much about them in the papers. But then, that would be fairly similar to the way the papers have covered the campaigns of anyone who isn't listed as a "frontrunner" early on. Aside from a puff piece on Kucinich (that made constant reference to his wife and her tongue piercing) and an opinion piece on Paul that claimed to be about Libertarianism, the Washington Post, along with other major media outlets, has more or less taken a vow of silence concerning candidates not named Clinton, Obama, Huckabee, or Romney (Guiliani, McCain, and Edwards get some attention, but not much).
Part of the problem is that the media is unaccustomed to dealing with multi-faceted contests; it's much simpler and more space-conscious to turn things into two-way races. After all, most blockbuster films and sports contests use that format, so why get confused trying to remember anyone else? Fundamentally, the papers have a terrible time discussing politics without turning it into a sporting contest. As they look ahead to New Hampshire, the Post wishes to portray the Republican contest as a fight between Romney and McCain, dropping the Iowa winner Huckabee to status of odd-man out, because New Hampshire doesn't contain as many false-faced Christians -- the journalists can't actually write stories that capture the primaries as multiply contested fronts. Even as the Post pays lip-service to the Huckabee's win, they turn their attention to reducing the next matchup to the easiest possible narrative.
Seriously, though, how can any paper see Huckabee's win as some sort of sea change in the GOP? Huckabee, like Bush before him, is riding the social conservative wave of religious fundamentalism that has formed the core of the GOP for the better part of the last three decades. For this core of whack-jobs, Mitt Romney --a Mormon for Christ's sake -- is hardly more than an atheist and certainly a step or two below a Catholic, McCain is a Manchurian Candidate, and Guiliani is a dangerous abortionist.
Now you have Huckabee, a man who's spent more money (not his own though) on this campaign so far than all but a few people have made in their lifetimes, trying to claim that his victory is a victory of a new "ruling class," whatever the hell that means:
I think he cribbed it from a movie like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It's one of those troubling sentiments to me, because it's one that I believe should be true, but one which reality constantly reminds me is not true. I doubt that "We the people" really advocated closing down all our factories and driving up corporate profits at the expense of, well, "We the people." I doubt that "We the people" are behind the continued prosecution of George Bush's Iraqi Adventure, but so far Huckabee's "ruling class" hasn't forced Bush out of Iraq. Last time I checked, "We the people" weren't even entrusted with the knowledge of our government's nasty dealings with third-world dictators and secret prisons and torture methods. Pretty pathetic ruling class, if you ask me.
Part of the problem is that the media is unaccustomed to dealing with multi-faceted contests; it's much simpler and more space-conscious to turn things into two-way races. After all, most blockbuster films and sports contests use that format, so why get confused trying to remember anyone else? Fundamentally, the papers have a terrible time discussing politics without turning it into a sporting contest. As they look ahead to New Hampshire, the Post wishes to portray the Republican contest as a fight between Romney and McCain, dropping the Iowa winner Huckabee to status of odd-man out, because New Hampshire doesn't contain as many false-faced Christians -- the journalists can't actually write stories that capture the primaries as multiply contested fronts. Even as the Post pays lip-service to the Huckabee's win, they turn their attention to reducing the next matchup to the easiest possible narrative.
Seriously, though, how can any paper see Huckabee's win as some sort of sea change in the GOP? Huckabee, like Bush before him, is riding the social conservative wave of religious fundamentalism that has formed the core of the GOP for the better part of the last three decades. For this core of whack-jobs, Mitt Romney --a Mormon for Christ's sake -- is hardly more than an atheist and certainly a step or two below a Catholic, McCain is a Manchurian Candidate, and Guiliani is a dangerous abortionist.
Now you have Huckabee, a man who's spent more money (not his own though) on this campaign so far than all but a few people have made in their lifetimes, trying to claim that his victory is a victory of a new "ruling class," whatever the hell that means:
"One is not elected to be part of the ruling class; he's elected to be part of the serving class," he said. "Because 'We the people' are the ruling class of America."
I think he cribbed it from a movie like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It's one of those troubling sentiments to me, because it's one that I believe should be true, but one which reality constantly reminds me is not true. I doubt that "We the people" really advocated closing down all our factories and driving up corporate profits at the expense of, well, "We the people." I doubt that "We the people" are behind the continued prosecution of George Bush's Iraqi Adventure, but so far Huckabee's "ruling class" hasn't forced Bush out of Iraq. Last time I checked, "We the people" weren't even entrusted with the knowledge of our government's nasty dealings with third-world dictators and secret prisons and torture methods. Pretty pathetic ruling class, if you ask me.
02 January 2008
Happy New Year, or better late than never.
It's been a week since I was in D.C., but driving down Connecticut Avenue last night around 9:30, I felt like it had been a month. Maybe it's because the train ride from Chicago had been so long -- a seven hour layover in Pittsburgh made it a nearly 24 hour journey -- or maybe it's because we simply ran ourselves ragged on every leg of the trip.
In Pittsburgh, with seven hours to kill, we visited the Andy Warhol Museum, seven floors of fun just across the 7th Avenue Bridge on the North Side. It had been several years since our last visit, and it seems that in the interim the museum has decided that Warhol's work alone isn't enough to keep the museum fresh, and two floors almost completely featured work by other artists (Bruce Nauman and Ron Mueck).
I'm also pleasantly surprised to say that after four days in Chicago, where they put meat in everything from soups to sodas, we were able to get beautiful salads in Pittsburgh, a town not exactly known for healthy eating. Lest my dear readers think I'm knocking Chicago, which is a first class city, I will admit that we hardly went out of our way to find good food. In fact, at least half of the meals were eaten either in the hotels of the MLA or the underground tunnels connecting the hotels. OK, let's be honest...at least 75% of meals were consumed that way.
A quick rundown of the MLA would go like this: saw friends, saw panels, bought or weaseled my way into many books, chatted up a few press acquisition reps, moderated a panel that was surprisingly well attended, given its kiss of death time slot, and finally spent the last few hours in Chicago at the Art Institute. Most of the modern American art is unavailable or scattered throughout the museum, as they're undergoing a pretty ambitious expansion and have many galleries closed. Also, a Jasper Johns exhibit was taking up way too much space. I like some of his stuff, but after two shows at the National Gallery of Art earlier this year, I think I'm Jasper Johnsed-Out for a time. Besides, the show was called "Gray," and featured his grayscale paintings, which after about five rooms starts to overload.
As for New Years Resolutions, I resolve this year to work on publications. That's a modest enough goal, I think.
In Pittsburgh, with seven hours to kill, we visited the Andy Warhol Museum, seven floors of fun just across the 7th Avenue Bridge on the North Side. It had been several years since our last visit, and it seems that in the interim the museum has decided that Warhol's work alone isn't enough to keep the museum fresh, and two floors almost completely featured work by other artists (Bruce Nauman and Ron Mueck).
I'm also pleasantly surprised to say that after four days in Chicago, where they put meat in everything from soups to sodas, we were able to get beautiful salads in Pittsburgh, a town not exactly known for healthy eating. Lest my dear readers think I'm knocking Chicago, which is a first class city, I will admit that we hardly went out of our way to find good food. In fact, at least half of the meals were eaten either in the hotels of the MLA or the underground tunnels connecting the hotels. OK, let's be honest...at least 75% of meals were consumed that way.
A quick rundown of the MLA would go like this: saw friends, saw panels, bought or weaseled my way into many books, chatted up a few press acquisition reps, moderated a panel that was surprisingly well attended, given its kiss of death time slot, and finally spent the last few hours in Chicago at the Art Institute. Most of the modern American art is unavailable or scattered throughout the museum, as they're undergoing a pretty ambitious expansion and have many galleries closed. Also, a Jasper Johns exhibit was taking up way too much space. I like some of his stuff, but after two shows at the National Gallery of Art earlier this year, I think I'm Jasper Johnsed-Out for a time. Besides, the show was called "Gray," and featured his grayscale paintings, which after about five rooms starts to overload.
As for New Years Resolutions, I resolve this year to work on publications. That's a modest enough goal, I think.
27 December 2007
Chicago, Chicago...that lit-conf'rence town...
Ah, the MLA. A time to smell the fear on besuited job supplicants, among whom I alas will not be, as my fifty plus applications fell on deaf ears.
Therefore my sole responsibilty during this annual theorizing bacchanal will be to moderate a panel that the organizing committee buried with a late night weekend time slot. With any luck the participants will outnumber the audience. I suppose that would be bad luck.
I've been to Chicago a few times in my life, nearly each time for a literature conference of one kind or another. It's a great town, but I've generally had the (bad) luck to be here either in the chill winds of winter or the humid swells of summer. Spring and fall have eluded me in the Second City, much like job interviews this go round.
I'm waiting for the conference to kick off proper-like, because it can be pretty amusing watching academicus literarius in their equivalent of mating season: there's a great amount of preening and opportunistic grovelling alongside a healthy dose of self-promotion. And of course drinking, and one of my favorite things about literary scholars getting drunk is that talk at one point generally devolves to arguing over the deeper meanings of the songs that float across the bar's jukebox.
So let's see where it all goes...
20 December 2007
Langston doesn't live here anymore.
Langston Hughes, one of the great American poets of the 20th century, spent a few years in D.C. in the mid-1920's, working at various service positions as well as helping Carter G. Woodson compile his Free Negro Heads of Families in the United States in 1830. Hughes' family wasn't exactly wealthy, and they bumped around a few rented rooms in the District over the course of about 14 months, after which Hughes went off to Lincoln University.
It was in DC, while working as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel, that Hughes received some lasting free publicity by leaving a few poems at the seat of Vachel Lindsay, who gushed to the press about his "discovery" of the Negro busboy poet (hence, by the way, about 80 years later, the establishment of Busboys and Poets down on 14th and V). The photo of Hughes from that event is fairly popular, and easily found in biographies about him or histories of the Harlem Renaissance (although I did several internet searches and couldn't pull it up):
Of course, it was Hughes himself who set the photo-op up, but who cares?
Nearly every weekday, I pass by one of the places Hughes lived while in the District. It's on S Street NW, just around the corner from the Rosemary Thyme Bistro.
It's the white house with red trim, 1749 S Street. Hughes, his mother, and his step-brother rented two upstairs rooms there beginning around January 1925. He lived here when he worked for Carter G. Woodson, and it's where he was living when he revised The Weary Blues for publication at Carl Van Vechten's urging.
It's a pretty unassuming house, but I'm sure it's no "shabby apartment," as Arnold Rampersad calls it in The Life of Langston Hughes (vol. 1). A dozen years ago, that area was still full of affordable apartments and group houses populated by students; now three-story houses just across the street often list for a million plus change.
Hughes didn't live here long, and he didn't care much for DC, what with the allure of New York City and the ingrained segregation in the nation's capital, but he's an integral part of that network of African American intellectuals and artists who either lived in or passed through the District in the early to mid twentieth century.
19 December 2007
This post is not about sports.
I finished Zadie Smith's White Teeth last night. This remarkable task was made possible by a marathon (for me) 3 hour reading session the night before, leaving me a mere 40 pages from the finish.
The book is the sort you don't want to put down, the sort that after you've read a good piece of it, and you're going about your daily business, your mind sometimes comes back to a character or situation and it takes a moment for you to remember it was in a book and not someone you met or something you remember from real life.
In many ways, it's similar to the novel I struggled through just before beginning White Teeth: Thomas Pynchon's V.: the narrative threads pull apart and come together throughout the novel, and both novels are concerned, to a greater (V.) or lesser (WT) extent, with sleuthing through history. However, the characters in White Teeth were far more compelling to me, more complex and rounded (and yes, I know that the flatness of the characters is more or less Pynchon's point; I've read my Jameson, etc. etc.), and that propelled me through the book. I was happy to finish it, but also a little depressed...I sort of wanted it to keep happening to me.
Now, I have a choice for my next read. Someone has lent me John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, a book that has been recommended to me by several people over the years. So I have that one. Or I have Richard Russo's latest, Bridge of Sighs, purchased at Politics and Prose the night said author gave a reading at the store. So it's signed by him and it's hardcover. Very thick. Very much a book I don't want to damage by stuffing it into suitcases (the MLA is at hand, after all). Finally, I have none of the above, a decision to be made by looking over the bookshelves and picking out a book that either I've bought but haven't read or my wife has read and I haven't (which is pretty much most of the British lit outside Jeanette Winterson -- speaking of whom, my son and I are now reading her children's novel Tanglewreck at night...it's great -- and the now completed Zadie Smith novel).
In a way I wonder if I should keep a weather eye out for my slim academic career hopes by reading something that will help lead me to a published article, since my 56+ applications have thus far yielded about six rejections and a lot of silence.
Decisions.
The book is the sort you don't want to put down, the sort that after you've read a good piece of it, and you're going about your daily business, your mind sometimes comes back to a character or situation and it takes a moment for you to remember it was in a book and not someone you met or something you remember from real life.
In many ways, it's similar to the novel I struggled through just before beginning White Teeth: Thomas Pynchon's V.: the narrative threads pull apart and come together throughout the novel, and both novels are concerned, to a greater (V.) or lesser (WT) extent, with sleuthing through history. However, the characters in White Teeth were far more compelling to me, more complex and rounded (and yes, I know that the flatness of the characters is more or less Pynchon's point; I've read my Jameson, etc. etc.), and that propelled me through the book. I was happy to finish it, but also a little depressed...I sort of wanted it to keep happening to me.
Now, I have a choice for my next read. Someone has lent me John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, a book that has been recommended to me by several people over the years. So I have that one. Or I have Richard Russo's latest, Bridge of Sighs, purchased at Politics and Prose the night said author gave a reading at the store. So it's signed by him and it's hardcover. Very thick. Very much a book I don't want to damage by stuffing it into suitcases (the MLA is at hand, after all). Finally, I have none of the above, a decision to be made by looking over the bookshelves and picking out a book that either I've bought but haven't read or my wife has read and I haven't (which is pretty much most of the British lit outside Jeanette Winterson -- speaking of whom, my son and I are now reading her children's novel Tanglewreck at night...it's great -- and the now completed Zadie Smith novel).
In a way I wonder if I should keep a weather eye out for my slim academic career hopes by reading something that will help lead me to a published article, since my 56+ applications have thus far yielded about six rejections and a lot of silence.
Decisions.
18 December 2007
Comparing apples to oranges.
So I'm stumbling around espn.com today following up the Rich Rodriguez hiring at Michigan and I find a story about Florida State and Jimbo Fisher, Bobby Bowden's heir apparent. Florida State is so excited to sew up this guy that they've promised him 2.5 million if he isn't hired as head coach in 3 years. However, more interesting was the paragraph on current head coach Bobby Bowden's salary:
Not bad for coaching football. It hammers home how much college sports (and here I'm talking about football and basketball, really) are amazing moneymakers. Not only that, these sports also serve as the most public face of the university in many cases and fuel alumni giving.
Penn State was recently forced to release Coach Joe Paterno's salary after a long court fight. Paterno has been head coach at Penn State since 1966, a position he attained after 16 years as an assistant coach. Paterno's contributions to Penn State beyond football are considerable:
In addition to that, the English Department also contains the Paterno Family Professor of Literature position (Paterno was an English major at Brown), currently held by Michael Bérubé, which is kind of funny, since Bérubé is on the Left and Paterno is quite visibly a Republican. Bérubé in fact was named one of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by protofascist David Horowitz, whose sad attempt at a blacklist petered out when it turned out no one really believed him (Horowitz's well-publicized attempts to demonstrate Left-wing bias and indoctrination in academia have led him to some embarrassing moments, like the Pennsylvania legislature's hearing in which no one was able to come forward with evidence of what Horowitz claims is widespread intimidation of conservatives).
But I digress.
Penn State recently had to reveal Joe Paterno's salary. It was $512,664 base. Not bad for the second-winningest coach in major D-1 football history who consistently fields teams among the highest graduation rates in the country.
Florida State also released Bowden's one-year contract that has a nearly $2.2 million base salary, including a $200,000 signing bonus, a series of incentives that could add at least $600,000 and a $1 million "lifetime achievement" bonus upon retirement.
Not bad for coaching football. It hammers home how much college sports (and here I'm talking about football and basketball, really) are amazing moneymakers. Not only that, these sports also serve as the most public face of the university in many cases and fuel alumni giving.
Penn State was recently forced to release Coach Joe Paterno's salary after a long court fight. Paterno has been head coach at Penn State since 1966, a position he attained after 16 years as an assistant coach. Paterno's contributions to Penn State beyond football are considerable:
Paterno is also renowned for his charitable contributions to academics at Penn State. He and his wife Sue have contributed over $4 million towards various departments and colleges, including support for the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center, which opened in 2003, and the Penn State All-Sports Museum, which opened in 2002.[15] After helping raise over $13.5 million in funds for the 1997 expansion of Pattee Library, the University named the expansion Paterno Library in their honor. [16] [Wikipedia]
In addition to that, the English Department also contains the Paterno Family Professor of Literature position (Paterno was an English major at Brown), currently held by Michael Bérubé, which is kind of funny, since Bérubé is on the Left and Paterno is quite visibly a Republican. Bérubé in fact was named one of the "101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" by protofascist David Horowitz, whose sad attempt at a blacklist petered out when it turned out no one really believed him (Horowitz's well-publicized attempts to demonstrate Left-wing bias and indoctrination in academia have led him to some embarrassing moments, like the Pennsylvania legislature's hearing in which no one was able to come forward with evidence of what Horowitz claims is widespread intimidation of conservatives).
But I digress.
Penn State recently had to reveal Joe Paterno's salary. It was $512,664 base. Not bad for the second-winningest coach in major D-1 football history who consistently fields teams among the highest graduation rates in the country.
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