Wednesday, 27 July 2005

The Chronicle Quotes Y.T., or Y.T. Screams, Runs Around, Then Screams Some More

So I'm quoted in the most recent issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.  No big deal.  Only the way I've been quoted makes me sound like I don't know English. 

To answer your question: I'm screaming on the inside.

Jul 27, 2005 11:17:11 PM | Academia, Weblogs

1 Comment

The Random People on All of the Future Hiring Committees to Which Scott Kaufman Will Submit An Appli

WE the undersigned hereby solemnly attest that Scott Kaufman, ABD, has lost our respect and will never be hired anywhere, by anyone, not even a community college, because of this ghastly offense against decent grammar.

Vehemently,

Posted by: The Random People on All of the Future Hiring Committees to Which Scott Kaufman Will Submit An Appli | Thursday, 28 July 2005 at 03:43 AM

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Me? I'm the Last Person You Ought to Respect! In the comments to the previous post, Mike S. asked how do you find the time to (a) read and (modestly) review sizable literary anthologies, (b) remain (somewhat) hard at work on that curious dissertation of yours, (c) sift through God knows how many highfalutin weblogs, (d) attend classes, and (e) lavish your wife with attention? My initial response employed the truism that it always seems like the person to your immediate left has four of five more hours in the their day than you do in yours. (That's right, Holbo, I'm looking at you.) The more I thought about it the more I understood that I do have quite the work ethic, but here's the thing: I've cultivated it in such a way that it doesn't feel like a work ethic so much as a life. I spend probably 14 hours a day--and now that summer's here, I spend almost 14 hours every day--either sitting at my desk writing or reading online or with my desk chair swivelled around and my feet propped up on the bed reading books, journals, magazines, &c. When I confess to Mike that I'm a very boring person, well, I'm not kidding. I'm a veritable shut-in, the kind of person who wakes up one morning and realizes that the sexy stubble he'd created with his beard trimmer what seemed like just yesterday has become quite the manly beard, complete with chops. (I am, however, a shut-in of the bathing variety. I bathe every single day and brush my teeth at least three times per diem. And according to a self-selecting group of former students, even my minimalist approach to grooming's enough to keep my "hotness quotient" hovering around 71.49 percent. But I digress.) So one answer to Mike's question is that my possibly pathological fear of leaving the apartment improves the quality of my scholarship. I'll return to my actual work habits momentarily, but first I want to address some of the other issues Mike raises: Your academic background is, I can't help but notice, just a wee bit prolific, vastly more so than my own. Honors undergraduate program? Rigorous Latin studies? A.B.D. at one of the nation's most respected English departments? You've done pretty well for yourself. Not to mention the fact you've been married for how many years is it, 5, 6? All I can say to this is that it's very easy to make the accomplishments of others look planned. But a little "behind-the-scenes" look at my academic career will demonstrate that much of what seems planned or earned is actually the result of circumstances I never could have anticipated. I'll take this compliment-by-compliment: Mike mentions that I'm an Honors Scholar, i.e. that all of my introductory classes at LSU were taught by Honors professors in the Honors College. What Mike doesn't realize is that my being in the Honors College was a complete fluke. I've mentioned before that one thing people would never guess about me is that I graduated...
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One Confused Blessay Before I continue answering Mike's questions, I want to thank all thirty-six of you who emailed me last night for the sole purpose of informing me that my academic career can survive the occasional infelicitous sentence. Why you chose to email me instead of leaving your logic in the comment box is something I could think about, but Bill Pannapacker captures, if not the fact (as some have argued), then at least the mind-set that would compel people to console my idiotic fears privately: Blogs are a useful tool for people on the margins of the profession. They help to break up the control of editorial boards and conference committees over the acceptable range of professional discourse. But it will be a long time before they are regarded as a legitimate venue for scholarly discussion; participation in them is not likely to help, and it could do a lot to harm one's career, if that is what matters most. Let me be the first to admit that I think the nerve Pannapacker touched is raw for a reason: we really don't know what we're doing. We are on the margins of academia (or, in Ray's case, beyond them), and we are inclined to dance when someone questions the validity and viability of what we're doing. (Not that Pannapacker said or implied that; any consideration of what we are or aren't doing strikes the same nerve. It's not his fault we're so jumpy.) By "we are on the margins of the academy," I don't mean to imply that we're all on the same margins. McCann's a force in the field and Holbo and the Miriams are internet celebrities. Jonathan, um, Jonathan's Jonathan. His position's so cryptic as to defy description. (But I suspect he too is an internet celebrity. Only incognito.) And then there's me. I'm writing a dissertation. I've never been published. I'm not on the margins so much as the testing grounds. Will I succeed? Who knows. I don't anticipate ticker-tape parades, but I clench my fists in futile prayer that I'll land a job somewhere someday. But who knows. Maybe someday people like Walter Benn Michaels won't be objects of discussions on blogs but authors of position-blogs about their work. (Am I auguring a rigged prophecy? Wouldn't you like to know.) My point is only that the status of what we write on our blogs is subject to changes beyond our ability to predict. Maybe what I'm writing need only adhere to the casual constraints which govern the lion's share of blogs out there. Then again, maybe it ought to adhere to far more rigorous standards, as I thought when I posted my contribution to the Theory's Empire event. I included 29 footnotes. The next highest number? None. That's not a criticism but an admission of confusion. I wrote a Frankenstein "blessay." The reason there's more "essay" than "blog" in that neologism is because there was more essay than blog in my contribution. I didn't know quite what...

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