My Lecture: A Play in One Infuriating Act

It is Friday morning.  It has been drizzling for a little under an hour.  The streets become rivers.  Tiny coastal towns are buried beneath fifteen tons of mud.  On the sidewalks the water is four inches deep.  Pedestrians try to find the shallowest puddles and invariably fail.  The few who succeed are immediately drenched by the wake of a passing automobile.  God hates the self-satisfied.  A man in a spiffy tweed coat sloshes through the results of this civil engineering disaster.  On his face is a look of determination.  He has a lecture to attend come Hell or high water . . . but he hopes it doesn't come to Hell.  The man in the snappy tweed jacket arrives at his destination.  He is wet and cold and tired.  He finds a seat next to a few friends and prepares to hear a lecture about his advisor's advisor's new book from a renowned scholar.

RENOWNED SCHOLAR:  I believe [the Tweedy Fellow's advisor's advisor] says X.

TWEEDY FELLOW:  (to himself)  No he doesn't!  He says nothing of the sort.  He's a Y man!  What's all this about X?

RENOWNED SCHOLAR:  [The Tweedy Fellow's advisor's advisor] is heavily invested in X.  Without it his argument is worthless.  But with it (pause for effect) it is also worthless.  Therefore he is worthless!

TWEEDY FELLOW:  (to himself)  This guy's charming and funny but he doesn't get it.  He thinks [my advisor's advisor] says X.  Why would he think X?  Why would anyone?

Time passes, er, the Tweedy Fellow passes the time by re-re-re-re-reading a .pdf of his advisor's advisor's book to make sure he hasn't missed something.  He hasn't.

RENOWNED SCHOLAR:  In closing I hope everyone can see that [the Tweedy Fellow's advisor's advisor] is worth reading as an intellectual exercise . . . but not seriously.  Thank you.  You've been great!  I'll be here all week.

TWEEDY FELLOW:  (to himself after observing his advisor's neck color-shift into angry Irish reds)  My work here is done.  To the place where food and beverages are provided in exchange for legal tender!

Comments

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

And before anyone asks, yes, that's the best I could do unanonymous. Wish I could do better, but I can't. Sometimes this whole careerism thing bites. I had a much better post planned, but it'd be entirely too revealing, so you get this. Hopefully you back anyway. By the way--and yes, I've hidden my Saturday Solipsism in a comment--I'm feeling much better now. I've got my thyroid hormone substitute coursing through my veins again and can now 1) sleep and 2) sleep for a few hours consecutively and 3) not be insane. Huzzah! I am healed!

[Sine.Qua.Non]

You know, it truly bites to have to go through all that just to listen to theories and ploddingly awful ones at that, get wet, and then have to slog back through it all again - and for what? A rotten book, a boring lecture and an incorrect thesis. Sheesh.

BTW: I see you have China Mieville's work linked. Love it!

[Belle Lettre]

First: you wear a tweed coat? What, are you trying to look like an English professor? Do you smoke a pipe? Do you have a beard? Do you say "verily" and "apropros" a lot?

Second: I dig it. Snazzy. Sartorial. Spiffy. (and alliterative)

Third: I hate these kind of lectures. I attended one on legal philosophy and deontological moral legal theory and I kept thinking "Is that what Famous Legal Philosopher said? I thought it was different." At the time, since it was a faculty roundtable and I was a student, I thought it was because maybe I was stupid and was wrong about it. Maybe I was right! At least there was free food.

[MT]

In the face of evidence like that, how does one maintain one's faith in academic renown? Or is this the kind of thing that proves the world is a battle between academic good and evil? I personally do not believe in tweed.

[Zach]

Not to be presumptuous, but there's something comforting about disenchantment (hi, I've clung to it throughout my twenties), a reliance of sorts that can serve as an excuse for any injustice or disappointment or self-imposed approximation for that that is miserably underwhelming. Sometimes I scoff at such optimism, but it's okay because it's rooted in such malaise I can't be anything but happily surprised! Tweed can be hot.