Saturday, 06 May 2006

A Day in the Life of a College Student, Circa 1928

Jim:  Andy was lit up like a church last night!

Jim #2:  Was he?  I can't remember.  I'd wet my goozle with some hard knockout drops soon as the sun dropped.

Andy:  (stumbling in)  So I drank some corn juice, I remember that much . . .

Sam:  'Pifflicated, you were!

Andy:  I was at that.  I was seeing snakes for sure.  What happened to Mary?

All:  Let's not talk about the after-date.

Andy:  Why not?  She was strong for lovin' last I recall.  (a confuzzled look crosses his face)  I was . . .

Sam #2:  You're no big butter and egg man from out West anymore.

Andy:  What's your insinnuendo?  I showed some mean stuff and now she just gives me air?

Jim:  You shouldn't have told her 'bout your surety.  She thinks you a chicken duster now.

Andy:  I'm no . . . I suppose it's not worth discussing.  I'm not sloptimist enough to think I can open her gate now. 

Jim #2:  Plus Jim over there told her you were a chest-pounder.

Andy:  Why'd you go and do that?  Drift, brother, and close the door behind you.  (Jim leaves.  Andy turns to the Sams)  What happened last night?  Which slicker brought panther-sweat to our private tunk?

Sam:  You did.

Andy:  I did?

Sam #2:  You came blustering in about not cookie-pushing for any more high higs and how you were coming to this and every future rub stag. 

Andy:  She was a knock-out and a darb, but my father isn't paying this grill four thousand a year for me to be some rare lady's tea hound.  I mean, she knows her oil . . .

Jim #2:  She is full of vinegar.

Sam #2:  And she never breaks a wing.

Andy:  But she gives a lot of house. 

Sam #2:  That's not what I heard tell. 

Andy:  Where's your muffler?

Sam #2:  Sorry.  I can be such a sock.  You want to join our cram tonight?

Jim #2:  You should.  You're on the mat and Sam really knows his onions.

Andy:  I should.  I don't want to get a letter from His Highness.

Sam:  You're next invite to the Dean's formal will be your last. 

Andy:  (slumps)  This Jewish engineering has me down on all fours.  Don't get me wrong.  The professor's pretty hot.  When we chum he has the oil and keeps cramming.  But I thought his would be a pipe and now it's all whip and over.

Sam #2:  Just be sure to bone and you won't get a footing.

Jim:  (runs in)  C'mon, peaches, here's your can!  (Jim #2, Sam, Sam #2 and Andy give chase.  Homosocial hilarity ensues.)

May 6, 2006 9:48:16 PM | Academia, Books, Dissertation, Evolution, From the Archives, Literary Journalism, Literary Theory, Literature, Philosophy, Redefined, Shameless Self-Promotion, Weblogs

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The Position; or, We Can All Go Home, Now... [Soon to be X-posted at the Valve. Would've been already but I didn't want to bump this beauty from its deserved position of prominence.] . . . that Stanley’s figured it out. Don’t get me wrong: I love reading Fish with a passion equal in intensity to the vehemence with which I disagree with him. But how can any intellectual brawler dislike a man whose very titles “betray” aggressive condescension? “Wrong Again,” opines the title of Fish’s 1973 article in the Texas Law Review. Still don’t understand? Stanley will say it again “One More Time” (CI 6.4). Is it any wonder the likes of Walter Davis suffer from an acute “Fear of Fish” (CI 10.2)? (If you think this fear related to his stature, a smiling Fish will enumerate the reasons “Why No One’s Afraid of Wolfgang Iser” [Diacritics 11.1].) I don’t mean to suggest that his prose never misfires. For example, the regular appearance of “my italics” in his parenthetical citations demonstrate—in direct opposition to the rationale behind the quotations themselves—how manipulative Fish is. Fortunately, his manipulation quickly becomes visual, what with every other word of the other fellow’s prose being italicized. That said, his 1972 omnibus review of “Recent Studies in the English Renaissance” is the only viscerally enjoyable example of the genre I’ve ever read. His deliciously causidical prose is worth its weight in bandwidth: I suspect that every writer of these omnibus reviews is at some point tempted to call for a moratorium. Of course, such a call would go unheeded, and in its place I would like to urge a more realizable course of action: publishers and those who advise publishers should be made more aware of their responsibility to a reader’s time and money. They should not, for instance, be a party to the making of a book like Burton Weber’s The Construction of Paradise Lost (Souther Illinois). First of all, I am nowhere cited. But then neither are John Shawcross, Dennis Burden, Jon Lawry, Michael Wilding, John Reesing, Irene Samuel (Dante and Milton), A.B. Giamatti, Wayne Shumaker, Davis Harding, John Steadman, John Peter, Christopher Ricks, Arthur Barker, Northrop Frye, Anne Ferry, Frank Kermode, Bernard Bergonzi, Thomas Greene, Patrick Murray, Douglas Knight, Roy Daniels, Louis Martz, James Simms, and Thomas Kranidas, to name only a few. The reasons for these omissions (and others) is simple: Weber’s bibliography stops in 1962 even though his preface was written in December of 1970. This is disturbing on its face; it is even more disturbing in the context of his intention, which is nothing less than to resolve the points of issue in the Milton controversy. As everyone knows, however, that controversy did not end in 1962, and since 1962 the focus of the debate has shifted away fom the narrow polarization which dictates the shape of Weber’s arguments. I do not know why he ignores a decade of criticism, but even in the context of things as they were in 1962 his is a very weak book...
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