Saturday, 02 September 2006

Almost Famous?

It is an ordinary morning.  Scott wakes up, showers, downs a cup of coffee and unslumbers his laptop.  The air conditioner in front of which he sits spews cool air and white noise. 

Scott: (to himself)  Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, Eric Rauchway, spam, spam, spam—ERIC RAUCHWAY?!?  (vigorously fans his hands in front of his face)  The Eric Rauchway?  (turns to bookshelf, removes Murdering McKinley from the shelf, stares the cover)  Why I—I—I c—can't, c—can't hardly br—br—br—brea— (labored wheezing, followed by a dull thud as his head hits the keyboard)

Time passes.  Scott unslumps, looks confused, composes himself, replies to Rauchway's email and begins work for the day.  The air conditioner continues blanketing his study with cool air and white noise.  Scott is completely unaware of the Little Womedievalist as she enters.

LW: (savoring the moment) Pack—

Scott: (jumping seven startled feet straight up) Jesus Christ! 

LW: —age from Amazon.  (exits)

Scott: (gathering himself)  What do we have here?  Michael's What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts?  Excellent.  Just the thing I need to procrastinate.  (opens book, flips to the acknowledgments page and reads aloud)  "I want to thank Timothy Burke, some guy, some famous guy, some guy, Ralph Luker"—that's awful sweet—"Christopher Clarke, Roxanne Cooper, John Holbo, Scott Eric Kaufman and Amardeep Sin"—SCOTT ERIC KAUFMAN?!?  (vigorouslier fans his hands in front of his face)  ME Scott Eric Kaufman?  (turns to mirror, looks at self, looks at book, points at self, points at page)  Why I—I—I c—can't, c—can't hardly br—br—br—brea— (more labored wheezing, followed by a duller thud as his head hits the keyboard again)

Five minutes later, Scott rouses himself, rereads the page, reacquires the vapors and faints again.  Ten minutes after that, Scott rerouses himself, rerereads the page, rereacquires the vapors and faints again. 

Time passes.

Seven hours later, the Little Womedievalist enters wearing a worried expression.  The air conditioner still spews cool air and white noise.  She looks at her husband, slumped over the keyboard, whispering his happiness in desperate, wheezy syllables and laughs, lovingly, at the foolish man-child before her.

Sep 2, 2006 8:59:00 PM | Academia, Books, Dissertation, Evolution, Literary Theory, Literature, Philosophy, Weblogs

8 Comments

Sine.Qua.Non

That was lovely, made me smile...going to Amazon to purchase said book and one for fainting spells to be delivered to one Scott Eric Kaufman...that or some smelling salts...

Posted by: Sine.Qua.Non | Saturday, 02 September 2006 at 11:10 PM

Belle Lettre

Oddly, the very first thought when I started reading this was "Coffee?!" Healthfreak SEK drinks coffee?!" What happened to the green tea?

The immediate next thought was AWESOME!! My dream is to have a dedication in a law review article (not widely read, mind you) that is not just a thanks for research assistance. But a BOOK by the PRESIDENT of the MLA that will be WIDELY READ?! AWESOME!!

Your name, the long, academic-ish, tripartite thing that it is (seriously, I thought "Belle A. Lettre" was academic-sounding and pretentious enough), is now guaranteed to live on, and the black ciphers that spell your name will sit on the shelves of the LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

TOO cool. Congratulations to you!

Posted by: Belle Lettre | Saturday, 02 September 2006 at 11:58 PM

CR

Your name, the long, academic-ish, tripartite thing that it is )

Or serial-killer-ish. When I recently reported a conversation with SEK to my wife, she said "What did I tell you about communicating with guys with three names over the innernets?"

I'm sure she was right, and I'll soon stop.

Congrats on receiving a acknowledgement as a grad student that isn't a cypher for "I stole your idea! You know, the one in your as yet unpublished paper for my seminar!" I've got one of those...

Posted by: CR | Sunday, 03 September 2006 at 01:05 AM

Michael Bérubé

Oh, and thank you for not mentioning the "two n"s problem. (You know what I am talking about.) Honestly, I do make the most boneheaded, no-excuses-possible mistakes sometimes.

Posted by: Michael Bérubé | Sunday, 03 September 2006 at 01:11 PM

Scott Eric Kaufmann
Oddly, the very first thought when I started reading this was "Coffee?!" Healthfreak SEK drinks coffee?!" What happened to the green tea?

I still drink that during the day, but I open with a cup of coffee. Different kinds of caffeine, each contains, so I shock my system awake, then gently nudge it into gear. (Or, I could riff on S.Q.N.'s advice and go with the smelling salts, thrice daily ... which, now that I think about it, I'm not sure why more people don't do it. The Little Womedievalist does, in a way: she has a truly vast collection of perfume minis, which she smells throughout the day to "wake up her nose." I suppose the rest of her brain goes with it.)

Oh, and thank you for not mentioning the "two n"s problem. (You know what I am talking about.) Honestly, I do make the most boneheaded, no-excuses-possible mistakes sometimes.

No problem. Just means I have to change my name, that's all.

When I recently reported a conversation with SEK to my wife, she said "What did I tell you about communicating with guys with three names over the innernets?"

The alternative, however, is that you'd be talking to the designer of the "Porn Star" clothing line or some anonymous, probably shady, Hollywood grip. So really, I can't win.

Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufmann | Sunday, 03 September 2006 at 02:20 PM

Michael Bérubé

No problem. Just means I have to change my name, that's all.

Well, it's about time.

Posted by: Michael Bérubé | Sunday, 03 September 2006 at 04:00 PM

Alex Leibowitz

When I'm mentioned in the acknowledgements for Saul Kripke's next book, I'll let you know.

Posted by: Alex Leibowitz | Tuesday, 05 September 2006 at 12:51 AM

ben wolfson

Shouldn't 'The really curious question, I think, is why the junior scholars and the graduate students are just as liberal—or, as George Will suggests, "more uniformly liberal"—than most of their senior colleagues who were hired thirty or forty years ago' read, in the middle, 'just as liberal as—or, as George Will suggests, "more uniformly liberal" than—…'?

Posted by: ben wolfson | Thursday, 07 September 2006 at 01:34 PM

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Dissertation Arcana #1,871: Believe It or Not, This Post Ends Bloody and Toothless My researches have led me to a particular chess game, played by two upper-class gentlemen for the highest of stakes: the rights to a particular rail line. One of the gentlemen, let us call him Mr. X., has his savings invested in in that line; the other, Mr. Robber Baron, has diverted all commercial traffic from that line in order to depress its value, so that he might sweep in, purchase all its stock, then reroute all commercial traffic back to it. Mr. R.B. is not what your mother calls "a nice man." Mr. X. pays him a visit and vicious battles of wits transpire until, eventually, both men stare at each other from opposite sides of a chessboard. According to Mr. X., Mr. R.B. opens with "The Catapult Gambit." I'm a fairly accomplished chess player—accomplished enough to be familiar with most (if not all) of the common openings—but I had never heard of this "Catapult Gambit." I consulted my chess library. Nothing. I consulted other people's chess libraries. Nothing. I finally found one obscure reference to it in a chess history. It mentioned it by name, but said that it belonged to a variation of chess called "Stanley Chess." The hunt, it was on. A few hours of archival work later, I possessed the oddest of dissertation detritus; odd not because it won't be useful, but because it will. (Such tangents typically lead to lands tangential, the exploration of which is fatal to Normative Time.) Here is what I found: Once upon a time there was an English family of "Ferrers." A war happened, and either because of or in spite of it, these "Ferrers" were awarded the Earldom of Derby and the courtesy title of "Stanley." Now wealthy and bored, these Stanleys started playing chess. Sadly, conventional chess failed to excite them, so they accessorized. Catapults being very fashionable in Fall 1254—everyone who was anyone had at least one Plague-Ridden Cow Corpse and Flaming Wicker Ball that year—the Stanleys decided chess needed one too. "The Catapult Gambit" was born. But the Ferrers Stanleys could not allow the common folk to acquire a device powerful enough to launch small objects entire feet, so they hid it. "Stanley Chess," as it was called, became the hobby of the gentlemen who played their chess in secret gentlemen's clubs. They held secret tournaments in England for hundreds of years. Eventually, one of them ventured to the New World, founded his own secret societies, and taught its members how to play Stanley Chess. They too held tournaments, local and national, the winner of which took home an ornate trophy which had been in the Stanley family for hundreds of years. In 1892, one member of the Stanley clan, Frederick Stanley—possibly upset by the prominence of his cousin, Charles Henry Stanley, author of the first weekly chess column in America—decided that his family heirloom would no longer be awarded to the premier secret chess player in North America. So in 1892, he decided to...
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Literature as Equipment for Prosecution [X-posted to The Valve] When Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize, I complained about conservatives' sudden, easily explicable interest in contemporary theater. ("So now you care about literature," I whined.) Turns out politicos aren't the only ones who develop an intense but fleeting interest in literary criticism. Police do too. Seems the British author John Fowles has run afoul piqued the interest of Austrian police investigating the eight year ordeal of Natascha Kampusch, the young woman kidnapped when she was ten-years-old and held captive until she escaped last week. According to The Scotsman: Police said they were investigating whether [Wolfgang] Priklopil knew about John Fowles' novel The Collector, which tells the story of a man who kidnapped a girl and hid her in a secret basement cell in the hope one day she might fall in love and marry him. "We have received several tips about the book," said Gerhard Lang, a senior police officer. He said no copy of the novel had been found at the house. The "tips" notwithstanding, one wonders what the police want with The Collector. Do they think it the pedophile-kidnapper's equivalent of The Turner Diaries? (The "novel" which inspired Timothy McVeigh's "patriotism.") Or do they—and I mean this seriously—do they believe it offers insight into Priklopil's psyche? If so, is that not the ultimate backhanded compliment? "You depict the sick mind better than any of your peers. We commend you on your substantial artistic accomplishment and hope it will be admissible in a court of law." If that is what they think The Collector to be, literature suddenly means as much as its most strident supporters claim. It is the work of an incisive mind peering into the depths of the human soul (however inhuman its content may be). Mostly I think the Austrian police are looking for a blueprint, a formula, something which will dispel the idea that an actual human committed this crime of his own accord. Systems console weak and weary minds, providing elaborate explanations for the simple but unfortunate fact of human depravity. This desire for pigeonholable explanations isn't limited to those immediately involved, however. Sometimes, banishing the banality of evil from the realm of possibility happens at great remove: Austrians, perhaps as a legacy from Sigmund Freud, place a great deal of importance on psychiatric help after trauma, so much has been made in the reporting of the case on the need for special psychiatric treatment. Who needs Freud more now, I wonder. The captive or her saviors?

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