Thursday, 07 December 2006

Dissertation Nightmare #781: To Err Is Human, To Be Painfully, Obliviously Ironic...

Strangers look askance when I tell them how long I've been working on my dissertation.  I never know how to respond, except to sputter some pablum about intellectual honesty, scholarly responsibility and the difficulty of acquiring COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE in normative time. 

Then I read a sentence in a peer-reviewed article from a leading journal that compels me to question whether I need COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE to write my dissertation.  To wit:

The penalty [for identical murders committed years apart by siblings] was precisely the same—three months in prison and a fine of 700 pounds.  As [Sherlock] Holmes observed in A Study in Scarlet, "There is nothing new under the sun.  It has all been done before."

Now, I understand that the work in question focuses on Holmes, but the unacknowledged irony is too much.  Is this poor soul so entrenched in THE DOYLE OEURVE that even the rudiments of COMPLETE WORLD KNOWLEDGE escape him?  Do I actually have the upper hand on someone? 

(Note: this post has been thoroughly Google-proofed.  I don't write to mock, but sometimes a little incompetence on the part of someone else is good for soul and liver.)

Dec 7, 2006 8:52:10 PM | Academia, Books, Dissertation, Literary Theory, Literature

3 Comments

Kerry Higgins Wendt

Does it really say "The penalty were," too?

Posted by: Kerry Higgins Wendt | Friday, 08 December 2006 at 08:40 PM

Scott Eric Kaufman

No, it didn't. Chalk that up to my inexpert job o' masking.

Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Friday, 08 December 2006 at 09:33 PM

Kerry Higgins Wendt

That would have been a real gift.

Posted by: Kerry Higgins Wendt | Sunday, 10 December 2006 at 02:09 AM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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Longer Than I Don't Remember: Idiosyncratic Periodization for Fun and Profit (x-posted to the Valve) Regardless of period and specializaton, most literary scholars are familiar with the idea of the Long 18th century (a.k.a. the only reperiodization famous enough to have its very own blog). Encompassing all things from the Restoration of 1660 or Revolution of 1688 (depending) to the 1832 Reform Act, this 172 or 200-year-old “century” calls attention to the inanity of organizing academic disciplines around arbitrary chunks of history. I embrace such lengthenings because they allow us to define epochs by meaningful events instead of the meaningless march of time. That Pynchon fellow lately in the news captures this tensions in Mason & Dixon: “What Machine is it,” young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, “that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling through another Day,—another Year,—as thro’ an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight ... we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,—we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop ... gather’d dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver, ... no Horses, ... only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity ....” (361) This time “Machine” traverses the “Prairie of desperate Immensity” indiscriminately, Pynchon argues—only human agents and actions can punctuate that vastness with meaning. Bookending periods between significant events introduces that causality into historical time. Thing is, with causality comes arguments about the provenance of certain causal agents, ideas and events. Should Romanticism be included in the long 18th? What about France? French Romanticism? In “Kant’s Strange Light: Romanticism, Periodicity, and the Catachresis of Genius,” Orrin N.C. Wang ably confronts one problem caused by combining calendric notions of periodicity and tropological accounts of intellectual history, but his account is limited by its specificity: “Romanticism is the figure of our investment in history, of history as cathexis” (20). Be it German, French, or English, all Wang’s Romanticisms describe a Continental situation of suspect applicability. Folding periods into tropes homogenizes intellectual history. Just because a particular strain of thought dominated a period doesn’t mean contemporaries outside that mold were necessarily apostatical. They may not have defined themselves against anything—but place them in a period bounded by its tropes and they’ll certainly appear to. Here as before, Wang’s astute claim is needlessly particular: “Enlightenment modernity is the historical period that in its complexity resists the uniformity, the very identity, of periodicity” (19). Every historical period resists the uniformity of periodicity. How else to account for the explosion of idiosyncratic periodization I’ve encountered this week? Scholar X’s “long (American) 19th century” terminates twenty-four years into Scholar Y’s “long first-half of the (American) 20th century from 1890-1945.” Both infringe upon Scholar Z.’s “long (American) 20th century.” Myself, I...
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Archival Fun: Now with More Dead Children! From the New York Times, 31 August 1898: BURIED ALIVE BY PLAYMATES ————Bernard Owens of Troy a Victim of Mock Spanish-American War. TROY, N.Y., Aug. 30.—Bernard Owens, aged eight, was accidentally killed yesterday afternoon by playmates. With some other boys he had organized companies, representing the Americans and Spaniards. They attacked each other in a sham battle. Young Owens fell. Picked up as dead, he was buried in a quickly dug grave under several feet of earth. Subsequently he was forgotten and this morning, when the body was recovered, he was really dead. The alarming realism of turn-of-the-last-century play aside, the questioning of Owens' playmates must have been something else: Detective: So Bernard— Young Jimmy: —Bucky. He's Bucky. Detective: Bucky? What? Oh, I see ... so Bucky was killed at the Battle of San Juan Hill? Young Jimmy: Yessir. Detective: Then you and Stan (points to Stan) thought to bury Bucky alive? Young Jimmy and Young Stan: (in unison) Yessir. Detective: And then you left to eat dinner? Young Jimmy and Young Stan: (in unison) Yessir. Detective: And then you came back the next day and found him dead? Young Jimmy's Mom: (sobbing) What's to become of my Jimmy! Please, officer, you can't arrest him! He's all I got! Detective: Don't worry, pretty lady, this one's (puts hand on Jimmy's head and musses his hair) not going anywhere. Just havin' some harmless fun, you were, right boys? Young Jimmy and Young Stan: (nod silently in unison) Detective: Next time you two rascals bury someone alive—and you listen close now, as I don't aim to be coming back here in two weeks and finding another dead kid, you hear? Next time you bury someone alive, don't return to the scene of the crime. I know you want to, but you can't, hear, 'less you want them to catch you and break this sweet thing's (points to Young Jimmy's Mom) heart? Clear? Young Jimmy and Young Stan: (nod vigorously in unison) Yessir! Detective: Good. (turns to Young Jimmy's Mom) Now, what was that you said about your famous homemade apple pie? Young Jimmy's Mom: You must be mistaken, Officer! Why, apples ain't even in sea—oh, yes, of course, I see. Come on in then ...

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