I'm a Self-Important Prick, I Know, I Know

Tomemos sent me an email yesterday saying I had a package waiting for me in front of the departmental mailboxes.  Given that I've checked my box once in the past three months, this comes as no surprise.  He also told me it was "accumulating jokes," which, sincere fool I am, I'd looked forward to reading.  The first two cracked me up:

"Recommended to publish, conditional on addition of more emoticons." — A. Winter, Review Board

"Nice article thanks for sharing." — Buy Prescriptions Now

The third one, however, struck me somewhat differently:

"You're a self-important prick, we know, we know, so pick up you're [sic] mail already, ass."  — The Department

I've a feeling "The Department" ain't coterminous with my department, but that someone would be possessed to write that, even jokingly, disturbs me.  I know you're tired of hearing about how I don't consider myself any great shakes ... how I think I've been artificially elevated to some undeserved position on the beastly two-head back of some horny undergrads ... how I'm likely as not to be a nobody two years from now no matter what others think.

But my stomach turns when I hear that people think me self-important.  Have they not read a thing I've written or listened to a word I've said?  Do they assume it's all an act?  That in private I puff my chest in pride of all I've not-yet-but-will-one-day-surely accomplish?

I'm at a loss.  If you know me and think my insecurities obscure an inner braggart, I don't think you know me as well as you think you do.  I'm not more; and if it's what I do that defines me, let the record show I'm well-nigh amorphous.

Comments

[George]

Some people continue to believe--bizarrely and in the face of logic and all available evidence and history--that writing about one's own life with the expectation that someone, somewhere might be interested in and possibly benefit from what you've written... that this activity is evidence of vanity or egomania or delusion.

We call these people misanthropes.

[Ahistoricality]

Some people continue to measure their self-worth by the volume of their mail (people who are more technologically savvy use the size of their Spam filter queue or blog tracker; it's all the same pathology), and are deeply offended by someone who doesn't consider their own self-evaluation valid enough to obsess about it.

We call these people insecure.

[j.s. nelson]

Yes, a lot of people somehow see themselves as subjected to the blogs they read and think it outrageous that you would use their time to talk about yourself.

[The_Myth]

Wait? This is an ENGLISH department, right?

And you're quoting the letter exactly by noting the "you're [sic]" as an error?

If this is all true, then I smell a disgruntled undergrad!

One you make feel uncomfortable with your words and what you say...

;-)

[Rich Puchalsky]

Probably just someone who was trying to mock-insult you and had it come out real-insulting.

But there's something there, although it isn't self-importance. The blog isn't popular because of some long-ago (in blog time) story about office sex. Having sex in unusual places is pretty much a typical college experience, right? That piece was linked to because it was written to forefront your persona; your narrated reactions made it work. And that's the consistent thread through your writing: not self-importance but the presence of the writer within the writing.

[SEK]

I don't know, Rich. A lot of people here are real haters ...

... that said, the rest of your comment? That's the sweetest thing you've ever written. I'm not going to read anything else tonight, for fear it'll contaminate the MORE THAN A FEELING your words inspired.*

*And no, I don't know why I unironically have Boston stuck in my head, outside of grievous personal failing, that is ...

[John Emerson]

Any sign or independence will be regarded as arrogance by those who don't dare risk it. Americans resent strong-minded people who don't have money. They admire strong-minded people with money, e.g. Donald Trump, because sometimes they give some of it away.

Also, you're doomed. Don't bother trying to clean up your act, they already know who you are. Maybe you should get that cop job you mentioned so you can take bribes and brutalize people. Much more fun than having sex with hot coeds who need an A in your course. That becomes so tedious. Eventually you start promising A's to the chicks who don't want to have sex with you.

[John Emerson]

"of"

[The Little Womedievalist]

When will our fellow grad officinos (and officinas) realize that we have our reasons for liking our bat-cave? We have a mail box-- outside the bat-cave, I'll grant, but a mail box that gets the job done... Academia and marriage, when brought together by the powers of nature and whatnot, lead to academic marriages. As an academic who hopes (probably in vain) to ride the professional coat-tails of an well-cited (if headless) husband, I find it amusing that anyone we know would be that petty. Wintery A, Tomemos and Joe(memos of the massive Kugel) are kings of grammar, rhetoric and wit, in my book. The prickly "Anonimo/a della Facolta di Lettere, Filosofia e Cose-che-non-valgono-la-pena-di-leggere-un-cazzo," who shows his/her impatience at the package-reception of his/her colleagues, needs to take a deep breath ... and see how long he/she can hold it. (Consider this an Irvinian dare.)

This said, um, WTF?!? Isn't there enough room of one's own in the dept. kitchen/mail room for said Sir (or Mme.) Prickly to work through the "mail-envy" without taking it out on unclaimed (if named) packages?

[George]

"Having sex in unusual places is pretty much a typical college experience, right?"

I clearly went to the wrong colleges.

[Miriam]

The new* English dept. mailroom is too small for one l'il package to sit around, minding its own business? Sheesh. Call the architect, stat.

*--Bearing in mind that I graduated in '92.

[JPool]

"Does everybody in the world have to like you?"
"Yes! Yes! Everybody has to like me. I must be likedhttp://www.seinfeldscripts.com/TheMasseuse.html>!"

Don't let the haters get you down, man.

Speaking from personal experience, attempts to deny perceptions of arrogance/self-importantance through appeals to reason are doomed to failure. Aside from the fact that one can of course be supremely self-loving and self-loathing at the same time (cf. Mailer, Norman; Allen, Woody), the haters beileve they have devined some truer aspect of your nature and attempts to claim "But I don't really believe that." ring hollow. All you can control is how you behave towards people, not how they interpret that behavior.

Given the rapid turnover in cohorts, chances are you don't even know this person. When you stop going to campus regularly, people still in coursework become a vague and strangley disturbing blur.

[The Constructivist]

I think this is a cry for attention from a secret admirer who misses the good ol' days when you hung out in the mail room 24-7. Or whatever.

[Feminist Avatar]

I am with Ahistoricality here. I don't think this is a comment about your blog; it is about you not picking up your mail. The thinking being that you must think yourself quite important that the rest of the world or what they have to say to you (through your mail) doesn't matter.