I am a ghost writer.
In life, I had one of the greatest reputations in the academic world. This thought made me retch. Fame is the thing I had most wanted from childhood; and after I got it, I had no understanding whatsoever of its basis—why people responded to what I said. I felt only disgust with my public "noble" character. I did not consider myself a scholar: I knew no languages except English, and I didn’t see the point of a systematic study of literature. I did not consider myself a critic, either, and I was surprised whenever I heard myself referred to as one.
I hated Hudson; I disliked most of my colleagues; I disliked teaching graduate students. After a routine disagreement over the merits of a dissertation, I refused to teach in the Graduate School again. I was frequently depressed, I had writer’s block, and I drank too much. I did not even like my first name. I wished that I had been called Quentin or Dick.
I held myself a discreet distance from any group with which I might be too quickly identified—professors, critics, liberals, curmudgeons, writers. I was all of those things, of course; I could not deny it. But I resented being understood under the auspices of anything so insufficiently nuanced as a rubric. I wanted to feel superior without betraying to others my sense of superiority. A lot of psychic energy went into the care and maintenance of my persona. It was the price I paid for a life of the mind.
I think of my intellectual life as a struggle, not energetic enough, against all the blindnesses and malign obfuscations of the academic world. For me, a liberal is a person who believes that the right economic system, the right political reforms, the right undergraduate curriculum, and the right psychotherapy will do away with unfairness, snobbery, resentment, prejudice, neurosis, and tragedy.
People’s political opinions may be rigid; but they are not necessarily rigorous. Political opinions tend to float up out of some mixture of sentiment, custom, moral aspiration, and aesthetic pleasingness. Today we live in an age of "fake news," "sound bites," "slogans," "insults," "insinuations," "name calling," "bickering," "nitpicking," and "demagoguery."
I am happy I died when I did.
What I wanted to be more than anything else was a comic writer. Alas! I did not have a flair for comedy.
"The Role of the University in a Dysfunctional Society" is an address I gave to the faculty of Hudson University on April 1, 2017.
I can’t wait for the reaction from the nattering nabobs of negativism who earn their living as trigger-happy snipers.
Open Access Policy
You are free to share, copy, or redistribute the materials in this text in any medium or format. You are free to adapt, reuse, modify, transform, or build upon the materials in this text for any purpose whatsoever.
In life, I had one of the greatest reputations in the academic world. This thought made me retch. Fame is the thing I had most wanted from childhood; and after I got it, I had no understanding whatsoever of its basis—why people responded to what I said. I felt only disgust with my public "noble" character. I did not consider myself a scholar: I knew no languages except English, and I didn’t see the point of a systematic study of literature. I did not consider myself a critic, either, and I was surprised whenever I heard myself referred to as one.
I hated Hudson; I disliked most of my colleagues; I disliked teaching graduate students. After a routine disagreement over the merits of a dissertation, I refused to teach in the Graduate School again. I was frequently depressed, I had writer’s block, and I drank too much. I did not even like my first name. I wished that I had been called Quentin or Dick.
I held myself a discreet distance from any group with which I might be too quickly identified—professors, critics, liberals, curmudgeons, writers. I was all of those things, of course; I could not deny it. But I resented being understood under the auspices of anything so insufficiently nuanced as a rubric. I wanted to feel superior without betraying to others my sense of superiority. A lot of psychic energy went into the care and maintenance of my persona. It was the price I paid for a life of the mind.
I think of my intellectual life as a struggle, not energetic enough, against all the blindnesses and malign obfuscations of the academic world. For me, a liberal is a person who believes that the right economic system, the right political reforms, the right undergraduate curriculum, and the right psychotherapy will do away with unfairness, snobbery, resentment, prejudice, neurosis, and tragedy.
People’s political opinions may be rigid; but they are not necessarily rigorous. Political opinions tend to float up out of some mixture of sentiment, custom, moral aspiration, and aesthetic pleasingness. Today we live in an age of "fake news," "sound bites," "slogans," "insults," "insinuations," "name calling," "bickering," "nitpicking," and "demagoguery."
I am happy I died when I did.
What I wanted to be more than anything else was a comic writer. Alas! I did not have a flair for comedy.
"The Role of the University in a Dysfunctional Society" is an address I gave to the faculty of Hudson University on April 1, 2017.
I can’t wait for the reaction from the nattering nabobs of negativism who earn their living as trigger-happy snipers.
Open Access Policy
You are free to share, copy, or redistribute the materials in this text in any medium or format. You are free to adapt, reuse, modify, transform, or build upon the materials in this text for any purpose whatsoever.
