On 8 March 2018, the online Chronicle of Higher Education published Joseph Conley’s “Just Another Piece of Quit Lit.” In the piece, which seems to have been prompted by Erin Bartram’s own piece of quit lit–about which more here–Conley puts forth the idea that more people ought to leave academe than have–and earlier than tends to be discussed. After acknowledging the difficulty in making the decision to quit, he notes to readers that, at least in his case, nobody made much of his decision to leave–and few were willing to extend him any consideration for having studied as he did. Conley also acknowledges that he was wrong to begin his course of study, summarizing years of undergraduate and graduate experience as a slow decline into self-destructive, alienating behavior encouraged by academe. After repudiating that way of life, he pivots into noting that things get better–with time and effort before making an attempt at humor and concluding that sticking with a choice made in early adulthood, rather than exploring other options, is what quitting really is.

As someone who has largely left academe and who is in a “real world” position that acts with more care and respect for me than my teaching largely seemed to, I found myself nodding along with Conley’s piece at many points. Like him, I am better off for having (mostly) left the field, for taking a job that is just a job and that I can leave behind me at the end of the work day. (That I have been largely able to treat the teaching I still do as that kind of thing helps. And even these comments are done as relaxation and practice, something I enjoy doing rather than something I have to do.) Too, I am married to a wife who made a similar decision; we met in our MA program, and I moved to New York to be with her as she pursued her PhD, but when she moved to Stillwater because I landed a job and we found out that our daughter was on the way, she decided that a doctorate in support of a career she did not want and could not really expect to have was no longer worth pursuing.

She, and later I, found that the sense of shame inhering in giving up, which Conley describes, does not fade quickly. My wife seems at peace with things, but I clearly do not, else I’d not continue to follow quit-lit pieces or comment on them, or bring up my own status as an academic expatriate so often as I do. Other people do seem to be happy with us, our value not bound up in dwelling in the ivory tower, and both of us scrabbled to find jobs that now afford us a better standard of living than we had enjoyed for several years–certainly since leaving New York, if not ever. So the experience of my family is much like what Conley describes; his account rings true for me.

If only I’d been able to get my piece in the Chronicle…

One thing that comes out for me in Conley’s piece, though, is a certain amount of bitterness. Comments he makes throughout the article–many of which amount to “nobody cares about you or your academic work”–may be accurate, but that they are made at all betrays dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. That would not be a problem, except that the purported point of the article, the sentiment on which it concludes, is exactly the opposite of it. If we are better off for quitting academe, why the jabs at those who remain in it, those who are already suffering (if Conley is correct)? At best, they come off as jokes that fall flat. More likely, they represent a bit of sour grape-ism, bitter swipes at those who were able to enact their long-held dreams.

I understand the allure, certainly; I am not without my own bitterness in the matter. Having seen people objectively less qualified than I get jobs for which I applied stung, and the sting has not yet faded; it is not to be wondered at that I would harbor some resentment while I still feel the pain. And I can easily imagine that Conley does, as well, despite the therapy he mentions and the good job he reports having, just as I do despite the many good things in my life and the greater freedom to be me that I have more or less outside academe than I had while trying to nestle deeper into it.

Perhaps there may be some balm for that hurt for Conley–and for me.

Care to help me find my way to healing? This can help!

That I read webcomics should come as a surprise to nobody. I have made no secret of my nerdiness, and webcomics–a combination of online life and graphic narrative–represent a junction of two of the more traditionally “nerdy” arenas of human endeavor. Nor should it be a surprise that I read them voraciously; there are several I check regularly (depending on their update schedules), and others I poke in on occasionally to see what all is still going on in them, if anything.

Relatively recently, I read through the complete runs of both Something Positive and Questionable Content. I did so in part to refresh my memory of plot points that had been coming up in more recent comics–and, once I started, I figured I had to read through the rest of the archives. Completeness matters, after all, and I do tend just a little bit towards the obsessive/compulsive, nerd that I am.

As I read through the archives, I did note the shifts in graphic art style across the many years of each comic’s run. The quality of writing has remained largely consistent, however, which I am sure I could try to parse, somehow, to make some statement about the relative development of artistic techniques and media. (I will leave that for those who are not quite on the fringes of academe, as I still am, to handle.) And I was reminded of why I have continued to read those comics for as long as I have; I find the characters compelling and the plots intriguing, even if there are occasional fumbles of both.

More to the point, however, I found myself strangely hollow after completing the reading. I do not know if it was a matter of having finished the things and not yet having more of them to read–but I have not tended to react thus when I have re-read such writers as Tolkien, Asimov, or Hobb. Their works are reasonably complete, however, so that might be the reason–except that Chaucer’s, which are not complete in any copy of which I am aware, do not evoke the same hollow longing that I feel from reading once again the webcomics’ incomplete runs (for both are still in production, so far as I know).

Wherein the sense of dissatisfaction lies, then, I am not sure. There is more to explore, to be sure, so it is not the foreclosure of possibility. And I admit to having been greatly distracted by the re-reading, my attention taken from other matters with which it ought probably to have been more fully occupied, so that I should be relieved at being released from the task of plowing through several thousand strips (is that the right word?) in each webcomic. But I am not happy to have ended the re-reading; still do I not know why, and I think it will bother me that I do not–at least for a while.

Until, of course, I either do it again, or something else emerges to ring hollowly within me.

Care to help support my webcomic habit?

I was introduced to Prof. Amy Olberding’s 6 March 2018 Aeon piece “The Outsider” through my Twitter feed (for which, my thanks, @JonathanHsy and @mckellogs). In it, Olberding relates her experiences as an academic who grew up in a relatively poor, rural environment, negotiating the tensions associated with that specific divergent background amid the prevailing cultural narratives of academic life. She cites the example of her grandmother as an instance of successful negotiation before moving to reject the dominant narratives of academia toward those people who share her background, using another of her forebears as an emblem of her resistance to assimilation to academic mannerism and life.

I read the piece as something…less than Olberding writes it. Where she occupies a coveted position, I am on the fringes of academe. Where she emerges directly from farming country, I do so only at a generational remove–and from socioeconomic circumstances both more and less constrained than hers, for while she and her immediate family were better off than many of her kin, I and mine were not, though my parents had and have skilled-labor and white-collar jobs, and I do so, even now. Too, my “y’all” occasioned less comment than hers seems to have, since I went to school in Texas and Louisiana, and I had trained myself more or less “out” of “the accent” long before the thought of academia entered my mind. And there are the obvious concerns of my being a white cis-hetero man and the myriad ways that being so eases my experience of the world in the United States.

Yet even for that removal, I could not help but read Olberding’s piece as a testimony of things like those I’ve known. And I am glad that she holds fast to the identity of her origin as she does; I have not been able to do so. For many years, I worked to set myself apart–in part because I was set apart in some ways, the object of a transitive verb, but only in part. I relished being “the smart one,” as I have discussed before (likely to people’s annoyance when they have noticed). I enjoyed the sense of distinction, the idea that I knew more things and was better because of it. And I very much enjoyed being able to learn yet more things, equating knowledge with personal value and thus treasuring the increase.

I am more or less past that, now. (I do still like to know things, and more things, but not so I can abuse others with them.) Trying to be an academic and failing at it, as others have tried and not succeeded, has taken from me the thoughts that I do stand apart and that I should stand apart. Moving back to the town where I grew up has reminded me that I worked not to be part of the place–and now that I have a daughter, and she is here, I recall how not having the kinds of roots that my classmates had hurt. (I would spare her that pain, although I do not know how to do so.) So, for what little it is worth, I commend Prof. Olberding for doing what she describes in the piece–and I hope more will do as she has done.

Notice me, senpai!

Another of the WordPress blogs to which I am subscribed is Elan Mudrow’s–it is another I encountered from appreciation for mine (which I enjoy and for which I am grateful). The blog usually posts photos and other images, often accompanied by relatively short poems; one example of such is the 2 March 2018 piece, “To Wander.”

Evidently, this got published before I had completed it, or else the completed version went away. I don’t know what happened, and I apologize for it. -GE, 6 April 2018

On 5 March 2018, Colleen Flaherty’s “When Students Harass Professors” appeared in the online Inside Higher Ed. In the piece, Flaherty uses the case of Matthew Vivyan at Florida SouthWestern State College to exemplify an under-reported problem upon which she then expounds: harassment of faculty by students. Flaherty outlines the “normal” course of harassment–usually downwards in institutional authority–before noting the difficulties and complications involved in reporting and investigating the phenomenon. The piece follows with comments regarding what measures are taken and what can be done against such situations, and it concludes with advice for how to proceed further with them, at need.

I am fortunate, of course, to be in the position I am–and to have been in the positions I was. For one, I am certain I have done things that could–and perhaps should–occasion comment and complaint, and I have not much suffered as a result of them (although it could well be the case that certain employment decisions were made in light of such actions–but I have no way to know that, and, if I erred and was rebuked for it, I accept that as just). For another, I have rarely if ever been in the position of being harassed by students. I have had the occasional pupil who offered to “do anything for a better grade,” but I had been warned of such things, so I took measures against them.

There is really only one instance that stands out for me. While I was teaching in New York City, I had many students who were problematic for various reasons. One such, whom I’ll call Ifeche here (it’s not his real name), was routinely disruptive, not only being inattentive, but loudly so, and usually sitting in the front of the room so that his antics could not be ignored. At one point, not long after the middle of the semester, as I was lecturing on one thing or another, I noticed that Ifeche’s hands were blow the desk. This was not unusual; many of my students texted from their laps. (I cared–and care–little; as long as they do not disturb others, I am content to let students pay attention elsewhere. The matter tends to take care of itself). So I continued lecturing–until I noticed Ifeche’s arm jerking rhythmically and, as he shifted, that his hand was down the front of his pants.

At that point, I commented–and sharply–about the matter (Looking back, I am glad that the comment was “Get your hand out of your pants! What’s wrong with you?!?” rather than one of the many snarkier comments that occurs to me now–of a kind with the things that may well have gotten me into trouble in the past). Ifeche, grinning or smirking, left the room. I did not report the incident, which I probably ought to have done, and he came back for the next class meeting, to my distaste. And as I read Flaherty’s 5 March piece, I recalled it and wonder if I was sexually harassed–and if my students were, and I did little to aid them.

Care to help the consideration continue?

Another of the WordPress blogs I follow is @ bittersweet diary, to which I was introduced when its owner liked a post made to this webspace. (I appreciate it, by the way.) One relatively recent post to the blog is the 25 February 2018 poem “Calamity.” Preceded by a black-and-white photo of a blonde-haired, pale-skinned woman exhaling beneath dark gray waters under a cloudy sky, the poem reads as some thirteen lines of free verse grouped into four irregular stanzas. No dominant pattern or rhythm or rhyme presents itself, no regularity of line-length appears, a disorderly structure perhaps connoting the calamity of the title and appearing in the first and penultimate lines of the poem.

That near-bracketing is one of the few structural elements in the poem; a few other instances of repetition help to give the poem a shape, namely “I drowned” in the second and third stanzas (ll. 4, 5, 11)–linking them–and the anaphoric “Not once did I [even] try” in the second stanza (ll. 6-8)–reinforcing its distinctiveness. They, along with the consistent tenor and vehicle, serve to keep the poem a coherent piece of writing despite the inherent disorder of free verse.

They also serve to unify the piece across a particularly strong juxtaposition of the narrator, metaphorically fire in the third stanza, and the dominant image of the addressed lover as an onrushing oceanic storm. The two lines treating flame stand out against the watery rest of the poem, evoking the idea of the narrator being doused by the addressee, fires extinguished by the calamity in which the narrator drowns utterly.

Additionally, there is an interesting neologism in the poem: “everywords” (l. 5). The phrase where it appears would normally be rendered as “In other words,” indicating that another way of saying or explaining the phenomenon would be presented; in such a case, the “drowned” of the preceding line would be presented in different terms, likely expanding upon it in some way (although the word is not arcane, to be sure). The construction, however, is “I drowned. / in everywords, I drowned” (ll. 4-5), the narrator tacitly saying that there is no other way to explain what has happened. Every word that could be used is used–and repeated, further foreclosing the available ways to talk about what has happened amid the calamity. That traumatic events tend to restrict how they can be discussed, usually by surpassing the ability of the mind to frame them, is amply attested–and enduring a calamity, as the narrator claims to have done in interacting with the addressee, is the stuff of which trauma is often made.

It might be easy to read “Calamity” as one among many break-up poems, or else as a quiet reaction to an abusive relationship–the idea of obliteration and subsuming in the poem lends itself to the latter. I am not sure that either is actually the case, however, although I find that I am not able to articulate clearly what the poem is actually doing. (That may be me more than the poem, though.) And it is possible that that inarticulabilty is the point, that in presenting something that seems like it ought to be accessible–because a short poem talking about a bad relationship should be–but actually is not is something that befits the title. Reading the piece may not be a calamity, but being unable to read it results in something not unlike one.

Help me avoid my own calamity?

As part of my effort to write more about what I read–and what I read in blogs, since I want my blogs to be read, in turn–I turn to the work of Frank Solanki, which I began following early in my time writing in this webspace. He writes poetry, with which I sympathize, given what I do in my other online endeavors, and it seems to me that attending to that poetry might be a good thing to do for more than one reason. Among my reasons is, as noted, that I’d like my own blogging read and commented upon, so I ought to read and comment upon the works of others. Another is that, as someone largely outside academe at this point despite some pretensions to retaining intellectual rigor, I ought at least to try to remain in practice with those skills I have trained through years of study–one of which is picking apart poetry. So I turn to Frank Solanki’s 14 February 2018 “A Lonely Beer” to see what I can still do.

The poem consists of twenty-eight lines of generally irregular meter–most read as trimeter, although a few dimeter lines are evident, and there seems to be no particularly preferred foot for the most part. There is no formal division into stanzas, although the prevailing abcb rhyme scheme does group the lines into seven quatrains that largely align to what could be read handily as sentence breaks. The first three such quatrains form something of a rhythmic unit, as each ends on a line of a stressed syllable followed by two iambs. The last three similarly unify, each ending on a line of iambic trimeter; the central fourth quatrain follows neither pattern, its distinct rhythm helping to figure it as the pivot its position suggests.

Semantically, the fourth quatrain bears out the pivot its position and rhythmic distinction suggest. While the other six quatrains can be read as introspective and reflective, the fourth is a decidedly direct address to the reader, offering a command to “Quit reading further” as it opens before laying out the conditions for that command. It also explicitly identifies the poem as being a response to the holiday of its publication; the quatrain’s final line bespeaks “not having a valentine,” appropriate to the 14 February publication.

That the poem thus marks itself off as a Valentine’s lament, and that it occupies twenty-eight lines, initially seems to invite consideration of the poem as a calendrical piece. That seeming quickly falters, however; a more fully calendrical version might align itself by sevens, following weeks, and it would position the Valentine’s reference in the fourteenth line rather than the current sixteenth. So one easy interpretation–one that would make the poem clever although not necessarily inspiring–does not hold up under more than a cursory glance.

Similarly, the easy interpretation of the poem as the lament of a sympathetic narrator who is alone on a holiday dedicated to romance falters quickly. The aforementioned direct address to the reader breaks a narrative flow that could otherwise ease reception by readers of the narrator as one with whom to empathize, and not only for its bluntness; it reads as somehow snotty and mean. And the narrator’s solitude seems justified by the sixth quatrain, in which the poem reveals the narrator had two lovers (with names evoking the perceivedly Puritanical, straight-laced 1950s of the United States) at once–clearly illicitly, since “They found out about each other / Now [the narrator is] alone and blue” (ll, 23-24). Had the narrator been in an avowedly open or polyamorous relationship, such would not be the case, but since the revelation of other lovers has resulted in the loss of both, the reader is left to conclude that the narrator deserves to be without romance amid others enjoying it.

What happens, then, is that the poem becomes the whining of the justly afflicted. The narrator has clearly not learned the lesson to be taken from the events discussed–namely, not to be duplicitous in romantic relationships–focusing rather on the isolation occasioned by bad actions than on how to avoid bad actions and improve the self such that either others would find the narrator fit company or the narrator would move past the need to be accompanied. (How much an improvement the latter would be is, of course, easily contestable.) The narrator drinking a beer alone becomes not a figure of sympathy or an image of contentment–and the figure of a lone person drinking in a bar can be and has been taken as both–but one of scorn, and in that becoming might serve as a warning to those who might otherwise approach such a person.

There may well be a reason that person is alone in the bar on a holiday.

Stand me a drink?

A thing I ought to do more often than I do is write about the things I read–not just the news media pieces to which I respond, but also the works of my fellow bloggers. Since I hope to have my own work taken up and considered, I owe it to my compatriots to do the same, to note what I read and appreciate in them–and one I very much appreciate writes at Little Fears.

A WordPress-powered blog, Little Fears is a series of illustrations and short pieces, typically humor and horror, that I’ve been following for a while, now–and even commenting on, which I do all too rarely. I do so chiefly for the humor–a long series of puns, some of which are quite groan-worthy. I am a dad, though, so that kind of joke caters to my needs; dads seemingly have to make puns, typically zeugma, and Little Fears presents no few examples of that form that can be taken up and re-deployed. (The blog also makes liberal use of homophonic puns, although those work less well in text than in speech by their very nature, as a recent post about aquatic mammals exemplifies.)

The blog also offers no few other items: the aforementioned horror, SkillShare courses, and merchandise of various sorts. It seems to be doing well enough to keep itself going on those efforts alone, so it serves as a useful model to follow for those who would do the same with their own work. And the author does respond to comments left on the blog posts, which is often a good thing; readers are invited into conversations thereby and made to feel as if they contribute something of value to what they presumably enjoy. So that much, along with much else, is worth the consideration.

On 9 February 2018, Michael Harris’s “I Have Forgotten How to Read” appeared in the online Globe & Mail. Harris opens by giving something of an anecdote of struggling to read a novel, using that story to segue into a discussion of the ways in which he perceives reading shifting, both as a practice and as a feature of prevailing culture. He asserts, using selected quotations and a disarming anecdote about one of his nieces, that the distracted interruption facilitated by online reading, with its ready access to additional information and expectation that success is measured in clicks and visitors, is becoming–and for some, has become or has always been–the expected, demanded form of attention. Harris is careful to note that digital environments are spurring more reading, in terms of time spent looking at words and of the number of words seen, but he also notes that reading is increasingly seen as a utilitarian concern, rather than a means of immersion.

Harris offers much worth considering in the piece. For myself, in my own experience as a reader nurtured in print who revels ineptly in the digital, many things ring true. While my daughter does prefer the “big TV” Harris describes his niece as rejecting, she is decidedly digitally native, preferring to sit with multiple screens going, each showing different images–and somehow tracking all of them. And I, who more than once said (accurately, I might add) that I had spend more time reading than doing anything else but breathing–and that only because I breathe while I read–find that I am more and more prone to click from tab to tab to tab than to sit with a book in hand, or a journal, or even a magazine or newspaper. When I do sit with print media, I tend to skip around. And even now, as I write this, I have four separate windows open, two of which are internet browsers, and I have open eleven separate tabs. (One is the tab where I write this blog; another is a tab for Harris’s piece. The rest are ephemera.) I am having to struggle mightily not to click back and forth among them–or to look at other devices I have ready to hand from a nearly pathological need to be available and in contact.

As someone who struggles still to retain some semblance of an identity as an intellectual (as I have noted), I find myself grappling with points Harris raises fairly often. His comment that “The deep reading that a novel demands doesn’t come easy and it was never ‘natural'” is a prominent example. When I teach, I mostly teach English, and that means much of what I try to get my students to do is focus in ways that they are (mostly) not well trained to do and to which they are rarely, if ever, disposed. And, frankly, most of them will not need to apply the skills of deeper, more careful reading that I would have them develop–although the patience involved may well be of sue to them, and attention to detail serves well in most any endeavor. Too, if, as Harris asserts, “A cynical style of reading gives way to a cynical style of writing,” then it is also the case that cynical styles of classroom practice will (continue to) emerge–with effects to come (more abundantly) for research. For if it is not of immediate use and gratification, why would any of us attend to it?

Enjoy the piece? Care to help me do more of them? Kick in, maybe?

On 11 February 2018, Erin Bartram’s “The Sublimated Grief of the Left Behind” appeared on her personal website. The piece traces Bartram’s realization that academe has little or no place for her and her evolving reaction to that realization. For Bartram, the painful feeling of failure that accompanied a final rejection from the tenure track first manifested as self-castigation; her later recognition of the strangeness of that manifestation leads to an interrogation of the circumstances that drive those who leave academia to blame themselves for the failure. Bartram also looks at the conditions of the post-ac life that has scholars without institutional support still work–often at substantial cost to themselves–to contribute to human knowledge, and she asserts her own refusal to engage in such. She then notes the still-present senses of disconnection and de-identification that have come with her departure, concluding with a few bullet-pointed editorial asides relevant to her discussion.

I was introduced to the piece through a re-Tweet from one of the luminaries I follow, and it has since received some substantial attention from more than one source; I am not the first to comment on it, certainly. I am also not the first to talk about what she discusses–the strangeness and pain of leaving not a career but a vocation, and one that takes up most waking and many sleeping hours over many, many years. I have discussed it, though, here, here, here, and likely elsewhere. Thus, as I read Bartram, I find myself nodding in agreement again and again.

Flatly, she has the right of it–even though my own conduct does not bespeak my deep agreement with her, since I continue to teach and to make some small contributions to scholarly endeavors. (Speaking of which, contributions to the Tales after Tolkien Society are always welcome.) The scholarly work I do is done from love of the thing and of some of the people involved in it (you know who you are), and for such loves, I am willing to exert myself–but only to a point. Love of other things and other people, though, come first, and the demands of working life to support them do much to keep me from doing more scholarship than I do, and more writing. And the teaching that I still do–because I am paid to do it–is a side-venture, something that my employer and I both recognize is an ad hoc series of short-term commitments–a job, rather than a career or the calling that I, Bartram, and others have recognized the life of the mind as being.

I mean to continue doing as I have been doing, to be sure; as long as I need the extra money, I’ll be working side-jobs, and as long as I get some joy out of what I do, I’ll keep doing the writing–here and elsewhere. But Bartram is right; I am being exploited that I do so, as are others who do as I do. It is one thing if we who do it know what is happening. It is quite another to pretend otherwise.

Care to help keep the lights on here? Go hither!