Deborah Rhode on prestige in academic life

Deborah Rhode says everything I’d want to say about academic life and “the pursuit of prestige”:

Status hierarchies carry special costs in university life. For most faculty, one of the main motivations for choosing an academic career, and one of its main satisfactions, is intellectual freedom. Professors value having control over their own time, agendas, and priorities. Yet that freedom is diminished when the pursuit of prestige becomes controlling. Moreover, because academic recognition is to some extent a relative good, a large percentage of the profession is bound to come up short. . . .

The solutions are obvious in principle and elusive in practice. The fundamental challenge is for academics to stay focused on their own values, and to make the best use of their abilities in the service of goals that they find most meaningful. Rewards can come from many sources, and not all of them register prominently on the conventional pecking order. Harvard philosopher William James once claimed that “to give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them gratified.” Whether or not the satisfactions are truly equivalent, letting go of certain status needs is often far preferable to the alternative.

In Pursuit of Knowledge: Scholars, Status, and Academic Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006).

It is of course easier to feel free to agree with Rhode if one has tenure.

[I take pleasure in remembering that prestige has its origin in matters of conjuring and illusion.]

The Armory Show

The Art Institute of Chicago has online a virtual trek through the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, the exhibition known as the Armory Show, which introduced American audiences to new directions in painting and sculpture. The museum also has the show’s catalogue and other documents available as free PDFs. Not to be missed: The Cubies’ A B C, a contemporary sendup of Matisse, Picasso, Stein, and others, words by Mary Mills Lyall, illustrations by Earl Harvey Lyall. A sample:

P’s for Picasso, Picabia and Party
    (Who deal in abstractions, distractions and such.)
When, with vision chaotic and expletives hearty,
You beg of a Cubie their sense to impart, he
    Profoundly makes answer: “In little is much.”
—P’s for Picasso, Picabia and Party.

[Making light of Picabia in general and Picasso’s Head of a Woman (Fernande) in particular.]

Did “Picasso, Picabia and Party” inspire “Parker, Pound, or Picasso,” Philip Larkin’s encapsulation of all that he loathed in music, writing, and art? My guess is not likely : Larkin was a thoroughgoing provincial, and capable of derisive alliteration on his own. How provincial? From his 1982 Paris Review interview: “Who is Jorge Luis Borges?”

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March 1: The Cubies’ A B C has been reprinted.

[The phrase “Parker, Pound, or Picasso” appears in All What Jazz: A Record Diary (1985). Did you know that the 1913 exhibition traveled to New York, Chicago, and Boston? Me neither.]

Proust in NYC

Two reports on the Morgan Library’s Swann’s Way celebration: The Sweet Troubles of Proust (New York Review of Books), In Search Of Proust, No Cookies (Wall Street Journal).

[Did you know that before madeleine there were biscottes?]

Lines after Marianne Moore

While teaching some Marianne Moore poems, I invited students to write, if they wanted to (and they did), a two-stanza comment on Moore’s “Poetry,” using the stanza form of another Moore poem, “The Fish.” That five-line stanzas of that poem are organized by a rhyme scheme, AABBC, and a syllable count: one, three, nine, six, eight. Why? Because. I think of Moore’s singular designs in relation to William Carlos Williams’s contention that the poet creates “new forms as additions to nature,” marvelous constructions that take their places among the things of the world.

I too wrote two stanzas. My title is the title of Moore’s poem; thus the quotation marks:



Did amphibian inspire quotidian? Or vice versa? There’s no knowing.

Other Marianne Moore posts
A few notes
Marianne Moore magic
Marianne Moore on writing
Q and A

More trouble for Barnes & Noble

The news is not good:

Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest book chain, warned that when it reports fiscal 2013 third-quarter results on Thursday, losses in its Nook Media division — which includes sales of e-books and devices — will be greater than the year before and that the unit’s revenue for all of fiscal 2013 would be far below projections it gave of $3 billion.

The problem was not so much the extent of the losses, but what the losses might signal: that the digital approach that Barnes & Noble has been heavily investing in as its future for the last several years has essentially run its course.

Related posts
Barnes & Noble v. Amazon
Barnes & Noble v. Amazon (2)
Whither Barnes & Noble?

Hi and Lois watch

[Hi and Lois, February 24, 2013.]

Yes, this post is the third Hi and Lois post in four days. But you know what Dr. Johnson said: “When a man is tired of Hi and Lois, he is tired of life.” Although it is true that he spoke in the earliest years of this long-running strip.

In 2008, I noticed that Trixie was riding in the front seat of the Flagston family car. Ever since I’ve kept an eye out for Hi-Lo incongruities and mishaps. In 2010, Trixie was stashed in the back of the family’s station wagon. So I feel honor-bound to note that today Trixie rides safely in a car seat.

Related reading
All Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)

[I know: Lois isn’t wearing a seat belt.]

RU Post-it

A young man is covering the Rutgers University campus with Post-it Notes that bear inspiring words. I like that. Read more:

RU Post-it Anonymous (Rumblr)
RU Post-it Anonymous (Twitter)
Student behind Rutgers’s anonymous Post-it notes comes clean (nj.com)

I suppose that RU Post-it is a twenty-first use for a Post-it Note. Thanks, Rob, for passing on this story.

A pencil-sharpener problem

It’s not what you might expect though.

This Google search — write a story problem: 7,241 broken pencil sharpeners — brought a wayfaring stranger to the shores of Orange Crate Art. Her or his wish is my command. Here goes:

There are 7,241 broken pencil sharpeners in the town of Point Pleasant. If the town has 557 repair centers, can they divide the repairs equally? Show your work.

Kentile Floors

Brooklyn wouldn’t be Brooklyn without Kentile Floors.

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February 24: As Pete Lit points out in a comment, there’s a Kentile sign in Chicago. Who knew? Not me.

TAL at Harper High School

Chicago’s Harper High School is the subject of two episodes of This American Life. The toll of gun violence from the 2011–2012 school year: twenty-nine current and former students shot; twenty-one wounded, eight killed.