Reading them is good. Writing them is better.
Picture a party with music, noise, decent appetizers (yes, yes, I admit it: I am a terrible speller and the word was spelled incorrectly in the original version of this piece; I felt compelled to change it, blushing and contrite even after such a long time, if only because this particular post has raised various issues and hackles. Okay, back to the show). Regular people are enjoying themselves, talking about politics, fashion, movies, adultery, kids. But over in a corner, two academic types are huddled, all seriousness and gravity. “What are you writing these days?” Professor A asks, eyebrow arched. “I’m finishing a book,” replies Professor B. Professor A nods seriously, sips his drink and replies, “Neither am I.”
I love that joke; I would have it translated into Latin and embroidered onto pillow shams; I’d have it calligraphied onto banners. Bumper stickers might be nice. Also those cheap pens with tiny texts on the side, the ones handed out by real estate brokers. The joke illuminates, like a medieval manuscript or a postage stamp, the self-congratulatory ponderousness damning so many of us. Why do we whine? Because we are forced to handle the good fortune of jobs requiring us to do two things: teach and write.
In academics, there’s no heavy lifting. You get to teach students who have chosen to enroll in a college course. Compare our work with those stalwart souls facing a sea of tenth-graders, most of whom spend the class time contemplating unsafe sex with strangers (the students, I mean). At least at college level, someone closer to home is actually footing the bill; somebody actually wants that person in class, not just off the streets. If you get a full-time academic appointment, you get a benefits packages and you get to do work that actually interests you. Or at least once interested you. If over the years you’ve started to bore yourself, that’s a matter for your shrink, not union.
OK, so you not only have to show up and teach, you also have to publish. But in our line of work, that’s how you tell a professional from an amateur. The professional is somebody who does it all the time, does it publicly, does it well enough to be recognized by peers as a formidable presence, and who does it in such a way that other people can make use of and follow her example.
Yet the self-flaggelating whine of the smugly disgruntled academic can be heard throughout the land. Imagine, if you will, a nasal voice contorted into a faux-Brit accent passionately reciting the following lament: “I do research for my own particular and personal purposes. Why should I, I who have been the top student in my class since my mother took Lamaze, be pressured into publishing before my ultimate opus is up to it?”
Why?
Because a commitment to work is what is expected whenyou are a professional. Look, I brush my teeth twice a day but that doesn’t make me a dentist. I cook dinner five nights a week but that doesn’t make me a chef. Just because you read novels, you wouldn’t call yourself a novelist, would you? Because you read the paper everyday, you wouldn’t call yourself a journalist, right?
So why is it that after you’ve read a stack of critical volumes, you feel free to call yourself a critic?
Look, every gang worth its colors has initiation rites. Why should somebody who isn’t visible as part of the larger community be allowed into the gang?
Image from Photobucket.com
