It Was Not Consumed (Prelude)

The current issue of the New York Review of Books contains an anecdote narrated by a well-known and respected journalist about taking a class at Cornell taught by Vladimir Nabokov.

He writes about not having read Anna Karenina in time for the first pop quiz and answering the question based upon the movie. A cardinal sin in a literature class. He writes with equal measures of glee and disbelief about his great good fortune that Nabokov didn't know the film and that, in the great writer's eternal optimism and belief that the human imagination can take what is on the page and run with it, he was not punished but rather hired as Nabokov's film-watcher.

I can't believe he thinks he got away with it. He was so obviously caught and this so literary a punishment.

Pomp, Circumstance and Sweat

I've been in my job now for two years, been done with my PhD for nearly one, and the certificate has been framed and on my wall for the better part of six months. Fortunately, it was just too darn hot in these robes for the hooding ceremony to be anti-climactic. (I still think we should wear academic dress on a regular basis for teaching, though.)