Bibliography

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For serial readers, my Horror Homeroom piece is now live, here.  Speaking of websites and blogs, you never know where a project might go when you start it.  This blog has a search function, as well as category options, but I know I have a few readers on Facebook and Goodreads who might never set foot here.  The other day someone asked me about a book and I had to do a search myself to see if I’d ever blogged about it.  This project has been going for more than a decade and a half and it’s nearing 6,000 posts.  I can’t remember everything.  Then it occurred to me: I could put together a bibliography for this blog.  This has to be a long-term process, though.  As a test, I scrolled through the first year, writing down the books.  There were about sixty of them.  Since there are over 170 months to go through, well, it’ll be a big bibliography when it’s done.

I’ll need to find a way to note the books I haven’t read.  Sometimes I’ll post on a book, or mention it, without having read the whole thing.  I don’t want to misrepresent myself here.  Other times I mention a book obliquely without actually citing it.  I need to include those as well.  Only, however, if I’ve actually read them.  Then there’s the problem of not remembering if I read a book or not.  After 2013 I can check on Goodreads, but between 2009 and then, I rely on memory.  Those were tumultuous years.  In 2009, just before I started this blog, Gorgias Press let me go.  I made a living for a couple of years as an adjunct professor at both Rutgers and Montclair State Universities, feeling like I was driving at night without the headlights on.  I was reading a lot, but job security was a mere myth.

Then in 2011 Routledge recruited me and my commuting life began.  I started reading about 100 books a year as I commuted my life away.  Most of those got discussed on this blog.  I was still at Routledge when I began my Goodreads account, not aware that there was employer writing on the wall.  I started my current job that same year and commuted to Manhattan for five more years, reading all the while.  It’s going to be a big bibliography when it’s done.  The nice thing is I don’t have to annotate it since that’s what this blog does.  Since I’ve got about a thousand other projects going, and a 9-2-5 job, don’t hold your breath for it.  But the bibliography’s been started and, God willing and the crick don’t rise, it’ll eventually appear here.  That’s the way of ongoing projects.

What Bots Want

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I often wonder what they want, bots.  You see, I’ve become convinced that nearly every DM (direct message) on social media comes from bots.  There’s a couple of reasons I think this: I have never been, and am still not, popular, and all these “people” ask the same series of questions before their accounts are unceremoniously shut down by the platform.  Bots want to sell me something, or scam me, I’m pretty sure, but I wonder why they want to “chat.”  They could look at this blog and find out much of what they’re curious about.  I could use the hits, after all.  Hit for chat, as it were.  

Some change in the metaverse has led to people discovering my academic work and some of them email me.  That’s fine, since it’s better than complete obscurity.  Within the last couple months two such people asked me unusual, if engaged questions.  I took the time to answer and received an email in reply, asking a follow up query.  It came at a busy time, so a couple days later I replied and received a bounced mail notice.  The other one bounced the first time I replied.  By chance (or design) one of these people had begun following me on Academia.edu (I’m more likely on Dark Academia these days), so I went to my account and clicked their profile button.  It took me to a completely different person.  So why did somebody email me, hack someone’s Academia account to follow me, and then disappear?  What do the bots want?

Of course, my life was weird before the bots came.  In college I received a mysterious envelope filled with Life cereal.  The back of said envelope read “Some Life for your life.”  I never found out who sent it.  Another time I received an envelope with $5 inside and a typewritten note saying “Buy an umbrella.”  If I’m poor now, I was even poorer in college and didn’t have an umbrella.  Someone noticed.  Then in seminary someone mailed me a mysterious letter about a place that doesn’t exist.  There was a point to the letter although I can’t recall what it was without it in front of me.  No return address.  I have my suspicions about who might’ve sent these, but I never had any confirmation.  The people are no longer in my life (one of them, if I’m correct, died by suicide a couple years after the note was sent).  It’s probably just my age, but I felt a little bit safer when these things came through the campus mail system.  Now bots fill my paltry web-presence with their gleaming DMs.  I wonder what they want.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Migration

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Since the American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting (AAR/SBL) is coming up soon, I got to thinking about my experience of the event.  I went to some memorable meetings and missed a few for various reasons.  I’m at the point where I don’t really crave attending anymore, but when I should go, I do.  My first experience was in 1991, in Kansas City.  I flew back from Edinburgh for that one.  It was the last time it met in Kansas City.  It was obvious, however, that this would become an annual pilgrimage for me if I ever landed in academia.  My first couple of years teaching were part-time with a full-time load of courses but Nashotah House had some faculty development funds to help pay my way.  My wife would go and we’d stay with friends whenever possible.  It became an academic addiction.

I skipped the year my daughter was born, but when AAR/SBL met in New Orleans we drove down from Wisconsin.  In 1998 I attended the infamous meeting at Disney in Orlando.  Then in 2000 we met in Opryland in Nashville.  This was an experimental phase, I’m guessing, but themed locations weren’t popular with serious scholars and soon we were back to major cities without theme-park vibes.  Having lost my toehold in academia, I missed the 2005 meeting in Philadelphia, but was back for the Washington meeting, representing Gorgias Press.  The three-year separation that started in 2008 I missed, except for the first lonely year in Boston.  I was back for San Francisco in 2011, working for Routledge.  Two years later I was in Baltimore, staying off site, with my current employer. I drove down for that one.

In 2018 I missed the Denver meeting because of a snowstorm panic in Newark, after sleeping the night on the airport floor.  Then the pandemic kept me away for a couple of years, but one of those was virtual anyway.  The last one I attended was 2022 in Denver.  This year I’m scheduled to be in Boston.  Even when my career has slipped off the academic rails, this meeting has been a rather constant touch-stone for November.  Now that I no longer give papers—the last one was on Sleepy Hollow in Atlanta, I believe, ten years ago—the spark has gone out of it for me.  I am glad to be heading back to Boston, however, on somebody else’s dime.  I’ve got some Poe sights to see in my off hours there.  And some 33 years of history to recollect.

Hallowed Halls

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Every time I read a short story collection I tell myself I should do so more often.  Knowing that you’re only committing yourself for maybe thirty or forty minutes at a time is one way to incorporate more reading into a life that’s incredibly busy.  I read In These Hallowed Halls, edited by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane, because, as its subtitle declares, it’s A Dark Academia Anthology.  As with nonfiction anthologies, it is a mixed bag.  The stories are all well written and all were enjoyable to read.  They also display some of the breadth of dark academia.  Most of the stories are literary (as a genre), others dip into science fiction and horror.  Dark academia doesn’t specify whether a book (or story) will be speculative or not.  As someone who writes short fiction, it seems that some of my tales might wag that way.

In any case, discussing a collection is tricky because there is such variety.  Some of the stories stayed with me beyond reading the next, which could be quite different.  Others I have to go back to remind myself what happened.  These days it can take several weeks to finish a book and a lot can happen in real life in that time span.  The stories that stay with me the most have obsessive narrators, or characters who are obsessed.  This kind of story, I know from experience, is difficult to get published.  Many of us who write, I suspect, do get obsessed.  An idea latches on and won’t let go.  Of course, most of us also have jobs that force the jaws open and drop us down in the world of the ordinary again.

Another thread that runs through many of these stories is how students struggle for money.  That’s true to life.  Thinking back to both college and seminary, there were times in both settings that I was working two part-time jobs as well as being a full-time student.  And living like, well, a student.  That experience, except for the truly privileged, is fairly common and our writers here recognize, and perhaps remember, that.  The other unavoidable theme when writing about young people in college is, shall we say, hooking up.  For many of us, college is that period in life when, thinking of our futures, and following our hormones, we start looking for love.  (I know, high schoolers do that too, but college has a way of focusing your energies.)  All of that swirling around the darkness that sometimes falls over our tender years makes this dark academia collection worth reading cover to cover.

Unwritten

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It has been clear to me for some time now that I won’t live long enough to finish all the books I’m writing in my head.  A good number of them have a head start on my hard disc, but as Morpheus says, “Time is always against us.”  The largest culprit in the 9-2-5 job.  Eight hours is a huge amount of time to devote each day, no matter how you slice it.  Since eight hours are required for sleep, or trying to sleep, that means work is half of each day’s waking hours.  The other half includes things like making meals, washing clothes, family time, paying bills, running the vacuum, exercising because you sit in front of a screen all day, and, of course, yard work.  Plants don’t have the same constraints that humans do and can get to the business of growing larger 24/7, as long as the weather cooperates.

Some days I grow reflective about this.  My daughter often asks why I don’t draw or paint more.  I love doing both.  The answer is time.  Even weekends are eaten up with shopping for the food you need to get through the week, and yes, the yard was bigger than I realized, and the house needed more repair work than anticipated.  You see, writing well requires a lot of practice.  And even more reading.  Any successful writer (which I am not yet) will tell you that reading is essential.  I do read a lot.  A friend recently sent me an article about a writer whose heirs calculated he’d read at least 4,000 books.  I know that I’ve read about 1,200 since 2013.  I also know that I can’t count them all before that time.  I went through our living room shelves and counted 500 I’d read there, and that’s only one room.  

Ironically, as a professor reading time is limited.  Unless you have a research only post.  I read a lot as a kid and a ton as a student.  When I started teaching I had less time, except on semester breaks and I tried to read as many books as possible during those interludes.  Then the 9-2-5 began.  My current pace of reading began when trying to live as an adjunct between Rutgers and Montclair State.  Montclair was a 70-mile drive, so between classes I started reading voraciously.  Ironically, the commute to my 9-2-5 spurred me to start writing books again.  By then I was practically fifty.  Since my nonfiction books take about five years to write, well, the math’s not in my favor.  Time to stop my musing, because the 9-2-5 begins shortly.

Ancient Asherah

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It seems like ancient history.  Actually, it is ancient history.  Ancient history with a new angle.  A Reassessment of Asherah is finally available in paperback.  Although my research has moved in a different direction, an author cares for all of their books and Asherah is my firstborn.  My doctoral dissertation originally, what separates it from many proposals I now see as an editor, is that it has a broad topic and some native sense of writing.  I have always eschewed technical jargon.  Academese obfuscates.  And is boring to read.  In any case, being young and naive, at the instruction of one of my doctoral supervisors, I sent it to the distinguished series AOAT (Alter Orient und Altes Testament), published in Germany.  It came out as an expensive hardcover and sold through its only print run.

Years later, evicted from academia, I found a foothold in publishing at Gorgias Press.  The owner of the press did something that even Eisenbrauns couldn’t, he talked what was then Ugarit Verlag into granting Gorgias the rights to republish my out-of-print book.  But he decided to do it in hardcover, so it was still too expensive for most potential readers.  Also, to make this a proper second edition, I added all of the articles I’d written about Asherah as well as the original text of the AOAT version.  If I recall correctly, it sold pretty well for Gorgias.  I moved on to other things.  Weathering the Psalms had been written before my career malfunction, but publishing that made me realize I could still write expensive books with low sales.

Four books further along, all on aspects of horror, a friend did the impossible.  He talked Gorgias Press into publishing a paperback of A Reassessment of Asherah, without my prompting.  For the first time in the thirty-plus years that the book has been available, it is now “individually priced.”  Please keep in mind, though, before emptying out your bank account, that “individually priced” here is still in the academic realm.  It seems the minimum price for books in this category is around $40, which is a bit steep for most of us.  But still, it is a new thing in the academic world.  I do hope that someone more persuasive than me might talk to Bloomsbury about a paperback of Nightmares with the Bible.  That has been, as far as I can tell, the poorest performing of all my expensive books.  It’s also the one that, I suspect, would have some individual readers.

Brutal Boys

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Some time back I posted about Steffanie Holmes’ Pretty Girls Make Graves.  It was a first book in a duology and since I’d been trying to keep up with dark academia, it was a recommended exemplar.  As I mentioned in that post, the book ends with a cliffhanger, so I got to Brutal Boys Cry Blood as quickly as I could.  Holmes is a prolific self-publishing author and I found Pretty Girls much better written than the majority of self-published material I’ve read.  Brutal Boys picks up right where the previous novel left off, freeing George Fisher from her predicament and moving her into new ones.  At Blackfriars University, George is investigating the death of her former roommate.  The Orpheus Society, consisting of old money blue bloods, seems to be involved in more than wanton destruction of property and orgies.

Much of the first half of Brutal Boys sets the scene for a relatively happy period in George’s life.  She establishes a polyamorous relationship with the uberwealthy student William Windsor-Forsyth and Father Sebastian Pearce, a teacher and college chaplain.  The three of them are mutually in love, but even as George is admitted the Orpheus Society, a deeper part of the sect emerges.  This group is even more insidious and has designs on human sacrifice.  But I’ve already said too much.

Reading is, of course, a subjective exercise.  My personal experience of this duology is that the first book is better than the second.  It’s not that I feel Brutal Boys is a bad story—it keeps your interest pretty much the whole way through—it just seems to be far more improbable than the first novel.  It is fiction, of course, and there is nothing speculative here.  There are no ghosts or monsters or divine intervention.  Speaking strictly for me, it might’ve helped with believability if there were a little of this.  I was not one of those swept away by Donna Tartt’s inaugural dark academia novel The Secret History, but she did include just a little of a speculative element that allows for a reader to perhaps convince him or herself that this might just possibly happen.  Some writers and readers prefer not to use that escape hatch.  I’ve read good dark academia both with and without speculative aspects to the story, but to me, such mystery adds a little depth to what might be happening.  And I admire self-publishing authors who write well enough to draw you into a second book, which can be a rare thing.

Name Your State

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My grandfather’s name was Homer.  I’ve often wondered about that since he was from a long line of uneducated farmers.  Since he was born in Bath, New York, and since I’ve poked around upstate for genealogical purposes, I noticed that there were several place names derived from the classics, including Homer.  I suspect that’s where his name came from.  His ancestors had biblical names.  This got me to wondering about the many upstate classics town names of Utica, Syracuse, Ithaca, Corfu, Palmyra, and more.  A little (very little) research led me to Robert Harpur.  Harpur was a one-time clerk in the New York State Surveyor General’s office, and he assigned names to several towns, using classical sources.  I haven’t found a comprehensive list, but all of this makes me homesick for upstate, a place I’ve never lived.

My Homer

My mother’s paternal line had deep roots in New York state.  Nobody in the family went to college, although my grandfather did take a couple of courses at Cornell to qualify as a country teacher.  Then, many years later, my daughter moved to Ithaca.  We spent many fine weekends there and would’ve moved there had we been able to afford it.  It was a kind of homecoming.  But the connections have a way of wending their way around, as they often do.  Robert Harpur settled in Binghamton, New York.  Harpur College, now Binghamton University, State University of New York, was named after him.  Not aware of any of this, my daughter attended Binghamton University.  (There was even a picture of me on their website for a while, a photo snapped by someone as I sat in the financial aid office one parents’ weekend, begging for more money.)  I have no way of proving this, but it seems that Harpur’s interest in the classics may have led to my grandfather’s unusual Christian name.

Here’s where it gets interesting.  Homer had a sister named Helen.  Of Troy?  (There’s also a Troy, New York.)  Perhaps a family name?  My records don’t really answer that for me.  And they had a brother named Ira.  Ira is a biblical name, but it also may be a variant of the name Hera, the wife of Zeus.  This had nothing to do with my writing my dissertation on Asherah, who is perhaps the namesake of Hera, or at least it has been proposed.  I doubt my ancestors would’ve named a son after a Greek goddess (the family was of Teutonic origins).  Or maybe great-grandpa Adam was more educated than he let on and had read the Iliad?  If only I could afford to get back to Ithaca I might just go on an odyssey of my own.

Not Intelligent

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The day AI was released—and I’m looking at you, Chat GPT—research died.  I work with high-level academics and many have jumped on the bandwagon despite the fact that AI cannot think and it’s horrible for the environment.  Let me say that first part again, AI cannot think.  I read a recent article where an author engaged AI about her work.  It is worth reading at length.  In short, AI makes stuff up.  It does not think—I say again, it cannot think—and tries to convince people that it can.  In principle, I do not even look at Google’s AI generated answers when I search.  I’d rather go to a website created by one of my own species.  I even heard from someone recently that AI could be compared to demons.  (Not in a literal way.)  I wonder if there’s some truth to that.

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

I would’ve thought that academics, aware of the propensity of AI to give false information, would have shunned it.  Made a stand.  Lots of people are pressured, I know, by brutal schedules and high demands on the part of their managers (ugh!).  AI is a time cutter.  It’s also a corner cutter.  What if that issue you ask it about is one about which it’s lying?  (Here again, the article I mention is instructive.)  We know that it has that tendency rampant among politicians, to avoid the truth.  Yet it is being trusted, more and more.  When first ousted from the academy, I found research online difficult, if not impossible.  Verifying sources was difficult, if it could be done at all.  Since nullius in verba is something to which I aspire, this was a problem.  Now publishers, even academic ones, are talking about little else but AI.

I recently watched a movie that had been altered on Amazon Prime without those who’d “bought” it being told.  A crucial scene was omitted due to someone’s scruples.  I’ve purchased books online and when the supplier goes bust, you lose what you paid for.  Electronic existence isn’t our savior.  Before GPS became necessary, I’d drive through major cities with a paper map and common sense.  Sometimes it even got me there quicker than AI seems to.  And sometimes you just want to take the scenic route.  Ever since consumerism has been pushed by the government, people have allowed their concerns about quality to erode.  Quick and cheap, thank you, then to the landfill.  I’m no longer an academic, but were I, I would not use AI.  I believe in actual research and I believe, with Mulder, that the truth is out there.

Dark Introduction

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Since I’ve discovered that I live in dark academia, I’ve grown curious.  Kara Muller has put together The Little Book of Dark Academia as a kind of first step in the discussion.  I have learned that some academic articles on dark academia are starting to appear, but this is pitched more toward those who maybe need some tips on how to get started.  By the way, this is a full-color, heavily illustrated book.  In practical terms, that means it doesn’t take too long to read it.  It’s also self-published, so less expensive than many books, but without editorial shaping.  It begins with history and definitions.  The term came into use in 2015 but the concept had been around much longer than that.  Sometimes a label is necessary to bring together thought on something that’s been floating around for a while.  As Muller points out, it tends to revolve around books.

My imagination isn’t so constrained as to believe that ebooks have no place in dark academia; they have their own special kind of darkness.  Still, the setting for these stories often takes place in real life, in studies and libraries full of books.  This is not a Star Wars paperless universe.  Muller gives a list of acclaimed dark academia titles with a brief paragraph or two about them.  In other words, a reading list.  And also a movie viewing list.  She also includes some television series that fit the aesthetic.  If you’re in the mood for dark academia, you’ll find plenty of places to indulge your hunger here.  The lists aren’t comprehensive, of course.  A bit of searching online indicates that many such lists exist, not all of them in full agreement.

Muller then presents a section on style and design.  Dark academia is, in many ways, like cosplay.  There’s a look and feel to it that can be emulated.  And I can’t help but say it’s backward looking.  A longing for classical education, the way that it used to be.  To me, this seems to be behind much of the current fascination with it.  This lifestyle is rapidly disappearing.  Even professors are now using AI instead of getting their hands dirty in the library.  And publishing online rather than in print form.  Showing up to class in tee-shirts and jeans.  Some of us, and I count myself in their midst, miss the feel of armloads of books and professors that wore tweed and could read arcane languages.  And nobody was trying to cut their funds because, well, the world was smarter then.  And everyone knew education was important.

Dark Poetry

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Playful.  Serious. Weird.  Very intelligent.  These are the words that come to mind.  Adrienne Raphel’s Our Dark Academia is a poetry book unlike any other I’ve read.  The poems take many forms from impressionistic reflections on life to a crossword puzzle.  From cutout paper-doll clothes to a faux Wikipedia article on dark academia.  It’s quite difficult to summarize since it’s more of an experience than anything else.  It’s the kind of book that makes you want to get to know the author.  Economy of language and an ability to manipulate words are required for poetry, and although I still dabble in it now and again, my tortured mind finds long-form prose a bit easier to produce.  I do try to keep these blog posts short, but I write a lot of other stuff as well.  In any case, Raphel’s keen intellect is obvious throughout this collection.  And she holds a doctorate from Harvard.

I’ve been exploring what is now being called dark academia pretty much my entire life.  And it has an articulate spokesperson here.  The academic life, although I love it, isn’t always the cushy existence it’s thought to be.  It requires a lot of work and long hours.  Those jealous of the lifestyle probably know it by fantasy.  It has taken a hard turn towards the political since about the seventies, something I didn’t know as I enrolled in a doctoral program in the next decade.  You learn by experience, and it’s clear Raphel has that.  The life of the adjunct instructor, which I tried to live for two years, demonstrates the inhumane things educated people can do to one another.  Of course it’s because of money.  In a late capitalist society, what else really matters?

One thing I know about myself is that I tend to take on the characteristics of authors I read, while I’m reading them, if they have distinctive voices.  Thought processes carry on in the mind even after a book is put down.  I find reading endlessly fascinating and wish I could share this enthusiasm with everyone.  I have to stop and remind myself, however, that our society only works with those who are doers as well as thinkers.  It works best, it seems to me, when those who are thinkers are in charge.  But not all thinkers are good.  My solution, at the moment, would be to have them read Our Dark Academia.

Mexican Philosophy

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Once upon a time, I applied for a teaching post at Syracuse University.  (Actually, twice upon a time, but that’s a longer story.)  I was able to gather that one reason I failed to merit an interview was that the religion department prided itself on its dedication to continental philosophy.  Lacking imagination, I couldn’t see how that might apply to teaching Hebrew Bible but then again, I don’t know much.  I’m starting off with than anecdote because it is in keeping with the spirit of Carlos Alberto Sánchez’s excellent Blooming in the Ruins: How Mexican Philosophy Can Guide Us toward the Good Life.  I recently wrote about how reading philosophy is something I enjoy when I can find the time, but what really struck me about this book is that Mexican philosophy is a counter to continental (i.e., European) philosophy and it is much closer to my own outlook.  I’m not in any danger of being offered a new job so it’s safe to say so.

I actually picked up a copy of Sánchez’s book because of a chapter that I’d read.  Much of the work begins with anecdotal accounts, followed on by something original, amplified, and solid (you’ll need to read the book to flesh that out).  Mexican philosophy rejects the idea of universals because each of us is socially located.  What may have seemed universal to European philosophers of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, many of them quite privileged, simply doesn’t apply to a person raised poor in Mexico.  (Or Pennsylvania, for that matter.)  I read the continental philosophers in school, but they had not had my experiences.  My traumas.  And yes, Sánchez emphasizes that trauma is part of the picture.

While I can’t summarize this wonderful little book here, I can recommend it.  If you have an interest in the larger questions, and if you want some philosophy that doesn’t try to impress you with big words and complex grammatical formulations, this may be for you.  Sánchez writes as if he’d be willing to sit down with you and discuss the matters that make life worth talking about.  The chapter that sold me on his book was the one on the Mexican view of death.  It is only one of several that deserve a bit of your time to chew over.  So I was not welcome among those who specialize in continental philosophy.  Maybe I was looking in the wrong place.  Maybe those who are open to homegrown thinkers of sometimes deep thoughts live south of the border.

Editorializing

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One of the realities of being an editor is that you have authors consistently ignore your advice and then ask you for solutions when what you predicted would happen does.  Oh, that sentence!  Let me put it this way: there used to be a time when simultaneous submission was frowned upon.  Even “forbidden” by some publishers.  The internet has changed all that.  Publishers who won’t accept submissions if anyone else is also considering them, lose out.  There are lots of publishers out there.  Many more than most people think.  Some of them are small and fly-by-night, but others are also ultra-specialized so they can hit their markets.  Even among academic publishers there are many to choose from.  If you submit to only one, wait to hear, and then get a “no,” you have to start all over again.  Or submit simultaneously.

Peer review can take a long time.  I mean a l-o-n-g time.  Especially since the pandemic, but even before, overwrought academics have trouble committing to adding one more thing to their plates.  If they do accept a review offer, the response is likely to be quite late; more often after the deadline than before.  I’ve been an anxious author waiting.  It’s the kind of limbo few actually enjoy.  It’s a reality, however.  If your book is about current events, or something trending, well, godspeed.  That’s a tough place to be.  Submitting to more than one publisher at a time gives you the leg up of not losing time if someone turns you down.  Some authors prefer a certain publisher and want to hold out for them.  Publishers get lots of proposals.  If I had so many proposals when I was in college I wouldn’t have been nearly so lonely.  Holding out is bad dating advice.

The best piece of editorial advice I can muster is to research publishers.  Academics are researchers by nature, but few take the time to research publishers.  There’s plenty of information out there.  When I couldn’t get an agent interested in Holy Horror, I turned to McFarland.  Why?  Because I’d familiarized myself with the kinds of books they publish and mine seemed a good fit for them.  Sure, there were more prestigious places to go, but I’m a bit too busy to bang my head against that wall all day.  Even a little bit of web searching on publishers can pay off.  Publishing is a business.  Never forget that.  If you only want to get your ideas out there, starting a website (which isn’t expensive) is probably a better way than getting a book published.  Writing books is great, and getting them published is incredibly validating.  But do yourself a favor, if your editor suggests a course of action to you, take it.

A Glimmer

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You just never know.  A few months back I emailed Liverpool University Press because my book, The Wicker Man, has apparently not sold any copies.  I had never received (have still never received) a royalty statement or any payment.  Now, I’m willing to accept that no copies have sold.  I’m not a recognized name and a bigger book came out in 2023, the fiftieth anniversary of the film.  I moved on.  Then, the day before my Sleepy Hollow as American Myth copies were scheduled to arrive, a friend sent me a text that made my day.  He’d seen on the MIT bookstore staff picks shelf, a copy of my humble little book.  I was floored.  Someone had read it and liked it.  And MIT!  I mean, that’s worth celebrating.  It also made me curious.

Image credit: a friend

I checked a website that tracks classroom adoptions.  The Wicker Man had been adopted for a class at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.  Ironically, just the day before my friend’s text arrived, a colleague at a nearby seminary asked if I’d come and give a talk about Weathering the Psalms.  This is all very dizzying to me.  I am an obscure private intellectual because no schools will open resident scholar or any other such non-tenure positions to me.  I can’t even verify myself on Google Scholar.  But a few people, it seems, have found my books.  In case you might think otherwise, I’m very well aware that the scholarly world is small (and the current administration would like to make it smaller by the day).  But I tend to think of myself as lost in that small world.

The Wicker Man was a departure for me, as is Sleepy Hollow as American Myth.  In these two books I moved away from my identity as a scholar of religion.  Don’t get me wrong, I’ve used my background and experience, and even latent knowledge of religious studies in both books, but they aren’t fronting religion.  It remains to be seen if the just curious will pick them up.  I know many people don’t default to, “I find this interesting, I’ll buy a book on it,” as I do.  And I’m more than willing to suppose that others aren’t interested in what I have to say.  Still, just when I’m starting to feel down on all my efforts, a little ray of hope shines through.  Someone in a bookstore somewhere has recommended one of my books.  And it feels good.

Publish, Perish

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Publish or perish has been around for quite a while and I feel for younger scholars who are trying to publish their collected essays as their second book.  Collected essays, in case you’re not familiar with dark academia, are generally what senior scholars do before they retire and they can’t be bothered to rewrite everything into a proper book.  Or maybe the topics are disparate and don’t easily fit together in one category.  When I was teaching the general rule was an article a year and a second book for tenure.  I was able to do this without a sabbatical, and with a heavy teaching load and administrative duties at Nashotah House.  It’s a lot of work.  My biggest challenge was coming up with ideas for new books.  Eventually I published my collected essays on Asherah in the second edition of my dissertation.

I’d written a 50-page article on Shapshu, the Ugaritic sun deity, that was intended to be my second book.  Then J. C. L. Gibson retired and I had to have something for his Festschrift.  There it went.   It was about that time that I started Weathering the Psalms.  That was my “tenure book.”  There was over a decade between that and Holy Horror, for a number of reasons.  The main one was that I was trying to cobble together a career between Gorgias Press and moonlighting as an adjunct at Rutgers University.  There was no time for research and publication.  Ironically, that only came after I gave up academia to enter the commercial world of publishing.  I see younger scholars now expected to produce that second book, and some of them go for the collected essays approach.  I understand.

Back when I was applying for first jobs—and the scene was already very tight, I assure you, despite promises just a few years earlier—I applied for everything.  One search committee chair wrote a scolding letter saying I wasn’t senior enough to apply.  By the end of his dressing down, he concluded with something along the lines of “unless you’re applying because there are so few positions, in which case it’s understandable.”  He was right.  So few jobs and so much student debt!  I landed at Nashotah and began cranking out the articles.  In a moment of weakness I offered to write some further academic treatments after my horror movie books appeared.  They don’t do anything for my career, of course.  And they take away time from popular writing practice.  Who knows?  Maybe some day I’ll gather them into a book.  Then again, maybe I’ll find myself growing younger too.