Dark Academia

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Dark academia is the new gothic.  It’s all the rage on the internet, as I found out by releasing a YouTube video on the topic that quickly became my most popular.  Still, I was surprised and flattered when Rent. asked me my opinion on the dark academia aesthetic.  You should check out their article here.  What drew me to dark academia is having lived it.  Although the conservatism often rubbed me the wrong way, Nashotah House was a gothic institution with skeletons in closets and ghosts in the corridors.  Tales of hauntings were rife and something about living on a campus isolated from civilization lends itself to abuses.  An on-campus cemetery.  Even the focus on chapel and confession of sins implied much had to be forgiven.  The things we do to each other in the name of a “pure” theology.  Lives wrecked.  And then hidden.

I entered all of this naive and with the eagerness of a puppy.  I was Episcopalian and I had attended the pensive and powerful masses at the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill in Boston.  I was open to the mystery and possibilities even as I could see the danger in the dogmatic stares of the trustees.  It was a wooded campus on the shores of a small lake.  A lake upon which, after I left, one of the professors drowned in a sudden windstorm.  I awoke during thunderstorms so fierce that I was certain the stone walls of the Fort would not hold up.  Disused chapels full of dead black flies.  Secret meetings to remove those who wouldn’t lock step.  This was the stuff of a P. D. James novel.  Students at the time even called it Hogwarts.  They decided I was the master of Ravenclaw.

Fourteen years of my life were spent there.  I worked away at research and writing in my book-lined study painted burgundy.  Is it any wonder that I find dark academia compelling?  I’ve often written, when discussing horror films on this blog, that gothic stories are my favorites.  Even the modern research university can participate.  Professors, isolated and often unaware of what’s happening outside their specializations, still prefer print books and a nice chair in which to read them.  And, of course, I’d read for my doctorate in Edinburgh, one of the gothic capitals of Europe.   Even Grove City College had its share of dark corners and well-kept secrets.  What goes on in that rarified atmosphere known as a college campus?  The possibilities are endless.  On a stormy night you can feel it in your very soul.

That article again: Dark Academia Room Decor: Aesthetic Secrets Revealed

Prophetic Cookie?

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I have no idea if they really exist in China, but the Chinese fortune cookie is ubiquitous in the United States.  I’m assuming that China isn’t tracking them to know where Americans eat, but I do often wonder about what’s inside.  Many years ago I noticed that the “fortune” aspect had dropped out.  Predictions weren’t made any more and your typical cookie had an anodyne, but sometimes witty reflection in it.  They might’ve been called “aphorism cookies.”  Well, that all changed for me after a meal that included said cookies.  I was surprised to see an actual prediction, and, not only that, but one that was strangely apt.  It reads, “You will make important academic connections in March.”  Considering that academics make up a minuscule part of the population, that seems oddly specific, doesn’t it?  And with a date—March.  This differs qualitatively from “Leadership is action, not position.”

There are other future-oriented prophecies in cookies, of course.  “You will become known for your generosity.”  (Gee, that’s nice.)  Or “A short vacation is in order for you.”  But I’ve decided to hang onto this academic fortune to see if it might come true.  I do have many, many academic connections, of course.  That’s part of my job.  And I was an academic myself in my palmier days.  But what seems strange to me is that many people reading “academic” in a fortune would automatically dismiss it, I suspect.  An important academic connection, no less.  Knowing a professor, from my experience, often doesn’t help in getting you anywhere.  I value their friendships, of course, but it hasn’t sold more books.  Or got me that teaching job I still covet.

Will the cookie prevail where other measures have fallen short?  I have to wait a few months to find out.  And more importantly, I have to remember this fortune.  I can, I suppose, put it on my bulletin board amid the Sleepy Hollow and other mementos and hope that half a year from now that I’ll recollect this little post, and that little cookie.  Of course, if someone offers me a job at a local college in March I’ll consider the deal sealed—the cookie was wise.  If nothing apparently happens, however, I’ll still have to wait beyond that to see if something emerges from my many daily interactions with academics.  Maybe one of them will truly be listening.  That’s the thing about predictions—they’re as much interpretation as they are prognostication.

The Publishing Self

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One of the things I noticed while researching Sleepy Hollow as American Myth was that many resources on the legend were buried in self-published editions of the “book” itself.  And other material about the legend was from self-published sources.  This lack of serious attention was behind my writing of the book.  Clearly the story is an integral part of American Halloween and Halloween is a big business.  Why aren’t mainstream publishers interested?  (I tried several agents but nobody seemed terribly drawn to the project.)  In any case, my thoughts today are about self-publishing.  Some of these self-published books aren’t even listed on Amazon, which is pretty amazing.  I even found one that apparently lacks an ISBN!  The author’s website (the only place it can be purchased) lists it as out of stock.  Self-publishing must require vigilance in order to be a way to make a living.

The profits from self-publishing are likely better than publishing with an academic press.  (Unless, of course, you’re given the rare trade treatment.)  If you’ve ever tried to find a publisher, the urge to self-publish is understandable.  The publishing world tends to be cliquish.  The same names keep coming up time and again.  If you’re friends with one of them, well, you can get in the door.  And mainstream publishing, surprisingly, doesn’t really like new ideas.  Most publishers prefer to keep on acquiring titles in the vein of one of their successes.  “More like this,” you can imagine them saying in their sleep.  New ideas are untested and may flop.  Bestselling authors seldom flop and those who imitate them often get a seat at the table.  The rest are left to self-publishing, or perhaps academic publishing.

I’ve read many self-published books and most of them have led to disappointment.  You see, a book is better if someone reacts against it.  The problem in mainstream publishing is the reaction against is generally a rejection and that means even if you improve you still have to publish yourself.  I was sorely tempted to self-publish a book before Holy Horror.  Having found a publisher for that book somewhat painlessly (the agents weren’t impressed with it either), led me to keep on going.  Nightmares with the Bible and The Wicker Man were both series books, so again, fairly straightforward.  Sleepy Hollow as American Myth followed the track of Holy Horror.  Written not for a series, I tried to find an agent, failed, and again turned to McFarland.  At least they’ll publish it in paperback.  I’m still discovering self-published books on Sleepy Hollow that I missed in the writing of my book.  For all its faults, academic publishing at least generally offers a good bibliography.

Dictionary Dreams

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“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.”  Thus begins the venerated Nunc dimittis, familiar from so many years of chanting evensong at Nashotah House.  It comes to mind when I’ve reached a milestone I never dreamed of attaining.  One that makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished my life’s work.  Strangely, it didn’t occur when my name ended up in a study Bible’s front matter.  But a friend recently sent me a note that immediately brought old Simeon’s words to mind.  I have been cited in the Oxford English Dictionary.  My book Weathering the Psalms is quoted (in the web version) under “simile.”  I have no idea how examples are selected for the OED.  It used to be scraps of paper sent in by astute readers, but I suspect things have changed.  How my obscure book ended up there, I haven’t a clue.

There’s an irony here as well.  Like most academics clueless about publication, I initially proposed Weathering the Psalms to Oxford University Press, assuming they published such things.  It was turned down on the basis of a reviewer—one or two I know not—that I later met at a social function, where he was clearly embarrassed.  I really just wonder how the OED found the book to cite in the first place.  In terms of copies sold, it has been my most successful book, but that’s not saying much.  As far as I can tell, it’s only sold less than 400 copies (the royalty statements don’t have the total and I haven’t received a check in years).  I guess all things in the world are connected, whether we notice it or not.

Those who know me personally are aware that validation is a huge thing for me.  I suspect that is true of most people who grew up in difficult circumstances and who managed—and this is never a certain thing—to pull themselves out.  Having been fired from my long-term teaching post (where I was working on this book) only made me want to prove myself more, I guess.  Insignificant things like getting a Choice review for one of my books (which continues to sell poorly) and having that behemoth of a dictionary notice that I used a fairly common word in a fairly common way do tend to release the endorphins.  It’s like maybe someone noticed that I’ve passed this way.  Maybe there was a reason for trying to capture the Wisconsin thunderstorms in a book about the Psalms.  Maybe there’s a reason each working day there concluded with the Nunc dimittis.

Second One

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Twice in a week.  I heard (actually read) a term I’d never encountered before.  It’s one of those rare beasts—an “academic meme.”  It means nothing to most normal citizens, but it has already achieved currency in academia and on various web platforms.  What is it?  “Reviewer 2.”  Or “Reader 2.”  If that means nothing to you, you’re normal.  If you wonder, however, what this is about, read on.  (Since my posts average two readers, it seems, this is an appropriate topic.)  When universities and/or editors do their jobs, they rely on peer review.  The idea is simple enough—two recognized experts (sometimes three or more) are asked to read a dissertation, an article, or a proposed book.  They then provide their opinion.  “Reader 2” (or “Reviewer 2”) has become shorthand for the one that torpedos a project.

Getting academics to agree on anything is like the proverbial herding of cats.  Academics tend to be free thinkers and strongly individualized.  (Perhaps neurodivergent.)  I know from my nearly fifteen years of experience that the most common results when you have two reviewers is two different opinions.  Often polar opposite ones at that.  One suggestion for the origin of “Reader 2” is that some editors, or dissertation committees, wanting to spare an author’s feelings, put the positive review first, followed by dreaded “Reader 2.”  Others suggest that it’s just a meme and that over time (internet speed) the meme came to mean “Reviewer 2” was harsh and mean spirited.  The thing is, once a meme is out there it’s difficult to stop.  Now, apparently, a generation has made “Reader 2,” well, a thing.

This has been floating around for a while, apparently.  I only heard it recently and it occurred to me that I’m missing out in the new academia mystique that the internet has created.  My most popular YouTube video is one I did on “dark academia.”  I wasn’t aware this is a hot topic among the internet generation.  There is a good dose of the unknown regarding what goes on within those ivory towers where the majority of people never go.  My own experience of academia was gothic, as I explain in that video.  I have a follow-up ready to record, but outside academe finding time with a 9-2-5 and a lawn that needs mowing and weeds that just won’t stop growing, well, that’s my excuse.  Whether it’s valid or not will depend upon your assessment, my two readers.

Unique?

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Is it embarrassing, or simply confirmation?  It used to be considered embarrassing to show up at an event dressed identically to someone else, if it wasn’t intentional.  It was considered, in some way, a slight on your personal expression.  This happened to me while still commuting when another employee and I had worn a very similar shirt for an event at work.  (He was more embarrassed than I was, for the record.)  What often feels more embarrassing to me is when I notice something I’ve never seen anybody else write about, get it all written up, and then discover that someone posted something similar on the internet someplace.  It has happened more than once—indeed, many times.  I feel embarrassed for not having known about the observation, no matter in how an obscure virtual a corner it was kept.

Perhaps these are just growing pains for the terminally curious.  Some of us constantly observe things we find curious, and start to connect the dots.  Someone else might’ve gone over this conundrum before, the way you pick up a waiting room magazine only to find the crossword puzzle already done.  What gives me hope in such circumstances are twofold facts: that someone else has spotted this confirms my observations, and that my interpretation is different from theirs.  My great fear, however, is that someone might think I’ve plagiarized.  This is a mortal sin for academics.  I would simply note that many of us read lots of stuff without noting where, and that I would remember if I intentionally lifted an idea from something somebody else pointed out.

I’m sure there are many examples of this on this blog.  Apart from posts that reflect an experience unique to yours truly, that is.  It’s getting tricky to say anything that hasn’t been said.  A recent newsworthy event occurred that called for comment from someone with my background.  By the time I’d scrawled a first sentence about it, others had written, and posted, full articles conveying what I would’ve had to say about the thing.  Embarrassing.  It has also made publishing much harder.  Even small, independent publishers in the non-academic sector only consider books sent from agents.  And agents are nothing if not aloof.  Too many submissions from too many wannabes.  Is there anything unusual, remarkable, here at all?  I’d say it’s my perspective.  Others can string words together.  Others can even buy the same cheap shirt that I purchase.  But they don’t see it from my angle.  Of that I’m certain.  Ask anybody else who’s made a similar observation.  They’ll confirm it.

Is That Cookie Free?

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I offer free editorial advice here, from time to time.  Not many academics, I expect, pay any notice—what have they to learn from a mere editor?  Still, it’s a public service, so here goes.  It really pays to do your research.  I don’t mean about the topic of your book, but research into what publishing is and how it works.  Some authors, for example, think that if they pay an Open Access fee their book will get bells and whistles that other mere monographs won’t.  They underestimate how much it costs to print a book, especially when they’ve already undercut their own sales by making it available for free online.  There some basic business sense lacking here.  There’s a free cookie but then there’s also giving away the whole box.  Who’s going to buy what’s free?  (There are good reasons for Open Access publishing, but wishing for special favors isn’t one of them.)

Photo by Food Photographer | Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

I make no claims to be some kind of publishing guru.  I tend to think of myself as a guy who got lost along the way, career-wise.  But I’ve learned that I wish I’d known more about publishing when I was teaching.  I see the same rookie mistakes over and over and over again, made even by senior scholars sometimes.  I remember, however, when I was teaching.  It never even occurred to me to find out anything about publishing.  In the academic’s eyes, publishers are there to serve up what researchers discover.  To a point that’s true, but publishers vary quite widely in their tolerance for the purely academic exercise.  You see, you actually have to sell books to stay in business, and if your research to too obscure, well, I guess you could try to find some Open Access funding.

One of the things that amazes me about the biz is just how many academics assume that editors are menial workers in the larger enterprise of getting their important ideas in print.  My time in publishing has been an education in itself.  I may not have time to keep up with Ancient West Asian studies anymore (the draw is still there, but it’s a terribly expensive habit).  Horror’s a bit easier to handle since you really have only about two centuries to cover, rather than four millennia.  But I can’t help but muse on what a missed opportunity presents itself when a free cookie is passed up.  It’s far easier to stay wrapped in that academic shell than it is to try to break out and discover what is freely offered.  Strange how the world works sometimes. Have a cookie…

Running on Irony

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I recently remarked that my life runs on irony.  I was thinking back to when I was trying to get out of Gorgias Press (long story) and I was interviewed by Irving Louis Horowitz, founder of Transaction Press.  He listened to my account of myself and said, “What you need is a leg up.”  He didn’t offer me that leg up, but I always remembered his kindness in giving me a shot at a non-existent position.  As it turned out, I was hired a couple years later by Routledge.  Routledge is owned by Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.  Publishers grow in two main ways: by the volume of books that sell well, and by acquiring other companies.  While at Routledge we were encouraged to talk to those higher on the ladder about prospects for acquisition.  I made a small case to one executive about acquiring Transaction and was summarily dismissed.

Then I was actually dismissed.  For reasons never explained, I was handed a pink slip the day after returning from a business trip to Arizona.  So life goes.  I found another job, more stable, in the academic publishing world.  One day I was recollecting my conversation with Irving Horowitz.  I’d contacted Transaction out of the blue because it was based in Piscataway, New Jersey.  Gorgias Press was also located in Piscataway, and I’d moved my family to nearby Somerville so that the commute would be only fifteen to twenty minutes.  (I was so naive about commutes at the time.)  Besides, that semester I’d been assigned to teach on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University as an adjunct, and Transaction operated out of a building either on or adjacent to Livingston.  It all seemed right.  Except it never happened.

After Routledge let me ago, I again contacted Transaction.  I knew that Horowitz had passed away but his widow sent me a packet of information that I never opened because a job offer had been made by my current employer by the time I received it.  After some time I’d heard that Transaction had been acquired.  The irony was that the publisher is now considered defunct because of the acquisition.  In my reverie, I decided to look up by whom.  Of course, Taylor & Francis had bought Transaction and rolled it into Routledge.  I am absolutely convinced my sophomore suggestion had nothing to do with this this.  Someone else, probably higher up, had noticed a smaller press ready for assimilation.  I’m pretty sure that I didn’t keep the somewhat hefty envelope I’d received from Transaction when I was again in need of a job.  If I had, and if it had contained an offer, I would’ve found myself again working for the company that had let me go.  My life runs on irony indeed. 

Academic Politics

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Being the curious sort, I followed up on the post I dropped the day before Valentines.  I had written about Scholars Press and how details were hard to find.  I kept digging after that post.  I learned some things.  The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) used to meet regularly with the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR).  ASOR was all about archaeology.  Then, in the year 1969 SBL and the American Academy of Religion (AAR), formed the Council for the Study of Religion.  The next year they began holding their conferences together.  ASOR was still part of it.  In fact, the three societies, along with Brown University, formed Scholars Press.  (For those in the know, this is why SBL now publishes Brown Judaic Studies.)  Scholars Press churned along, but ASOR was increasingly being shunted aside.  The conference started being called AAR/SBL, with no ASOR.  In 1997 (I remember this personally) ASOR started holding separate conferences.

Two years later, in 1999, Scholars Press dissolved.  SBL, the oldest of the societies, began publishing as Society of Biblical Literature.  AAR partnered with Oxford University Press to do their publishing.  (By the by, AAR started out as Association of Biblical Instructors in American Colleges and Secondary Schools).  ASOR went its own way, and Brown settled on SBL to continue its religious studies publishing.  As a young scholar, I was a member of all three societies.  (I didn’t attend Brown, though.  But I did go to a graduation there once, if that counts.)  I wondered why they couldn’t get along.  In a word, it was because of politics.

Those who know me personally likely know that I have tried to pursue the ordination track in three different denominations.  What they may not know is that the reason I never got through the process was, you guessed it, politics.  I started to learn, when in college, just how many power plays were involved in covens of ministers.  When dealing with the ultimate power, I guess, everyone wants to get the upper hand.  That bothered me as a seminarian.  The second and third denominations both showed their politics up front, and those sharp, flashing teeth made me realize that I’d never be free of politicking had I moved ahead.  I suppose I could go be a hermit and live in the desert—I might escape it that way, but whenever two or three are gathered, the politics start to show.  ASOR, SBL, and AAR have quite a lot in common.  All are under threat as part of the dreaded “humanities” category, and yet that’s not enough to make them want to pull together.  Politics just go that way.

Local Gothic

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One of the most valuable aspects of the humanities is the range they give the imagination.  As an undergrad from a small town, I was astonished at the range of courses available in a liberal arts college.  Even so, I took only two in the literature department.  I wish I’d taken more.  You see, as someone who grew up poor, my reading has often been budget reading.  Used books found by chance and cheap editions in department stores of a town lacking bookshops.  I soon found that Gothic literature met my needs.  Alan Lloyd-Smith’s American Gothic Fiction: An Introduction is, as you might guess, a series book.  One of those books by an outsider analyzing a different culture’s literature, it is nevertheless quite good for the most part.  Until it decides, as many literary studies do, to go all theoretical.  Prior to that it’s very engaging.

For me it’s less the ideas than the mood of Gothic literature that I find engaging.  It creates a cozy feel, and when I read about Poe, Melville, and Hawthorne, I feel a sense of belonging.  Gothic transformed when it emigrated to America.  Lloyd-Smith does a great job of demonstrating how castles and cathedrals gave way to a landscape built by Native Americans, and an unexplored frontier.  How literature in America tended toward the Gothic from the beginning and even up to the point this book was written, hadn’t really effaced much at all.  Such things are inspiring to me.  It jumpstarted my own fiction writing again.  One curious feature, however, is that the book doesn’t discuss “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” at all, other than a passing reference to Burton’s film.  There’s quite a lot on Poe and company, Charles Brockden Brown, and some of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  Even Toni Morrison makes an appearance or two.  (He does cover Southern Gothic also.)

While this is clearly intended as a classroom book—wide, wide margins for note-taking, introductory level until chapter six—it is worthwhile reading for any curious adult interested in American literature.  My life has been a search for my tribe.  For many years it was a very religious search, that, unfortunately led to rejection that left me searching for a new home.  The horror community has been somewhat welcoming, and there’s something Gothic about that in its own right.  In any case, reading about Gothic brings its own melancholy joy.  I mostly enjoyed this book and learned quite a lot from it.  And, of course I bought it used.

In Public

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Mere days after my dentist appointment I had occasion to be back in the waiting room.  Of course I had a book with me.  Then my attention was caught by either a patient or someone waiting for a patient.  This man had not one, but two books with him.  He was poring over one of them, which was an older hardcover, like an academic.  Since I’d just posted about seeing nobody reading books, I felt I needed to publish a kind of, well, not exactly retraction, but reflection.  The sight of this man, about my age, was profoundly hopeful.  I have no idea who he was and waiting rooms are not generally where I choose to introduce myself.  I do sometimes weigh, however, the demerits of interrupting someone reading with the merits of meeting another reader.  We reading sorts can be private people, although reading in public marks us.

The book I happened to have had a bright, trade cover.  His were more somber and academic.  How could I, whose reading looked facile (it was not, but it looked like it might be) approach someone perhaps awaiting a root canal, who had some serious reading to do?  Two hardcovers bespeak serious business.  This made me reflect on another occasion in Easton.  Again, I was waiting for someone and it was summer so I sat outside on a curb, at the traffic circle, reading a book.  It was actually Toni Morrison’s Beloved.  Evening was falling.  A couple of coeds, or they seemed to eyes from my age, stopped and asked what I was reading.  I explained, and, unaccountably, they seemed never to have heard of Morrison, but were interested.  It was a teaching moment.

Back to the dentist office.  Had I missed out on the opportunity for a free lecture?  If this man were a professor, he’d likely have talked gladly about his work.  One thing I learned from being a professor myself is that people rarely ask about your work.  Yes, colleagues in the same field do, but even at Nashotah House with its small faculty, nobody seemed interested in the research of their colleagues.  As academic dean I even tried to institute a faculty seminar where we could read a paper and discuss it.  I was the only one who ever volunteered to do it.  In retrospect, it might’ve been a lost opportunity, that waiting room visit.  I’ve attended many medical appointments in my life, and finding a fellow reader at one of them was a bit of a silent gift.  I was glad to have been proven wrong.

Personal History

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Being an historian by disposition has its own rewards.  I relate to the chronicling monks of the Middle Ages and their eagerness to record things.  On a much smaller scale, I try to keep track of what has passed in my own small life.  As we all know, most days consist of a stunning sameness, particularly if you work 9-2-5.  Although your soul is evolving, capitalism’s cookie-cutter ensures a kind of ennui that vacation time, and travel in particular, breaks.  Travel is expensive, however.  A luxury item.  It’s also an education.  My wife and I began our life together overseas, living three years in Scotland.  We traveled as much as grad students could afford.  Gainfully employed in the United States, we made regular summer trips to Idaho, and often shorter trips closer to home in Wisconsin.

We repurposed an old, spiral bound, three-subject notebook to record our adventures.  It spanned twenty-two years.  When we moved to our house in 2018, this notebook was lost.  (A similar thing happened with an Historic Scotland booklet where we’d inscribed all the dates of properties visited.  It vanished somewhere in central Illinois in 1992.)  Recently, looking for an empty three-ring binder for my wife to use, I unexpectedly came across our old three-subject notebook.  The relief—maybe even ecstasy—it released was something only an historian could appreciate.  Here were the dates, times, and places that I thought had been lost from my life.  In that morass of years after Nashotah House my mind had gone into a kind of twilight of half-remembered forays to bring light to this harsh 9-2-5 world.  I carried the notebook around with me for days, not wanting to lose sight of it.

Those of us who write need to record things.  I’ve never been able to afford to be a world traveler.  The company’s dime sent me to the United Kingdom a few times, but overseas after Scotland has been more a reverie than a reality.  But now, at least, I could remember our domestic trips.  The notebook included ventures I’d forgotten.  You see, when you get back from a trip you have to begin the 9-2-5 the very next day, particularly if your company isn’t fond of holidays.  (This explains why I write so much about them.)  Pleasant memories get lost in the mundane cookie-cutter problems of everyday life.  And yet I could now face them with that rare joy known to historians.  I had a notebook next to me, ready for transcribing.  It was going to be a good day.

Campus Monster

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Universal was the studio that gave America its monsters.  Well, it wasn’t Universal alone, but the initial—almost canonical—line-up of monsters were Universal productions.  As horror grew to be more influenced by science-fiction in the 1950s, Universal kept at the monster-themed movies, cranking out many that I missed and on which I’ve been trying to catch up.  Monster on the Campus is interesting in a number of ways.  Directed by Jack Arnold, of Gilligan’s Island fame (or future fame, since this movie was earlier), it’s a story built around evolution.  Pipe-smoking professor Donald Blake has a coelacanth delivered to his lab.  Unbeknownst to him, the prehistoric fish had been irradiated with gamma rays to preserve it—as well as being shipped on ice.  The dead fish is about to create problems.

A dog laps up some of the blood (it started to thaw) and becomes a vicious evolutionary throwback.  Then Professor Blake cuts himself on a fish tooth and sticks his hand in the contaminated water.  He becomes a murderous caveman, but the effect is only temporary.  A dragonfly eating the fish transforms into a prehistoric insect that the professor kills, but its blood drips, unnoticed, into his pipe.  He changes and murders again.  Finally it dawn upon him that he was responsible for the murders.  In a remote cabin he sets up cameras and injects himself with the radioactive coelacanth plasma and ends up killing a park ranger.  Finally, he injects himself so that following police officers will shoot him to death.  Rather a bleak story.

The film has been read as social commentary since its “rediscovery,” but what caught my attention was the easy acceptance of evolution.  This was the late fifties and the creationist backlash was still pretty strong at the time.  If evolution didn’t occur, the professor (and dog and dragonfly) couldn’t have become their atavistic selves, giving the movie its plot.  The classic Universal monster of the decade was the Gill Man—aka Creature of the Black Lagoon—also an atavistic throwback to an earlier time, but also a divergent branch of evolution.  Creature was also directed by Jack Arnold, but four years earlier.  It began with a quote from Genesis 1, bringing creation and evolution together.  The title Monster on the Campus offers many possibilities for co-ed mayhem, but instead opts for a scientist who gets caught up in the tangle of evolution.  The movie was near the end of Universal’s monster run, but in the sixties horror would change forever.  This was a little fun before things got serious—horror school was about to start.

Life Course

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Curriculum vita.  The course of a life.  I see quite a few CVs, although I’m not on any search committees.  As I was examining one the other day I recollected how, when I first tried to put one together, I was told to leave high school and its achievements out of it.  Nobody’s really interested in that anymore.  Presumably college is an indication of choice whereas high school is a matter of where your parents live.  Or how much money they have.  College says something indicative about you.  Although many parents—not mine, to be clear—help bankroll college and may have a say in where you go, college is “your choice.”  Unbounded by geography, young people mostly old enough to take care of themselves, are given a really tremendous responsibility here.  And it was certainly influenced by high school.

Some choices are economic, and that also says something about a person.  Some are faith-based, which definitely says something about you.  Some are terribly ambitious, and those tend to get you the biggest head start on your life course.  Of course, some of us did not realize that.  Some of us, not sure if college would work or not, chose somewhere close to home.  Somewhere where escape, if needed, was possible.  And of course, your college shows up ever after on your CV.  I often wonder if things would’ve worked out differently if I’d gone somewhere else for college.  I needed somewhere understanding to shake me out of the false narrative I’d been told.  Had I gone somewhere more strident I might’ve retrenched in my pre-decided ideas.  Of course, those pre-decided ideas are what made me decide to go to college in the first place.

How can we possibly measure the course of a life?  From big event to big event?  So many of the meaningful bits occur in small spaces wedged in-between the large markers of who we are.  We can’t possibly know all the consequences of our choices, even as we attempt to select the right option at each step of the way.  And there’s no guarantee regarding the outcome.  Were it a feasible option I’d go back to college again—I would start at a different place this time—to test the results of my first decade of higher education.  For, I know, although a CV can reveal more than it might intend, it leaves much more unsaid than it can possibly say.

Conference Voice

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“Conference voice” is a phenomenon that began with my career malfunction.  While teaching I attended the AAR/SBL annual meeting every year but one.  Even the year that Nashotah House fired me I attended, through the generosity of a seminary colleague who’d left for a parish and who used discretionary funds to help me afford it.  (Churches can actually help people from time to time.)  In any case,  I always met many colleagues at the meeting itself, and had many conversations.  Besides, I taught a full docket of courses every year.  Then the malfunction.  I was eventually hired by Gorgias Press but I had to do adjunct teaching to make ends meet.  I taught up to about ten courses per year at Rutgers, all in the evening.  Then I was hired by Routledge.  The commute to NYC precluded any adjunct work, so I settled into the quiet world of editing.

I also began attending AAR/SBL again.  I came home with “conference voice.”  After going for days, or even weeks, with no substantial conversation, I’d lost my lecturing vocal stamina.  At the conference I had five days of back-to-back meetings, often in a crowded and noisy exhibit hall.  I’m a soft-spoken individual (I can project when teaching) and my larynx was stressed by the concentrated five days of constant conversation.  My voice had dropped in pitch by the time I got home and it took a few days to get better.  I would lapse into cenobic silence for another year.  After the conference I’d return every year with aching vocal cords.  My family sympathized, but I really just don’t talk that much.  Especially at work.

Recently I met a friend for lunch.  I hadn’t seen him to chat for a few years so we spent over two-and-a-half hours talking.  Part of it in a restaurant where I needed to raise my voice.   I awoke the next morning with conference voice.  This bothered me because I’d been invited to do a podcast episode about a horror movie and I faced an existential crisis: what does my real voice sound like?  In my mind, my profession is teaching.  The voice I had at Nashotah House, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Rutgers University and Montclair State, was my real sound, such as it was.  Life has landed me in a situation where I seldom speak, and almost never to groups where I need to project.  Conference voice is a reminder of what I was meant to do and what I, of necessity, must do.