Remaining in Shadow

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Some people want to be found.  Others don’t.  Those of us who are curious shade into those who are frustrated when we can’t find someone.  People have been around for a relatively long time now, and we’ve been giving each other names because “hey you” only goes so far.  Even so, unique names are rare since, it seems, the majority of European-derived folk had something to do with smithies.  Nevertheless, the internet offers to help us find people.  I was searching for someone the other day but that person, despite publishing nearly daily on the interwebs, has a very common name.  And he styles himself without even a middle initial.  (He may not have one, I know.)  The point is, perhaps he doesn’t want to be found.  I run into authors like this—they assume their high-level monograph is sufficient fame.  You can’t find them online.

I recently joined Bluesky.  I’d like to leave Twitter, but I still have a large number of followers there (for me), although they seldom interact.  Publishers look at things like the number of X followers you have, so until Bluesky surpasses Twit, I’ll need to keep both going.  On Bluesky more people introduce themselves to you.  At least when you’re new.  Not a few are looking for relationships, sometimes of the sexual kind.  (I find that occasionally on what is called X, but mostly in the account under my fiction-writing pseudonym.)  These are people who want to be found.  The internet, strangely enough, has driven us further apart.

America has always been a polarized place, but the web has sharpened the border.  Indeed, it has militarized it.  I remember the days when meeting people actually meant going outside and stopping somewhere else.  Society had rules then.  Two topics of forbidden discussion were religion and politics.  It was easier to make friends with those rules in place.  Since I’ve chosen to put myself out there on the web, my choice of field of study does tend to come out.  And it’s one of those two forbidden topics.  Since my career goal has occasionally been ministry (still is from time to time), putting religion into the equation is inevitable, for those who really want to get to know me.  Social media is a strange country, however.  I tell new conversationalists on Bluesky that I have a blog, but it doesn’t seem to lead many people to my dusty corner of the interweb.  And it still gets me no closer to finding that guy with the tragically common sobriquet.  He may not want to be found. 

Sherlock Holmes seeks someone without the internet. Image credit: Sidney Paget (1860 – 1908), Strand Magazine, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Imagine Monsters

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Adulthood is where you begin to recognize the folly of growing up.  Like most people, when I “matured” I was ashamed of things I made as a child and, regretfully, threw them away.  This came back to me recently as I was thinking of a sketchbook—actually a scrapbook that I repurposed in my tween years.  I love to draw.  I don’t do it as much now as I’d like (thanks, work!), but I was encouraged in it by art teachers throughout school who thought I had a little talent.  The sketchbook, however, was only ever shown to my brothers, but mostly only looked at by me.  This particular project was where I was making up monsters.  As with my writing, I’d never taken any drawing classes, but I had an active (some say overactive) imagination.  (That’s still true.)  

In any case, a discussion with my daughter brought back memories of this book I’d discarded by the time I went to college.  I still remember some members of the menagerie I’d concocted.  Even now that I’ve seen hundreds of monster movies, most of those I’d fabricated as a child have no peers that I’ve seen.  These weren’t monsters to be incorporated into stories—they were purely visual.  Although, I can say that my first attempted novel (probably around the age of 15) was about a monster.  I got away with being interested in monsters in high school, but college was a wholesale attempt to eradicate them.  Even so my best friend from my freshman year (who left after only a semester) and I made up a monster that lived in the library.

As an academic, until very recent years, monsters were off limits.  If you wanted to be sidelined (and in my case it turns out that it wouldn’t have mattered) you could explore such outré subjects.  Now it turns out that you can get mainstream media attention if you do (as a professor, but not, it seems, as an editor).  I’m sitting here looking back over half-a-century of inventing monsters, with a sizable gap in the middle.  The interest was always there, even as I strove to be a good undergrad, seminarian, and graduate student.  Now I can say openly that monsters make me happy.  I can also say, wistfully, that I’d been mature enough to keep that sketchbook that preserved a part of my young imagination.  It was tossed away along with the superhero cartoons I used to draw.  And the illustrations of favorite songs, before music videos were a thing.  Growing up is overrated. 

A surviving drawing, unfinished

Low Stakes

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Elsewhere on this website I refer to myself as an “unfluencer.”  This quasi-serious attempt at humor does bear a kernel of truth.  It’s difficult to get your voice heard on the internet.  By the time I began blogging, vlogging had already become a thing and people prefer watching to reading.  (I do have a few YouTube videos out there, but they take an awful lot of time to put together and I’m kinda busy trying to write obscure books.)  The reason I mention this at all is to make a point.  People sometimes wonder why a guy who has a doctorate in religious studies wastes his time with horror.  There’s a good reason.  People will pay attention when the stakes are low.  Is horror important?  I think it is, but most people don’t.  Genre fiction is easily dismissed as being off in fantasy land, despite the growing number of voices suggesting we should be paying attention to how it influences (unfluences?) religion.

Those who delve in such blue collar things sometimes grow to be taken seriously.  I suspect—since I wouldn’t know—that it’s a matter of sticking with it long enough, and producing enough content that people have some standard for comparison.  And the interesting thing is, you often notice fascinating features along the way.  While working on my next book the other day, I realized a major gap in the study of history of religions.  I can’t say what it is here, of course, because someone without a 9-2-5 may scoop me.  But the gap is clearly there.  And I would never have noticed it if I weren’t spending my time writing about low-stakes monsters.

I’m a blue-collar thinker pretty much through and through.  Talking it over with my brother the other day, I realized that despite the years and years of higher education, I was brought up working class and I look at the world through those lenses.  When I was actually a professor that began to change, but in retrospect, I think that’s why my students liked what I did in the classroom.  I wasn’t some child of privilege handing down tired observations meant to impress other children of privilege.  I’m just a peasant trying to figure things out.  I can point to no highly educated forebears—neither of my parents finished high school.  No, I have been fortunate enough to have clawed my way through three higher degrees only to realize that people only listen if the stakes are low enough.  And I’m alright with that since I get to spend the time with my beloved monsters.

Bibliographer for Hire

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Why is bibliographer not a job?  Why can’t a person make a living categorizing knowledge?  I ask this because I see YouTube videos of people saying your job should be what you enjoy doing.  What if you enjoy creating bibliographies?  You see, my research methods are a bit unconventional.  They kind of have to be since I have no institutional support for my writing, and yet I want it to be intelligent and informed.  That means I have to locate my own sources and inevitably, when I’m compiling a bibliography, I’m happy.  Even if it means ferreting out obscure sources and trying to learn where something was originally published, I’m still at the top of my game.  (Yes, this is one of those things that the longer you’ve been doing it, the better you get at it.  These days it means learning to engage the internet for research.  Since it’s more of a money-making venture geared towards entertainment, that can be tricky.)

I remember those days of typing out bibliographies by typewriter, smearing White-Out all over, or trying to use that ribbon stuff that was supposed to be able to type over mistakes.  My friends and fellow students hated bibliographies.  Secretly, and perhaps perversely, I was enjoying myself.  You see, a bibliography is gathered knowledge.  When I finish reading a nonfiction book, particularly one where I want to do further reading myself, I go through the bibliography.  I want to know the origins of ideas.  There’s an irony here since my last few books have featured quite a few of my own ideas supported by what I’d read.  And I know that unless I provide a precise footnote, anyone who might read my work might wonder “how I know” what I’m writing.  It’s increasingly becoming one of those “pay attention to your elders” sort of thing, I guess.

But the bibliographies I could compile!  The really tricky part when writing The Wicker Man was the word limit.  I know authors who struggle bringing the bibliography down to required length, and I feel for them.  I really do.  You see, a bibliography is a record of what it took to get me to write this book.  These are the things I was reading, pondering.  Or found along the way.  There’s an art to a bibliography as well.  Some topics seem to attract authors with last names beginning with a certain letter, for instance.  Or others seem to have a dearth of another letter.  I may be the only person who finds such things fascinating, but can’t that be a paying job?  It is most interesting work, and categorizing knowledge is a full-time job.  If only it was a paying one.

Trouble on Campus

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I know what it’s like to have a story living within you.  Academics writing novels don’t always qualify as Dark Academia, but Kathleen Kelley Reardon’s Shadow Campus does.  Continuing my current kick of that genre, I eagerly read of the skulduggery taking place at the fictional Pacific Coast University and found myself nodding with recognition.  Higher education is highly political.  I have to wonder if where two or three are gathered politics will inevitably be in their midst.  Perhaps thus it has always been, but it seems to me that when universities decided to model themselves on corporations, it grew much worse.  In any case, Meghan Doherty is a business professor up for tenure.  Her only family is an estranged brother in Connecticut.  Then one night someone attempts to murder her on campus and make it look like a suicide.

Shamus, her brother, flies to California to see her in the hospital and soon begins to suspect things are not as they seem.  I don’t want to give away too much here, in case you want to read it too.  I can say that sometimes life on campus is like this.  I’ve made the claim to have lived Dark Academia, and I’ll stand by it.  After the unpleasantness at Nashotah House, I was hired for a year as a replacement professor at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.  I really enjoyed teaching there, apart from having to leave my family in Oconomowoc; I stayed with a former Nashotah House student to whom I’m eternally grateful.  The department chair and colleagues liked me.  I was a good fit.  There was talk of making this a full-time position for which I’d be the inside candidate.  Then one of the other professors began to dislike me (long story).

I was called into the department head’s office and told that my eight courses for the next year had been reduced to one.  Permission to hire had been granted, but it had to be a specialist in women’s studies.  I was welcome to stay on as an adjunct, of course.  I’m a blue-collar guy and I recognize a boot when I see one.  And that was only the second time something similar had happened to me, and it wasn’t the last.  I’ve paid my dues to academia and yes, it is often dark.  So I enjoyed reading Reardon’s fictional account of underhanded dealings at Pacific Coast.  In my own experience guns were never brandished, but then, you can’t have it all.

Finding the Source

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I need to know the origins of things.  Call it a sickness if you will, but I’m compelled to trace things to their source.  This is why I went on to earn a doctorate, and it’s a trait that hasn’t left, despite my career malfunction.  My interest in origins was recently reawakened by the citation, in a book, of a source that was incomplete.  I turned to the internet, of course.  I found the source, reprinted on a Tumblr page, for which I was grateful, but there was no proper citation there either.  Instead, a link to another webpage, which itself consists of yet another link.  Even after pages of googling, I was no closer to finding the source.  This is why I miss libraries.  You were there with books, some of them centuries old, looking at the source.  Outside the academy this rarely happens.  Particularly when you work 9-2-5.

The internet age is one of taking someone else’s word for it.  That’s why it’s important to establish credibility.  The website where I found the information—the top ranked site on both Ecosia and Google—had old books as the background, but no “about” page.  Who had put this information here and where did s/he get it?  The item I was looking for was from the 1700s.  I don’t have a print copy lying around and I was wondering what the source was—a book?  A journal article?  A newspaper?  An actual archive?  And why can’t Google find it in a library?  I know the source actually exists because I also found it referenced in a reputable print book, but one with inadequate citation.  Some of us were cut out for this kind of thing.  Constitutionally researchers.  But you have to work to live.

One of the greatest pieces of advice ever is to stay curious.  It helps keep a mind active, even a 9-2-5 one.  I’ll keep looking for this mysterious source.  I’ll check out likely references in the bibliography.  I’m sure that other people have the same compunction not to take someone else’s word for it.  Particularly not an anonymous poster on some website.  Especially in this day of AI lies.  One of my high school teachers once said that a reputation for being trusted is something you earn by lifelong cultivation.  If people know you are a reliable source, they will believe the things you say.  Anonymous information can be helpful from time to time, but without knowing the source I always remain skeptical.  And curious.

Finding a Spot

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Sometimes you’re not born among your tribe.  I live where I’ve moved out of economic necessity, not where my family’s located.  My family’s not quite sure what to make of me anyway, so I seek my tribe.  At first it was among the United Methodists, but when I was in seminary they let me know what they really thought of me.  The Episcopalians seemed more welcoming to my academic aspirations and my doctorate led me to believe my tribe was those who studied ancient West Asian religions.  I wrote papers, led conference sections, knew people.  When I had to step out of academe, however, they tended to fall away.  (Ironically my most-read work, according to Academia.edu, is my dissertation, revised edition.  It has had over 8,000 views.)  I still have many scholar friends, but I’m clearly no longer part of the club.

That’s why I turned to horror (as a field of study).  I was seeking my tribe.  I wasn’t at all sure Holy Horror would get published.  I was encouraged when The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture published “Reading the Bible in Sleepy Hollow.”  Then I discovered other academics (still not part of the club) were studying religion and horror.  Ironically, it was people on the horror side, rather than the religion side, who made me feel most welcome.  In the meantime, I wrote some horror stories (still do) but the fiction publishing tribe seems to be at war against the rest of the world.  You can’t breach their bulwarks.  I’ve been trying for a decade and a half.  So I continue to write books that move more toward horror, and move away from religion.  Still, hard-core horror fans don’t really pay much attention to my books, still I try, but as an outsider.

Since Sleepy Hollow as American Myth is in production, I’m working on my next projects.  I’ve been indulging in fiction again, where I’d really rather be, for a host of reasons, but unless I succeed as a double agent, I’ll remain unpublished.  My tribe, I think, would welcome more nonfiction like I’m writing.  These books haven’t been selling well, but they may eventually get referenced.  Now, many years after the fact, the ancient West Asian studies tribe cites my work and asks me to contribute more.  I’m afraid that island was abandoned years ago, former tribe-mates.  I was lonely and so I rowed across the ocean into horror territory.  If you’re looking for a tribe too, I’ll be glad to try to introduce you around.

Writing Academic

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One of the things that Stephen King detests (or at least detested back in the seventies) was academic literary criticism.  Perhaps you’re more normal than King or I, but if you read such things you find yourself immediately sucked into a world where the writer seems determined to demonstrate their erudition by splicing together words that shouldn’t really sleep together and then throws theory at you until you fall off the cliff.  It can be a frustrating experience for the reader, even as the writer is granted tenure for it.  One of these days I’ll learn my lesson.  Buying books by academics is dicey prospect.  I’m drawn in by the ideas, and the early pages, then I’m soon in the deep end remembering that I never learned to swim.

Is it really fair, I wonder, to begin a book—the first one or two pages impossibly engaging—then start winging ponderous, theory-laden words at the reader?  Your publisher paid for an attractive, inviting design and the reader, lured like a child to a candy store, thinks this will be sweet.  Then the sugar coating wears off and you’re faced with another 253 pages of clawing at words you recognize, hoping to make some sense out of what seemed, and still is, an engaging idea.  This has happened to me multiple times.  I live between worlds.  Even when I was an academic, however, I eschewed theory-heavy language.  I had nothing to prove, other than the point of my article.  And to prove a point, it seemed to me, people have to understand what you’re trying to say.

Higher education is in crisis mode.  Among the various fields you can study, the humanities are under especial scrutiny.  Have you read a book by an English professor lately (present company excepted!)?  Although their title is “English” you can be left wondering what language it actually is that they’re writing.  And they are capable of plain speaking.  Those first two pages demonstrate that.  They are capable, but are they willing?  I begin to understand Mr. King’s reservations.  I’ve run into books even in the field in which I have a doctorate that I can’t understand.  I find myself tentatively cracking open the Oxford English Dictionary to see if perhaps I’ve misunderstood the connotations of that word for my entire life.  I don’t mind a challenging read now and again.  At the same time, I mourn the loss of something beautiful when I can’t make out what the author seems to be saying.  Perhaps such books should come with warning labels.  I suspect Stephen King would have a good turn of phrase for what such a label should say.

Philosophical Thoughts

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Please don’t read too much into this!  I read a lot of professors who spend their careers trying to understand a previous scholar’s thoughts.  I suspect this happens quite a lot in philosophy, but it fits pretty well in religious studies also.  And I wonder, what of those intellectuals where were grappling with pure ideas?  Did they know they’d become adjectival?  In other words, did Immanuel Kant know that he was Kantian?  Or was he just writing stuff, trying to explain how he understood being in the world?  Now scholars dedicate themselves to understanding Kant.  Or in more recent times, Derrida, Lacan, and Bakhtin, or whoever’s the flavor of the day.  The ones who were too busy being Derrida, Lacan, and Bakhtin to figure out what someone else was saying about things just wrote.

Image credit: Portrait of Immanuel Kant by Johann Gottlieb Becker, 1768, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

I often wonder about how higher education has shifted the way we do scholarship.  It’s not really a place to test out ideas that the world can evaluate, but more a place where specialists can discuss possibilities and what someone else might’ve thought of something.  I guess that’s why I tend to think of my last four books as being non-academic.  I’m not using the tired formula of reacting against what some theorist has said about my subject.  I’m simply observing and drawing inferences.  Maybe it’s because I wasn’t raised in an academic environment.  I remember reading Nietzsche for the first time.  How he didn’t footnote.  How he didn’t argue against what some prominent others had said.  He simply wrote.  And he did so brilliantly.

Perhaps it’s yet another example of having been born early enough.  Tech has made it remarkably easy (for those without families to feed) to become writers.  No agent or editor required.  And things like Book-Tok can make those who publish outside the Big Five famous.  What would Kant have done?  That’s a nice Kantian question.  In fact, the whole reason I began this post was that I’d run across James C. Taylor’s A New Porcine History of Philosophy and Religion on my shelves.  Just seeing it reminded me of the Kantian pig refusing to lie to an axe-wielding maniac.  That got me to thinking of Kant and what it must’ve been like to see him being Kantian.  I’m no expert.  I took a lot of courses in philosophy and religion back in the day, but I have a book about philosophical/religious pigs on my shelf.  Somehow I suspect Kant wouldn’t have appreciated his page in this book, even though it gave me philosophical thoughts to start the day.

Those Who Know

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I felt a little bit odd being asked.  A local school invited me to be consulted on classroom decoration.  I took a total of one class in interior design as an undergrad and that hadn’t been my highest collegiate grade.  So why were they asking me, of all people?  Let me put this into context for you.  It was in Wisconsin.  I’d been the Academic Dean at Nashotah House for a few years and had served for a few on the Parent Teacher Organization, one as president.  While at Nashotah I’d been tasked with making the three classrooms more appealing—choosing paint colors and replacing drapes that had been falling off their hooks since I’d arrived a decade ago.  But I believe the real reason that I was asked for a consultation was that I was a professor.  Yes, a professor of Hebrew Bible, but a professor nonetheless.

Such requests, no matter how mundane, ceased immediately when I had to take a job in publishing.  People don’t turn to an editor as an expert.  (Not even most academic authors—trust me on that.)  We like to put people in neat categories.  Boxes.  Professors are smart, so when we need advice we seek them out.  Whether or not they know anything about the topic.  I was even assigned to teach accredited courses in fields that I’d never studied.  It was a heady feeling, I have to admit, being treated like my position qualified me to speak on “ships and sails and sealing wax” and everyone listened.  What has always struck me as odd is how abruptly this stopped.  Even among church folk.

When I was teaching I was frequently asked to address adult education classes on Sunday mornings.  I had arcane knowledge that priests and ministers wanted me to share.  Once I began working as an editor I had someone from a church in Princeton contact me to ask if I could recommend someone else to do such a course.  They were somewhat taken aback when I suggested that I had some expertise in the area.  I’ve even had other academics, in the same field in which I taught, react with total surprise that I know something about the discipline.  I have a sneaking suspicion that the ease of categorizing people has been substituted for actually getting to know someone.  It’s easier to call, or email, the local university—or even, in my experience, a small, obscure seminary—to find the expert you want to consult.  You’d like to think that we might be able to ponder a little more deeply.  But trust me, you don’t want to ask me about interior design.

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.

Waking Poe

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It’s personal and it’s deep.  My appreciation for Edgar Allan Poe, that is.  I’ve read a few biographies of him over the years, but my engagement with him feels more like that of a boon companion.  Still, I learn a lot from looking at him from different angles.  (And yes, he will be in my forthcoming book.)  Jonathan Elmer’s In Poe’s Wake: Travels in the Graphic and Atmospheric caught my attention but I can’t remember exactly how I heard about it.  This was a case where the back-cover copy won me over, noting as it does, that Poe’s image is everywhere.  Still, I approach things as an historian.  How did this lead to that?  And I must confess that I’m not a great fan of heavily theoretical work (I see plenty of it).  As soon as I see Deleuze, my eyes begin to glaze over.  Do we have to go there again?

All of which is to say Elmer’s book is erudite and, at times, quite academic.  I learned a lot from it, particularly the first two chapters.  Much of the rest of it was a bit too theoretical for my plebeian tastes, but I was still learning as I went.  I hope.  I guess I was thinking it would be more of a history of how Poe ended up, for example, on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  Or how the Baltimore Ravens got their name.  Or even how the Ultima Thule daguerreotype became so ubiquitous.  These may well be impossible questions to answer, even as some of us are fool enough to rush in and try.  In academia, the theoretical is a much safer approach.  It impresses Deans and others in the department.

I occasionally listen to famous people talking about fame.  How it destroys some people and obliterates aspects of others’ lives.  Poe was reasonably well known during his lifetime, but not famous on the level that, say, the internet can instantly make you.  Or even TikTok.  Even back within my lifetime (which, I gather, is about the same as Elmer’s) Poe’s influence has grown dramatically.  His was a household name in my childhood, at least among a certain type of reader.  It wasn’t unusual to find people who’d never heard of him.  I suspect that is also true today, but Poe looms large over October and even the New York Times nods in his direction when the days grow shorter.  Like most writers, Poe isn’t who we think he is.  Elmer’s book does indeed explore his wake, and it is one that continues to cause waves over the centuries.

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.

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…

Lost Decade

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The nineties, it seems, got away from me.  Personally, they started with living in Edinburgh with my newlywed spouse. We had no television and no money, and limited time to finish my degree.  Then we landed at Nashotah House for the remainder of the decade.  Our daughter was born, and we settled into the role of new parents as the world went on around us.  The internet hadn’t made its way to that part of Wisconsin and television reception was quite poor.  Now bear with me as I’m trying to reconstruct things.  Twin Peaks ran from 1990 to ’91.  We were in Scotland at the time and had no television.  Northern Exposure (’90 to ’95) started a few months later, and was still running when we returned to the States.  We began watching it because family recommended it, mostly on VHS.  Some family members had watched Twin Peaks, but it was darker, and we opted for lighter fare when we could see TV.  (I hadn’t undergone my horror reawakening yet.)  Then came Picket Fences (1992 to ’96), which I still haven’t seen.  The X-Files, original run, broadcast from 1993 to 2002.  What a decade to lose!

Northern Exposure and Twin Peaks had some things in common, I noticed as we watched the latter, but then they ran at about the same time.  It also seems Twin Peaks and The X-Files shared some secrets.  I can’t say about Picket Fences, but it seems that speculative elements infiltrated these nineties shows.  What’s more, they all received critical acclaim.  I would feel like I lost much of the nineties, except that I was having a great time being a parent.  Although Nashotah House rubbed me the wrong way, I was employed doing what I had pictured myself doing.  Wisconsin was a beautiful state and offered lots of outdoor opportunities, particularly when it wasn’t forty below outside.  What I really lost was pop culture of the nineties, living in a monastic setting.

I recently discovered that I’d also missed much of the music of the nineties.  I’m not a radio listener.  Too many distractions—I can’t listen to music when I write, let alone with some announcer talking.  I don’t listen to music when I jog because I find the natural world so interesting.  It occurred to me just a few months ago that I had very little knowledge of 1990s rock. (Not the preferred genre at Nashotah.)  Some of it is pretty good, I’m discovering just now.  Like a typical academic, I began to shut out the outside world when working on my Ph.D.  Now I spend my time trying to catch up.  Not that I have much time to watch television, or listen to music, but I hate to miss something that everyone else seems to know about.  Then, of course, after the X-Files, Lost ran from 2004 to 2010 and we didn’t catch that either.  Maybe I missed the first part of the new millennium as well…

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