Author Kyle Lukoff Spoke about being Censored

By Adam Katz

I met Kyle in college, before he was a recognized author. It’s been weird watching this controversy roil around him. I may say more at a different time.

But for now: Kyle just gave the following speech about his books being banned from schools in Utah, Texas, and presumably elsewhere. The speech is gorgeous and heartbreaking. Please read it. That’s all.

here are some of the books in question:https://bookshop.org/books?keywords=kyle+lukoff My special favorite is Max and the Talent Show

here is the speech: http://www.kylelukoff.com/…/my-speech-at-the-fam-rally…

We Stand with Fran’s House

Recently, 20 members of a disbanded franternity at Bucknell university attacked and harassed the residents of Fran’s House, Bucknell’s LGBTQ+ house, while campus safety officials did nothing or next to nothing to help. These students were minding their own business in their own home, which the university had provided for them after the building’s previous residents, the same disbanded fraternity, had lost the house for, among other things, the ugliness of their hazing rituals. The students made a statement, which we have printed in full below, along with a news-article. We stand with LGBTQ+ community of Bucknell and wish to offer our website, our podcast, and any other resource we have at our disposal, to any student who feels under attack just because of who they are. Please reach out to us and let us know how we can amplify your voice.
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Statement from Tyler Luong Bucknell Student and resident assistant at Fran’s House:

“President Bravman,

I hope that by the time you’re reading this email, you’re already aware of what has happened on the night of reading day. 

While others were drinking and having fun under the sunset, the residents of Fran’s House were locking our windows and securing our doors from nearly 20 former Tau Kappa Epsilon members from breaking into our home. 

As the residential advisor of the affinity house and a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I want you to imagine what it felt like to be studying one minute, and then locking down all possible entrances the next. Can you possibly imagine being the authoritative figure of a home, only to see the words: “Nobody come in or out right now. Don’t open any doors. Lock Windows”, staring right back at you? Because that was my reality. 

All of my residents were shouting for me to come to the bathroom, and when I arrived, I saw one of my residents holding down the window, while a bunch of silhouettes stood menacingly on the other side. Can you possibly imagine seeing the fear that was in the eyes of my residents? Because it wasn’t imagination for me. I saw it In the eyes of my residents and in the reflection of my own eyes in the bathroom mirror. 

“Let us in!”, “This isn’t your home!”, “This is our home!”. 

Those were the words that my residents heard, as the nearly 20 former Tau Kappa Epsilon members banged against our windows and doors, swinging a metal bar at our flag pole that displays our pride flag, and urinating on our front porch. They FLASHED one of my residents. Tell me President Bravman, what would I do if they had managed to get into our home? President Bravman, I was never trained to handle breaking and enterings. 

The only thing we could’ve possibly done was sit in anger and fear, as we waited way too long for Public Safety Emergency to arrive. 

And when the group of 20 walked away, shouting at us the entire time, I stood there on the front lawn, watching and hoping that they don’t turn back. President Bravman, I didn’t want to stand there. I wanted to stay inside and lock myself in my room. However, as the Residential Advisor, I chose to show my residents that I will protect them no matter what. With my legs shaking with adrenaline, I stood there ready to lay my physical safety to protect my residents. I was so relieved to see all of them walking away.

And then they turned back.

4 of those nearly 20 men turned back. Can you imagine the feeling of relief when you see your offenders walking away from your home, only for it to drain immediately when they turn back?

I informed Public Safety again and they DID NOT arrive in a timely manner. President Bravman, three of my female residents and one male resident stood behind me on that lawn ready to defend our home. How could I as a Residential Advisor ask of them to do that? How could I have stopped them?

When Public Safety arrived, they laughed at the situation. President Bravman, the officers bonded with our offenders, reminiscing their college days and calling them handsome young men. President Bravman, the two officers didn’t even speak to me. Neither of the two officers came up to us Fran’s House residents to ask if we were okay. AND THEN THEY PROMISED TO TALK TO THE CHIEF OF PUBLIC SAFETY TO GET THEM ACCESS TO OUR HOUSE WHEN FINALS WEEK WAS OVER, SHAKING EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEIR HANDS.

President Bravman, the officer offered them their business card. I had to ask TWICE to get one because the officer was too busy laughing with our offenders. Is it within the policy for Public Safety to completely ignore the ones who reported the crime?

As a student, how can I call them Public Safety when they arrived late to the scene, and then ENABLED that behavior?! Why am I required to call Public Safety during emergencies if they make light of an emergency? President Bravman, there was no safety. 

When we chant “Ray Bucknell”, are we chanting for public nudity? Are we chanting for public urination? Are we chanting for breaking and entering? Do we chant for 20 inebriated former fraternity members to harass the LGBTQ+ community in their own home? Because that’s not what I signed up for when I accepted my spot at Bucknell, and I don’t think that’s what future Bucknellians will be chanting for either.

And as I sit here right now, at 1:23 AM, with my entire night of reading day used up to calling Public Safety, Residential Education, writing a report, and calming down my residents while hiding my anger, I still have to convince myself that my final exam on Friday should be a priority over my safety. 

I have to go to sleep now, knowing that those seniors defiled my home, flashed my friend, and will graduate without learning anything from this. One of them looked into our eyes and told us they didn’t know they were harassing the LGBTQ+ house when multiple residents saw them swinging a metal bar at our Pride Flag Pole. Is the school going to allow them to graduate and let them represent what Bucknell stands for?

President Bravman, this isn’t your typical incident on campus. One simple campus-wide email won’t bring back the sense of safety that was stripped away from Fran’s House. I beg of you, please imagine what it was like for me to be in this situation. To put up a mask and encourage my residents not to engage with our offenders when I myself was ready to risk my safety for my friends.

Please help,

Tyler Luong”

Andrew’s Big Think #1:

Moving Back and Forth Between Writing Projects (or a lesson in overcoming writer’s block)

As I write this, it’s currently 11:40 pm on a Friday, and I keep thinking about the next paragraph I’m adding to my dissertation chapter. I just ended by introducing Whitman’s comparison of his 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass to Homer’s Iliad, but oh how I can’t wait to make explicit Achilles and Patroclus’ undying (well one does die) love for one another. And, how this homoerotic relationship provides an entry way into reading what Whitman’s homoerotic vision looks like in, specifically, “Song of Myself.” But, before I dive too far into the Greek warrior sensual waves, I should say that I was definitely not in this writing headspace a few days ago (to be exact, the light switch moment happened for me two days ago). I felt a sense of not only writer’s block, but a need to distinguish between the rhetorical modes that I’m using. Let me deconstruct this for you…

At the end of December, I finished my chapter about Whitman’s first introduction into ancient Greek literature, via Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens, and a quite tantalizing erotic concluding quote about the speaker figuring out “the phallic choice of America” (yes it’s that blatant and more on that to come, pun intended). And then from January to mid-April, I turned my writing attention to a pedagogy article that was released by Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies (a special issue on “‘Teaching to Transgress’–a bell hooks pedagogical theory–in the Emergency Remote Classroom”). But, this week, right after I put the finishing touches on proofreading my article, I was left with rhetorical and genre writing confusion. It was such a disorienting experience moving away from my article and back to my dissertation. Let me explain to you the symptoms of this almost amnesia-like state of writing. 

To convey to the readers of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies my approach for teaching Whitman, alongside a queer of color critique, I was holding bell hooks, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Walt Whitman’s writing in my head for at least four months. And with Morrison’s text Playing in the Dark, hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Whitman’s contradictory vision of democracy (present starting in his 1855 Leaves of Grass) all swimming in my mind, I tried to let go of these texts and just keep a hold of Whitman’s poetry. Because my current chapter goes right into the first edition of “Song of Myself” (unnamed in 1855), I thought “Oh if only I hold onto Whitman, I will be able to easily transition back into where I left off in my chapter” but my creative mind wanted to keep hold of the queer of color framework that I had used when questioning how whiteness impacts Whitman’s poetic voice (a queer, white, male one). When Whitman’s speaker opens “Song of Myself” with “And what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.,” I asked my students is this democratic idyllic idea possible in a country that holds onto white nationalist roots (2-3)? Okay, so I’m still deeply impressed with how the article had me conceive of my own personal identity (a queer, white, cisgender, man) and scholarly identity (a 19th-century American and British Lit. scholar), and how powerful my students’ analyses were in my “Whitman’s Multitudes” course (I learned and am continuing to learn so much from them). But, how do you move back and forth between writing projects? How was I going to get back into the writing headspace to look at Whitman’s homoerotic poetics and his turn to ancient Greek literature for that inspiration? 

Well reader, here’s what I did to break through this disorienting feeling:

  1. Listen to bell hooks’ The Will to Change while grading and working on podcast material.
  2. Join the Walt Whitman Birthplace’s James Baldwin reading and discussion series (still going on each Saturday and led by the wonderful poet Indran Amirthanayagam). 
  3. Checked out, from the library, a queer antiquity documentary from the library (Before Homosexuals: From Ancient Times to Victorian Crimes, director: John Scagliotti).

And this is how each helped me work through my turn back to my dissertation (I should add that my go-tos–Broadway, Disco, and coffee–didn’t hurt this process)

  1. hooks’ deconstruction of America’s toxic patriarchal system that holds men back from expressing their vulnerability and a full spectrum of emotions provides an urgent message that for men to fully love, they must know how to dismantle patriarchy’s hold on them. I am still pondering over the following quote: “To know love, men must be able to let go the will to dominate” (xvii). I’m now pondering whether hooks’ theory can make its way into my chapter along with my use of a queer of color critique of Whitman’s poetry (this could come into my discussion of Whitman’s homoerotic vision of democracy in “Song of Myself”). 
  2. Each week, with Indran’s openness and prescient questions about reading Baldwin during the pandemic, his thoughts and the other participants are helping me expand my knowledge of Baldwin’s writing on the roots of systemic racism in America’s democracy. 
  3. As “a prequel to Before Stonewall, Before Homosexuals unearths the diverse and fascinating garden of human same-sexual desire” (Scagliotti)…for queer scholars, what else do you need to read to instantly be drawn in? Reading this on the back of the dvd not only enticed me but also sparked my interest when I read that Scagliotti journeys throughout the Western world to uncover how same-sex desire is found “from ancient Rome…[to] censored chapters of the Kamasutra, Native American two-spirit rituals and much more” (Scagliotti). While I have not yet watched the documentary, you can be sure that I’ll be writing about my viewing experience (and whether it makes its way into my chapter) in the upcoming weeks. 

All of these texts have helped (or hopefully will help) me reconnect with my dissertation since I broke the writing anxiety, in my head, that I have to keep the writerly voice in my pedagogy article separate from the writerly voice in my dissertation chapter. How will the queer of color critique that I apply to Whitman’s poetics appear in my dissertation? I don’t have an answer yet to that question, but I know that when I turn to my queer analysis of how Whitman writes same-sex desire in “Song of Myself” it will take into account how queer whiteness flows throughout the verses. 

(Coming Up)

I’ll check in with you all next week, when I’ll provide an update on my experience reading James Davidson’s chapter on Achilles and Patroclus in The Greeks and Greek Love: A Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World (2007).

Sunday is for Swearing

By Adam Katz

So.

Erika and I were talking about the difference between a fanny-pack and a bum-bag.

I didn’t know until a few days ago that, what in the United States, call a ‘fanny pack,’ in Britain is called a “bum bag,” apparently because in England (and elsewhere) “fanny” is a euphemism for “vagina.” I did know that “fanny” had a different meaning in Britain than it does here, but I didn’t connect that they must therefore have another word for “fanny pack.” Quick aside: how long have these shenanigans been going on? When John Cleland published Fanny Hill in 1748, was the title meant to be a pun on mons pubis?

Obviously if I ever go to England and encounter a ‘fanny pack’ I can’t call it a fanny pack. Obviously. But I can’t call it a ‘bum bag,’ either, because, to my untrained American ear, that sounds like a euphemism for ‘rectum.’

So I just have to hope that I never go to England, or if, God forbid, I do, I never run into a fanny pack, because I’d be fucked coming or going.

*

Postscriptum: The piece itself is idle chatter, but the decision whether to publish it is not. I have had to argue with people, ranging from my own family to complete strangers about the difference between high art (Shakespeare, Chaucer, Faulkner) and… “that’s not even art.” Usually the latter is things like hip-hop.There’s a longer article in here somewhere about racial coding of the term ‘art.’ But that may be for someone else to write.

Anyway, I got tired of people making this argument, so I started having counter-arguments ready:

-The prologue to the Canterbury tales has the word ‘shit.’ At least half of the Canterbury tales are slapstick comedies about people having extramarital affairs.

-Act 4 of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale contains the word ‘dildo.’

-Absalom, Absalom!, which is Faulkner’s most critically acclaimed work, is about an old man who would bang any woman but one (for some reason) and his daughter who is tricked into incest with her half-sibling.

The traditional dividing line between art and smut is whether the work serves a higher purpose, but what if amusement and relaxation are a higher purpose? When I make uncouth jokes in sympathetic company, I can feel my muscles unclench. I am curious if anyone reading this has a similar reaction. This is not even to mention the article in Scientific American a few years ago hinting at a correlation between having a large vocabulary and swearing a lot. I am fine highlighting such scientific research as long as we don’t lose sight of the fact that you don’t need to justify the use of expletives to assist you in verbally expressing your emotions.

Additionally, fun fact, I have yet to meet a professor who concentrates on the medieval period who has a clean sense of humor. These are people who often have the vocabularities of ten languages to draw on and yet they keep coming back to the tried and true tetragrammatons. Even the ones who wear sweater-vests and have elbow-patches on their tweed coats. Readers, I put the question to you: have you met a professor of medieval studies (history, literature… doesn’t really matter) who had a clean sense of humor?

A three year old I knew, who had taught herself to read, created this on the fridge one day and said to her mother, “Mama, I made a word! Can we read it? I know ‘ck’ makes a k sound!” About five years later, this child, in a fit of absolutely righteous anger uttered the phrase “so and so is a stupid butthead motherfucker,” and then paused and said, “No, so-and-so is a stupid motherfucking butthead,” I think I like it better as an adjective than a noun there.” I was incredibly impressed with her grasp of grammar. (Photo courtesy of Erika)

(Podcast Release) Inside the Ivory TowerBoiler Room: A Writers’ Roundtable-Part I (S3 Ep4)

Mary, Adam, Andrew and Erika sit down and talk about what it means to each of them to be a writer. They spend a little time talking about audiences and analyzing one of Adam’s short stories. Adam doesn’t say “fuck” and Erika gets the giggles, too.

Part 2 of this episode will be available next week, which will include some messages from listeners, too.

You can read two different versions of Adam’s story at the link’s below:

At the Sign of the Red Lion (May 2021)

At the Sign of the Red Lion (April 2021)

Podcast Preview: Inside the Ivory Tower Boiler Room-A Writers’ Round Table (Part I)

We’ve enjoyed our first official blogging week, although we’re still working things out before we expand too quickly. I get to see the posts before they go live though, so I know there’s exciting stuff coming up.

In the meantime, don’t forget that Saturday is our podcast release day. This week we come to you with a live recording from inside the boiler room where the four of us sat down together to talk about writing. You might even get an actual view on YouTube. You’ll hear words like “sapieosexuality,” (Tweet me or leave a comment here if you know what that one means before you look it up,) and hear us talk a little about Dylan Thomas, William Carlos Williams and another famous William–Shakespeare. Of course you can’t have the four us us talking literature unless someone mentions Walt Whitman, too. (Spolier alert: We’ve got something planned for his birthday at the end of this month…you’ll have to tune in then to find out what it is.) Major credit to Adam on this episode, too, who is bravely and generously sharing a draft of one of his stories with you-while it wasn’t our intention to workshop his story as part of the episode, it did become the focus of some of our discussion about things like audiences and letting go of your work. We’ll make sure there’s a link to download the story in the episode notes. (My picoreview: I want to read more stories about the main character as told through Adam’s eyes. It’s awkward to read someone’s work while they’re watching you read it, but I really enjoyed reading it.) I think this may turn out to be a two part episode, so if you’re listening for some of the things I mention, they may not air until next week.

While you’re waiting for the new episode to launch, or looking for things to do with your weekend, here are some of the things other than our own writing, that the Ivory Tower team will be spending our time with:

Andrew is watching the 1974 Robert Redford/Mia Farrow version of The Great Gatsby as he prepares for a turn at “Queering Edith Wharton’s Gilded Age Poetics.”

Mary just finished reading The Women of Brewster Place. I asked her to send me a couple of sentences to share with you about the book and her recommendation, and here’s what she has to say:


“Gothic literature fans looking to include more authors of color in their library look no further: Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place is a great place to start! In a lot of ways this novel seems contemporary but when you peel back the layers it is a lot darker than it seems. Brewster Place becomes a character of its own just like the House of Usher is in Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher. I enjoyed every second of reading this novel.”

I am stubbornly committed to open-mindedness, and so Adam and I had planned to listen to Schubert’s Quintet in C performed by the Cleveland Quartet and Yo-Yo Ma. He’s a Schubert fan and I’m not, but if I can convince him there really is good viola music, I have to give him a chance to do the same with the music he loves, too. We did listen to the first movement, and then my computer decided to reboot itself and we got distracted. I hope we can make time to listen to the rest this weekend–I did enjoy it more than I usually enjoy Schubert. (Check out the Netherlands Bach Society’s Brandenburg Concertos-in my quest to convince Adam that good viola music exists, I suggested he listen to Brandenburg 6, and if you’re a harpsichord fan, Brandenburg 5 has an epic, Jimi Hendrix worthy harpsichord part.)

And just in case the weather isn’t great where you are this weekend, here’s a picture Andrew took for me on his walk the other day. The weather was grey here where I am when he sent it, and I don’t get to go for as many “walks” (they’re still walks, I just roll along in a chair more often these days,) as I used to, and so I really love the photos he shares with me, especially since they show me what’s going on in the place my roots are planted.

Andrew enjoys the sunshine and the harbor near his home.



Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog so you get updates as they’re posted. You can also follow us on Twitter or on Facebook ; obviously all three of those places will have a link to the new podcast episode when it comes out, or head over to Anchor and favorite us there.

We would love your suggestions for things to watch, read and listen to-share them with us in the comments below, or any of our other social media options. I’ve got writing to do, so I’m going to put a bookmark in this, and go get some words on the page. Have a great weekend. -Erika, for the Ivory Tower Boiler Room team.

Take a seat at the table with us

While I am trying to recruit my friends to be guests on the podcast and chasing the cats off the keyboard, my head, and everywhere else, you can help make this week’s episode really exciting.  -Erika, on behalf of the Ivory Tower Boiler Room team

This weekend in the Ivory Tower Boiler Room, Adam, Andrew, Mary and I are going to sit down and actually talk about the thing that brought all four of us together: writing.   In order to help us have something to talk about, we want to hear your thoughts on this question:

How do you define yourself as a writer and how do you define your audience (how much do each rely on the other)

We ask you to please keep your response under 5 minutes (please :)) but feel free to be as specific as possible about your projects, and don’t feel pressured to answer both questions.

 Please send us your recording by Thursday, May 13th. (ivorytowerboilerroom@gmail.com)

He takes “If it fits, I sits” seriously. For more about citizen scientists and how they have studied that phenomenon check this out

About The Big Think

Welcome to The Big Think in the Ivory Tower Boiler Room.

The Ivory Tower Boiler Room is a collaborative effort.  Adam and Andrew’s collaboration on the podcast spawned the writing group.  Andrew invited Mary to the writing group, Adam brought Erika on board (credit summer camps for those connections–Andrew and Mary went to camp together, Adam and Erika connected through the alumni network for the summer camp they both attended.)  During one of the writing group check ins, the idea of some episodes about mental health and trauma came up  and Erika offered to draw on her social work background to help give the episodes structure.  Mary also had her own stories to contribute, and the four of us discovered that we collaborate together well, and we also enjoy working together.  When we decided to create a blog as part of this website, we had to figure out how to incorporate all of our voices, even when we have different things to say, and so we want to introduce “The Big Think.”  The Big Think is a weekly post where one of us gets to practice omphaloskepsis and really dive deeply into a topic  or question.  Each week (usually on Monday) you’ll hear a different voice from inside the Boiler Room reflecting on a big question or theme, something important to that person.  This month, as a team, we decided to have a theme uniting our four separate contributions: “writing about ourselves as writers.”  Future Big Think pieces may or may not have us looking at a theme together, but they will give you a chance to get to know each of us and see the different ways we look at big questions.

This is still a blog and so you will see a lot of other things too. And it won’t only be content generated by us, either; we want you to see different sides of all our contributors: book reviews, photographs, visual art…  You might see original poems or stories  from Ivory Tower participants, and of course links to podcasts we love.  We welcome all of it.  We want to create a space here where we showcase contributions from the entire Ivory Tower community, and so we encourage you to use the comment section and talk about what you read. You can of course suggest things that you might like to hear us talk about, whether that’s with a guest on a podcast episode or during a  writer’s roundtable  (for more on that, check out the upcoming podcast episode,) or here on the blog.  And please, let us feature your work–reach out and share what you’ve got; thoughts of your own on our Big Think topic, an original piece of your own, a call for beta readers.   This space belongs to all of us, and we want your work to appear here, too.   

Grab a nice cup of tea, settle in, and enjoy the read.   

August Rodin “The Thinker”

Adam’s Big Think #1: Writing about Ourselves as Writers

By Adam Katz

So. The reason why I don’t feel comfortable any longer within the constraints of academia is what I’m doing right now. Starting out an essay (from the French essayer—to attempt) without a clear goal except to communicate what is on my mind in a given moment. This attempt may or may not have a bibliography. It probably won’t have footnotes; if it does, they’ll be sarcastic as fuck.

Ready?

Right off the bat, an irony comes to mind. The very word ‘essay’ derives from the work of one Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. So why is it that when we write ‘essays’ in grade school and grad school alike, they feel a lot more like the work of Thomas Hobbes than that of Montaigne? What is the skill we are meant to demonstrate in an ‘essay’—which is to say, a scholastic essay? The ability to defend a rhetorical position. What is the skill most in evidence in a Montaignean* essay? The ability to explore a topic. In a scholastic essay, we often ignore preconceived notions and prejudices; in Montaigne’s essays, we see an honest effort to examine those preconceived notions alongside the topic, no, as part of the topic. Honest effort. It takes effort to be honest. That’s the essence of Montaigne, for me, as a reader and a writer.

It gets worse. A scholastic essay, that is, an argument in defense of a thesis, based on evidence, was not a new thing, neither for Montaigne, nor, for that matter, for Aristotle. Montaigne had the ability to write rhetorical exercises of that nature; he just… didn’t want to. So using the word he coined on a genre he had a documented distrust of is just… rude. Here is what Montaigne had to say:

“The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man persuades another man to believe, as we generally give the name of money not only to pieces of the truest alloy, but even to the false also, if they will pass.” (On Giving the Lie, 2.18)

I think it’s telling that Montaigne immediately links passing false arguments to passing false money. He himself, as a local politician, implicitly makes the connection between an idea having currency and a false coin being used as currency. Both are done to make a quick buck out of the pockets of the credulous.

I don’t hate rhetoric; I don’t hate argument; I don’t hate the scientific method. I don’t even really hate scholastic essays. I do agree (this is a low bar, but I clear it just fine) that something demonstrated by evidence and analysis is a fact, until disproven by evidence and analysis. There are issues with the system, but I don’t disagree with that premise. That’s not what I’m complaining about. What I’m complaining about is that by forcing students, time after time, to write essays about topics they don’t really care about, we are teaching them that the search for truth is a superficial exercise. That kind of education system breeds adults who engage in discourse when their goal isn’t to seek truths but rather to make money. Because when that happens, we start to see exactly what Montaigne is talking about: falsehoods being passed around like counterfeit coins, and being supported or undermined based on whether they conform to the audience’s preconceived notions, which usually means their self-interest. Whatever else may be true, it’s harder to lie in a Montaignean essay than in a scholastic one.

What does this have to do with academic writing? Well, “Publish or Perish” is another face of the problem; another way to craft arguments for the sake of self-interest rather than for the sake of learning and discovery. I am not saying that when one of my former-colleagues writes an essay, they don’t believe in the thesis; or worse that you can’t believe in something if you’re getting paid. That’s not it. They might believe in the thesis. But what if you’ve been writing an essay for too long and you just want to get it done? What if you are in a rut? What if you find out that your argument doesn’t work? And you still have to finish the article, because you’ve sunk a year’s work into it and even if you finished it tomorrow you’ll have to wait 6 months to hear back from whatever journal you send it to (where the editors work for free even though the magazine is published and sold for a profit by its host-university) and you don’t really have that long to wait because by then you need to be working on another article because if you don’t maintain a certain pace you won’t make it to assistant professor, or from assistant to associate, or from associate to full professor, or from there to having a fancy name on your chair. Lots of people tell themselves the tenure process is there so they can write what they believe without consequences, but in practice, I hear complaints from professors all the time that people go along to get along even after tenure. Being intellectually honest after tenure might be like taking up a hobby after retirement; something you always meant to do but by the time you reach that point you don’t know where to begin. And if, somehow, in all of that, you manage to publish work you’re proud of, work you came by intellectually honestly? It certainly happens. I have read a lot of great academic writing, and I am thankful to the people who wrote it. But nor do I want to ignore the corrupting influence of the publish-or-perish mentality on the people who are doing good work despite operating under a bad system, and not because of it.

So. What’s the alternative?

Well we can start by looking at the pernicious influences of the system, from grade school right up through the university, and imagine what life would be like if they just… went away. Where do good stories, essays, and other pieces of writing start? We know where they start. They pop into our minds in the shower, on the toilet, while reading, while going to sleep. Something just… clicks. But a good piece of writing can start with an exercise–a this-instead-of-that; a rhyming game, a visual organizer. Not every essay makes it out of the initial phase; not every idea needs to be carried to term. It’s a lot like throwing wet spaghetti against a wall, so to speak, and seeing what sticks. That is a process that takes time and leisure to get right. It really can’t be rushed. So what a writer needs is time. If we give people more time, we will have more and better writing as a result; more time will allow for necessary parts of the writing process like false starts and flights of fancy and self-care. On a practical level, this can be introduced in the university starting tomorrow. Students could have all semester to write something I call “unstructured-structured.” The essay-prompt itself is unstructured. But the way in which the essay is written is structured by meetings between student and professor. 

Teachers always assign essays with quantitative guidelines: “x pages long,” “bibliography must include primary sources and contain a certain number of items,” thesis must conform to certain guidelines. So let’s try substituting qualitative guidelines: “pick a subject that interests or bothers you. Why does the subject interest or bother you? When did you first become aware of it? What are some angles you haven’t considered?  Are there multiple sides to the issue? Do all of those sides have merit? Why or why not? What are some things you feel you could explain to those engaged in discussion of the subject? What are some things you imagine they could explain to you?” This kind of essay, you may observe, would be much more interesting to read as well as to write. It puts the obligation on the student to think a topic through and come up with something original to say, no matter how old the student is. But while it doesn’t focus on contributing new knowledge to an ongoing scholarly debate, I feel that new knowledge could indeed by arrived at this way. Perhaps most importantly, the focus is on respecting the other people in the discussion, but still weighing their ideas and arguments on their merits.

Whatever we do, we must slow down the writing process. As long as an essay is something you hand in instead of a process you engage in, students will write their essays at the last moment and professors will engage in self-care by skimming them. Meanwhile the great writers are precisely the ones who try things out and see if they work. Thomas More is a great writer. Michel de Montaigne is a great writer. Margaret Cavendish is a great writer. What each of these people have in common is that they wrote for pleasure. Yes, they were on the wrong side of colonialism, and thus had money and free time and were entrenched in a certain Euro-centric outlook (I hesitate to say that they were white because that concept had not even solidified yet). But that is not a reason to discount their works entirely; it is certainly a reason to work harder towards a society in which a less privileged person has leisure time to write—or to do whatever. But that may be a hill for another hike.

And yet I want to strike even more of a Utopian stance for a moment and ask: what if? What if the essayistic form of Montaigne and his descendants—Thomas Browne, Margaret Cavendish, even Derrida, although I hate him for being so obscurantist—what if that were the process they taught us in school; the process we were to teach our students? Not the only method of writing, but the main one: how to explore a topic, how to include your own preconceived notions in that exploration. How to engage in an intellectually honest manner with a topic, damn the consequences. It would be harder. But it would put the focus where it belongs: not just proving a random thesis because your teacher says that if you don’t have 6-8 pages on their desk by next Tuesday, you get a failing grade for the assignment. Not being motivated to prove a point; being motivated instead to discuss some ideas.

In my own writing classes—the ones I teach, this is what I do. My kids, as a rule, do not write persuasive essays; they write fiction or personal essays. I think some of the students are paralyzed by the freedom, at first. But they warm up pretty quick, and it’s not surprising to me that I regularly read short stories that are among my favorites; short stories that stand up to the work of the old, dead, white masters, even though they are written by children who aren’t even in high school yet. It turns out that when you ask a person—child or adult—to write something from the heart, and, of course, you shepherd them through the process so they don’t get discouraged, they have the potential to write something incredible. And if you ask them to write a scholastic essay about a topic they aren’t particularly invested in, they will write a scholastic essay they aren’t particularly invested in. And when you read it, you won’t be, either.

*Seriously. There must be a better way to turn French names into adjectives. “Montaignean.” “Foucaultian,” “Rousseauian”? 5 vowels in a row? Am I writing words or stretching them on a rack?

Meet Adam

By Adam Katz

For me, this blog is part of a larger shift in focus from academic writing to personal writing. For a year after grad school, I was trying to force myself to read academic articles, and, ultimately, to write one of my own. And now I’m reading science fiction books instead, and writing one of my own.

Let me back up a step.

I finished my PhD late in 2019. The whole thing was a rush job, because I was afraid I would not be able to graduate if I didn’t do it then. I started the dissertation around 2013 but kept putting it off. First because I was having relationship issues and just couldn’t focus on both. Then because I was starting a new teaching job and just couldn’t focus on both. And so on, until it was almost too late. And then I went full speed, finished it, defended, and was out. So the whole thing took about a decade, and at the end I was still short on time.

I know.

I KNOW.

Anyway, after the dissertation was done I decided to change gears and work on an article for a while. During the early months of Covid. When everything was hectic and everyone’s survival felt uncertain and I couldn’t even maintain the attention-span necessary to read for pleasure, much less to read the kinds of things I needed to read in order to finish the article—if only writing an article about Doctor Faustus meant reading things as interesting as the Marlowe play. But no, it meant reading long-winded 16th century treatises on witchcraft, essays on the extent to which Marlowe was influenced by the 16th century French Humanist Petrus Ramus, and ancient roman dialogues and treatises about. All of which might once have appealed to, even excited, me. But I just wasn’t able to get it up academically anymore.

So then my friend Andrew was talking about starting a podcast and I thought that was just the sort of project I needed to jumpstart my writing. And it was for a while. The podcast made me reconnect with my academic roots and Andrew and I started hanging out more, including spending hours on Zoom together just to write. Progress started getting itself made somehow. But it was torture. I hate footnoting. I hate making bibliographies. I hate all of it. I had written the argument. It was a decent argument. Wasn’t that enough?

So a couple months ago now, I decided to take a break. There were some creative pieces I had left on the sideboard for a while, and I wanted to get back into them. One of them was a novel I’d written about 200 pages toward; I had put it aside so I could finish my dissertation; then I had put it aside again so I could finish my article. This was a pattern. I decided to break it.

It’s a few months later. I’m up to 330 pages. And I regret nothing. Nobody is paying me to write (which is no different from before). I’m doing it because I love it.

No that’s not quite right. I’m doing it because I want to see how the story I’m writing ends.

No that’s not quite right either. I’m doing it because I think writing has value. Just like practicing piano. Just like painting or riding a bicycle. It’s an activity I find fills my life with meaning. So I keep doing it. It occurs to me: this is not how I felt about academic writing; not for a long time now. You know you’re burnt out if you feel about your academic writing the way Kay felt about haymaking in The Once and Future King:

“The Wart loved hay-making, and was good at it. Kay, who was two years older, generally stood on the edge of the bundle which he was trying to pick up, with the result that he worked twice as hard as the Wart for only half the result. But he hated to be beaten at anything and used to fight away with the wretched hay—which he loathed like poison—until he was quite sick.” (Chapter 1).

I kept saying to myself: write this article and then you’ll be that much closer to getting a job at a university. Write this article and you’ll be that much closer to knowing what to do with your dissertation, which you can turn into a book proposal, which you can turn into a tenure-track position with a robe and golden tassel. But “write this article because…” also means when I’m depressed. When I don’t feel like working. When I can’t bear to see another footnote.

So I’m doing this instead for the foreseeable future. And, periodically, if you like, I’ll let you know how it’s going. For now, it’s going better than before. Which… you know what? I’ll take it.