Get Smart

In "Here's the Problem With Being So 'Smart'," Jeffrey Williams critiques the "special status and value" that the term smart has assumed in contemporary academic culture. The gist of Williams's essay, which is excerpted, I think, from a longer piece in the minnesota review, is that although smart "purports to be a way to talk about quality in a sea of quantity," it really operates as more of a stylistic marker, a judgment of taste that disguises itself as a judgment of reason. Williams is wary of the phrase, suggesting that it often operates as a sort of buzz word for insiders. I'm sure he's right.

Here's my take: In the ultra-competitive academic marketplace -- where the publication requirements for tenure keep increasing, even though everbody knows there's a surplus of scholarship -- a 'smart' publication is one that is supposed to have a certain cachet. It's a text that everyone is talking about in the faculty lounge and about which everyone has an opinion, regardless if they've read it or not. A 'smart' scholar is not just intelligent, but savvy, sharp, and clever. An agile performer, both on the page and behind the podium.

I'd go so far as to suggest that the phrase denotes a sort of academic hipness or trendiness that everybody bemoans, but is probably inevitable so long as universities become ever more corporatized. (Of course, Harvard was, if I'm not mistaken, the first U.S. corporation, but what I'm referring to is the influx of for-profit values into our institutions of higher education.) It's all very anxiety inducing for those of us just entering the profession. Not only is there enormous pressure to publish "innovative" research early and often, but one is expected to be a performer, projecting a 'smart' image and the promise of being a 'rising star' in one's field.

New E-Lit by Richard Powers: "They Come in a Steady Stream"

The latest online installment of Ninthletter contains a work of short fiction by Richard Powers titled "They Come in a Steady Stream Now." I eagerly read the piece as soon as I received word of it via e-mail, because I've been waiting for one of our major contemporary print novelists, such as Powers, to make the digital leap.

My personal impression has been that in the world of electronic literature, poetry has made the migration to the screen (to borrow a formulation from Joe Tabbi) far more smoothly (should I say Flash-ily) than prose narratives have. This is somewhat surprising (or perhaps not) considering that most films in the US are narrative based. While it's understandable that longer prose narratives, novel-length works, might still be best encountered on the page, in a book format, one would think that short fiction, particularly of the image + text sort pioneered by the likes of Donald Barthelme, would be by now a staple of the e-lit universe. But it isn't. At least to my knowledge.

What I'm trying to say is that e-lit has been waiting for some time for an established print-based author of considerable talents to publish an e-fiction that would blow the whole genre wide open. I had great hopes that "They Come in a Steady Stream" now would be that text. Without sounding too disappointed, let me just say that it's not.

I've only read "They Come in a Steady Stream" once and don't want to say too much until I've read it again, but what Powers gives us is a sequence of thoughtful, though by no means profound, meditations on spam. Powers' text, once opened, appears as a window from a standard-model e-mail application for a PC running Windows OS. What you read in this simulated e-mail application are a series of e-mails from Richard Powers. Again, these e-mails consist of short blog-sized musings about the plethora of unsolicited e-mail missives that we receive each day. The messages from Powers are interrupted by spam messages that may or may not be from actual companies.

While it's heartening to think that Powers may be preparing to take the full digital plunge into electronic environments, the author of Plowing the Dark is not breaking any new ground here. The e-mail narrative as a genre already has more experimental antecedents, such as Rob Wittig's Blue Company. To be honest, I was hoping for something more, a fiction in which hitherto unmagined possibilities inherent to the onscreen environment were brought to the foreground. Sorry, but the e-mail inbox frame just doesn't do it for me.

But, hey, not every work can be revolutionary, and I'm sure I'll find more to think about and remark upon in Powers's fiction when I reread it.

Northern Sky, Sverige, Dec A.M.

Northern Sky, Svergie, Dec A.M.
Originally uploaded by erasmus.

Laptop Use May Lower Fertility

Researchers claim that men who use laptop computers on their laps may be at risk for infertility. Apparently, the heat generated by laptops and the closed-thigh posture preferred by many men when they balance their computers on their laps may contribute to make them infertile. I can see how these factors could lead to a reduced sperm count. However, if procreation is the concern here, I have a hunch that the fellas who are lugging their laptops around with them everywhere are probably less likely to get laid in the first place. I could be wrong, but I think that having a fast, top-of-the-line laptop doesn't have the same effect on the ladies that having a fast, top-of-the-line sportscar does.

Gorilla Wake at the Brookfield Zoo

Gorillas at the Brookfield Zoo held a wake for Babs, the dominant female of the group. Babs was 30-years old and suffered from an incurable kidney condition, so the zoo euthanized her.

Ramar, the silverback male leader, was the only gorilla not to pay his or her respects to Babs. I wonder if this is typical behavior? Was there resentment? A rivalry?

Kudos to Adam Richer for sending me this link, and for taking me and Ira out to the Brookfield Zoo a year or so ago to see the apes in the Tropic world building.