MORE DREARY NEWS FOR ACADEMICS
Over at the Chronicle of Higher Education, a humanities professor has been on a crusade to reveal the many ways that graduate school is a bad idea. There are too few academic jobs teaching English or History in America for the training to be anything other than a crap-shoot. This is a problem, particularly because the hurdles to becoming a professor in America include slaving away for years on a PhD and submitting yourself to the low-wage exploitation of adjunct teaching. Louis Menand considers this in his new book, "The Marketplace of Ideas" (reviewed by The Economist here). He notes that whereas you can become a lawyer in three years and a medical doctor in four, the median time to a doctoral degree in the humanities is nine years. (Median time...nine years.) And then good luck finding a job.
Given all the bad news, I was initially heartened to see that the Chronicle has published a response to the original story by a humanities professor named James Mulholland, "Neither a Trap Nor a Lie". Surely this would offer evidence that contradicts these numbers. Surely it would prove that the economics of academia in the humanities isn't so dire. read more »
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THE Q&A: PATTIE BOYD, MUSE, PHOTOGRAPHER
She married one of the Beatles, divorced him, married Eric Clapton, hung out with the Rolling Stones, drank with the Who, toured with Cream. Pattie Boyd has some stories. Like other Beatles plus-ones early on, she kept to the background. She occupied herself by taking Polaroid pictures, serendipitously documenting one of the most important eras of music history (her photos can be seen on her website).
After years of struggling with her past—the broken marriages and knock-on effects of a rock‘n’roll lifestyle—Boyd was able to write about her experiences. Her biography, "Wonderful Today", which debuted at the top of the New York Times best-seller list in 2007, begins in Kenya, where she spent her early childhood. She then recounts her modelling career in London, her time with the Beatles and her role in inspiring such songs as “Something”, “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight”. Lately Boyd has devoted herself to photography. "Through the Eyes of a Muse", a collection of personal photos from her years with George Harrison and Clapton, recently finished making a grand multi-year tour through America, Canada, Britain and Australia.
In a conversation with More Intelligent Life, Pattie Boyd spoke about her past and the way photography helped her heal.
More Intelligent Life: What convinced you to dig up the past and sort through your memories to put together "Through the Eyes of a Muse"? read more »
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DAVID BYRNE [HEARTS] THE ECONOMIST
A man of good taste, we always knew. (See the third photo down on his journal.) Mr Byrne, the feeling is mutual.
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THE FEED: MAR 16TH
What we're reading:
Tales of the unread (Second Pass): This literary website turns one, and celebrates with reviews of out-of-print books
Everybody have fun (New Yorker): Lessons policymakers can learn from happiness research
Historic preservation (AP): Federal grants to American projects are under threat
Academic elitism (In Character): Snobbery, exploitation and silliness in the ivory tower
Today's quote:
"'Lloyd Webber' has become a kind of synonym for 'naff'. Ask yourself, dear reader, how many of your friends are big Lloyd Webber fans? Probably not many. That isn't a coincidence. Judgements about art and culture are impossible to separate from the judgement about social status."
~ Tim Lott, "Are Vettriano, Lloyd Webber and Dan Brown really so naff?" (Independent)
(Via The Economist) Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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THE NOT-SO-SECRET DIARIES OF A DOMINATRIX
Many things come easy in life to smart, beautiful women. Melissa Febos, the author of "Whip Smart", understands this. It is what allows her to nail job interviews and collect boyfriends with ease. But Febos also has gifts as a writer, including a knack for self-deflation. "Whip Smart" is a memoir about the author's four-year career as a dominatrix in a dungeon in midtown Manhattan. "An hour alone with a naked man with whom you do not intend to have sex can be a very long time," she recalls thinking on the day of her first session. Already we like her.
Now a writing instructor at SUNY Purchase College and the Gotham Writers' Workshop, Febos begins her story with her search for a job that pays better than her gigs in publishing. She was then a recent graduate of the New School university in New York, with a minor heroin habit, an inborn curiosity and a petite and curvy figure. Her neighbour, whose apartment bears such signs of sophistication as an Egon Schiele print and air-conditioning, is a dominatrix who seems to enjoy her job. The two women talk: trade secrets are shared, seeds are sown.
Febos locates the Dungeon of Mistress X through an ad in the back of the Village Voice. The place is nicer than she had expected, a sprawl of spotless dungeons outfitted with hanging cages, riding crops, paddles and coffins. Coffins? "For clients into sensory deprivation," explains Febos's superior during the tour. Ah, yes. She is hired, and her asking price will be $75 for an hour-long session, plus tips. Work starts the following Monday. read more »
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THE FEED: MAR 12TH
What we're reading:
Will kids understand Shakespeare better if they don't have to sit still? (Guardian)
A show of letters by J.D. Salinger
Salinger's dam of silence has sprung its first leak (Wall Street Journal)
Thousands of non-believers zealously converge in Melbourne, Australia (BBC)
What's in the David Foster Wallace archive?
The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas inherits the mess of papers he had stashed in a dark garage over-run with spiders (New Yorker)
Today's quote:
"By focusing on criminalising a government and making military intervention the top priority’, he argues, ‘[the Save Darfur Coalition] has made peace more elusive and increased the suffering of ordinary Darfuris."
~ Rob Crilly, author of "Saving Darfur: Everyone’s Favourite African War", in a review by Philip Hammond, "Darfur: every celeb’s favourite African war" (spiked review of books) read more »
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WHITNEY'S TEPID BIENNIAL
Sleet spattered over VIPs queuing outside for the opening of the Whitney Biennial on February 23rd. We suffered in silence, in darkness, our conversations drowned by the monastic groaning of an outdoor installation that cast an eerie blue hue. Dumpling trucks prowled and rogue cameramen interviewed some on a scrap of red carpet. We inched along as the storm intensified, sentries sifting us into various purgatories.
Once inside, past menacing squads of security officers and Blackberry-wielding event planners, we were rewarded with heat, light, DJed electronica, crowds, food, wine and, eventually, art. We began our tallying for our respective cost-benefit analyses: was it worth the wait?
The Biennial spans three floors—more when counting "Collecting Biennials", a nearly year-long show of permanent-collection works by artists featured in Biennials past, in celebration of the show’s 75th year. Francesco Bonami, this year’s co-curator, broke it down for us: floor four is “spectacle”, three is “video” (the first Biennial to devote an entire floor to the medium) and two is “creepy”. We are meant to choose our own path, but the most convenient approach is to take the elevator to the fourth floor and walk down. read more »
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THE FEED: MAR 10TH
What we're reading:
A demolition of Hank Paulson's memoir
A critic huffs that Paulson sounds tough but was in fact all too weak (New Republic)
A book that defends plagiarism, champions faked memoirs and declares fiction dead has the literary world up in arms (Salon)
The trade paper fires its two top critics, moving to freelance reviews (Los Angeles Times)
The late choreographer's dance company embarks on a final tour before disbanding (Wall Street Journal)
Today's quote:
"[T]his poor sap of a show feels as eager to be walloped as a clown in a carnival dunking booth."
~ Ben Brantley on "Love Never Dies", Andrew Lloyd Webber's sequal to "The Phantom of the Opera", "Same Phantom, different spirit" (New York Times)
(Via The Economist)
Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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FRITZ LANG'S HAUNTING PRESCIENCE
"There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator," declares Maria to her underground followers in "Metropolis". When Fritz Lang's apocalyptic silent film premiered in Berlin in 1927, it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was also a commercial and critical flop. Paramount Pictures swiftly acquired the film, trimming its length and simplifying its plot to appeal to an American market. It didn't work: the film bombed in America, too, and the original cut was presumed to be lost forever.
In the meantime, Lang's stylish vision of a grim future has become a cult relic, fascinating cineastes and inspiring directors such as Ridley Scott and Stanley Kubrick. Now, over 80 years later, the film recently enjoyed another world premiere, again in Berlin—this time as the director's cut.
Set in the year of 2026, "Metropolis" features lowly, expendable labourers toiling in polluted darkness to support the wealthy few. Lang's imagery is bizarre and haunting, full of grinding machinery, a mad scientist and a fembot villain. It also boasts a plot full of weird gaps and confusing transitions. In 2008 a previously unknown copy of "Metropolis" was found in a museum archive in Buenos Aires, complete with missing scenes. This "sensational discovery", according to Rainer Rother, the head of the Berlin film museum Deutsche Kinematik, has filled in some of the more mystifying parts of the story. Smaller characters are fleshed out; bigger characters are better motivated. read more »
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THE FEED: MAR 8TH
Today's links:
Extraordinary intelligence may not be genetic (Salon)
The problem with a new biography of Nina Simone is the woman herself (Washington Times)
Is a "Best Actress" award sexist? No (Los Angeles Times)
It's time for Russian writers to engage with the country's dodgy past (New York Times)
Today's quote:
"Well, the time has come."
~ Barbara Streisand, presenting the best director Oscar to Katherine Bigelow, the first woman to win; in Roger Ebert's Oscar round-up "No Pain for 'Hurt Locker,' Bigelow" (Chicago Sun-Times)
(Via The Economist)
Picture credit: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Comment of the moment
quote How could Mr. Ewing talk about board game renaissance without mentioning Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, which are far less repetitive than risk or monopoly and have been the true catalyst of the recent board game revival. ...