I Am Still At an Academic Conference
Part two: after the Eliot panel, I went to the keynote presentation, where Laura Kipnis who wrote The Female Thing tried to make the Lee Siegel nonsense into a synecdoche for literary criticism; you will be glad to know she didn’t succeed. Then I went to the pizza reception, where I inhaled a Budwieser and 45 slices of Papa John’s and briefly listened to the jazz quartet whose leader had strewn flyers around the tables advertising his jazz workshops, in which anyone can learn to express himself or herself through improvisation.
Jamey’s hobby is listening to jazz, especially new young players. He also enjoys playing basketball and is very much interested in Metaphysics and spiritual pursuits as they apply to the growth of the individual. He has hit 50 free throws in a row!
I told a nice French lady that I was exhausted and had to go to bed, then spent an hour walking around sketchy parts of Louisville (cemetery -> electrical substation -> lumber mill -> ball bearing factory -> Harley dealership) playing the extreme sport of trying to get on the same side of the freeway and railroad tracks as the Days Inn. When I finally got there, the desk clerk looked me over and said, “You don’t look like you’re here for the car show... and you don’t look like you’re here for the gun show... it must be the literacy thing!” Close enough. “That’s right,” I said.
But the next day’s panels were good; my paper on Lolita came off well; the other Nabokov panelists are great and I skipped the official dinner so we could go out to an Argentinian restaurant where I ate (not beef!) a milanesa, which was basically a delicious plateful of fried cheese.
You're making me want to go to the MLA!
