Willy Loman and the Academic World

I used to go to a regional conference in Chicago about this time every year. It was held in the Bismarck Hotel on the Loop. The Bismarck had been a grand old hotel that had fallen onto hard times. Someone asked about the accommodations there, and I told them that I usually stayed in Willy Loman's old room.

Willy Loman was the downtrodden hero of Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman. He was the epitome of the guy who kept grabbing for the brass ring only to have it slip through his fingers over and over again. The process finally wore him down.

Thinking about the Bismarck and poor old Willy got me thinking about being downtrodden in academia. Contrary to popular perception, the academy can be a pretty harsh and cruel place. Most academics have one thing in common -- they want to be heard. As a result, like the Inferno, there are a number of circles in academia:

The Top Rung. This is where everyone wants to be. This is the abode of the Superstar Professor -- top rank university, endowed chair, princely salary, constant invitations to speak at conferences worldwide. CNN wants to know what they think. This is being Heard. While they are most often not recognized on the street, they are icons on campus and at meetings. Their classrooms are packed with students, and when they read a paper, the audience spills out into the hallway. The world hangs on their every Word. This is the brass ring, ladies and gentleman.

Flash in the Pan. These folk were once on their way. They had their terrain, and the world was noticing. And then the world went in another direction. They can still draw crowds at regional meetings, and still get their work published. But not as much and not as quickly. And some of it gets sent back. Students hang around, but few of these students hitch their wagons to these fallen stars....

The Adjuncts. These are the genuine victims of academia. Something went askew, and they got tossed into the bottomless pit. The conditions are harsh -- no pay, massive course loads at multiple marginal schools, no chance of advancement. No school will ever hire someone full time if they can get him as an adjunct. They either have a day job (many adjunct courses are at night) or they live in poverty. The saddest of the lot are working on papers that no one will publish or a book that might as well be scratched out in sand on the beach.

Everyone knows these three categories. This post is really about the huge hidden lot of academic toilers. I call them --

The Legion of Willy. You know these people. Ph.D. from a decent university. Got a job just slightly down the pecking order from their alma maters. Got two or three publications placed in respectable journals in time to get tenure. Were promoted to Associate Professor. This is where most of them linger, until they retire.
Most of the time, they hang around campus. Once or twice (if they can finagle the money) they head off to present papers at conferences. Most schools will give them travel money if they have a paper on the program. Many of them shoot for the mega-conferences in their fields, where they present along with 10,000 to 30,000 of their confreres.
So here is a typical conference trip. First comes the airplane flight. When they get to the conference city, they look to use the coupons (that came in their conference packets) for the airport shuttle bus. They cram into buses with masses of other professors, and head off the the one-to-ten conference hotels. Most often, they share a room with a colleague or a mate from graduate school. Once in the rooms, they unpack their wardrobes. The men wear either blue blazers with lots of brass buttons, or tweed coats with leather patches. The standard pants are Dockers, but the more daring wear jeans. The women run the gamut from Liz to Claiborne. Breakfast is always in the hotel. When funds are tight, lunch is at Subway. When times are a bit better, lunch is at the dining area at the Conference Center. The average wait in line for lunch is 45 minutes. Willy Lomans learn patience early.
On presentation day, they scurry to arrive early. The lucky ones have a place on a paper panel, in a room that looks like a refurbished cloakroom. If they are lucky, the session might draw double-digit attendees. Quite often, the presenters outnumber the audience. The rest are sent to post papers on a board for others to read as they wander by, or else they camp out at a table with (always) too many copies of the paper or handouts for the handful of people who actually sit down to hear a discussion about the paper. When they are done, they get the concierge at the Conference Center to book reservations for dinner at a moderately priced restaurant nearby. By the end of the meeting, it is time to re-pack, catch the shuttle bus, and wing homewards.

So what makes a professor into a Willy Loman? In one sense, the have nothing to complain about. They are among the most secure people on earth. But they are not Heard. So they write things that no one needs to Hear. This is the heart of their tragic circumstances....

gary

Washoe is Dead

Washoe, the sign language chimp, is dead, alas. Long after the grant money ran out, Washoe hung around. Long after Tom Sebeok got tired of his decade long fight with Washoe's people, the poor chimp kept eating bananas and making grimacing faces. Washoe was not at Tom's funeral. Washoe could not apologize for the fact that Sebeok wasted the best years of his career trying to point out that signing is not proper language, and that real language is a species-specific behavior of humans alone. The War over Washoe kept Tom from writing his great zoosemiotic magnum opus.

Washoe did not ask for any of this. There is a terrible price to pay, sometimes, for being more clever than the rest of your species.

Ask Washoe.

Ask Tom.


gary

Lost in the Cosmos -- The Full Title!

Here is the complete and full title of Walker Percy's magnificent book:


Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

or

The Strange Case of the Self, your Self, the Ghost which Haunts the Cosmos

or

How you can survive in the Cosmos about which you know more and more while knowing less and less about yourself, this despite 10,000 self-help books, 100,000 psychotherapists, and 100 million fundamentalist Christians

or

Why it is that of all the billions and billions of strange objects in the Cosmos--novas, quasars, pulsars, black holes--you are beyond doubt the strangest

or

Why it is possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you've been stuck with yourself all your life

or

How it is possible for the man who designed Voyager 19, which arrived at Titania, a satellite of Uranus, three seconds off schedule and a hundred yards off course after a flight of six years, to be one of the most screwed-up creatures in California-- or the Cosmos

plus

A Twenty-Question Quiz which will not help you become rich or more assertive or more creative or make love better but which may--though it probably won't, considering how useless most self- help books are--help you discover who you are not and even--an outside chance--who you are

plus

A preliminary short quiz which you can take standing in a bookstore and which will allow you to determine whether you need to buy this book and proceed to the Twenty Questions

plus

A short history of the Cosmos, including a semiotic theory of the Self which explains why it is that man is the only alien creature, as far as we know, in the entire Cosmos

plus

A space odyssey which gives an account of what can happen to an earthling astronaut if there is somebody out there and what can happen if there is no one out there

Lost in the Umwelt

Walker Percy once wrote a great book called "Lost in the Cosmos."

In tribute to him, every now and then I will do a LITU, or Lost In The Umwelt, appreciation.
To be a LITU person, I think, is a great honor.

There are so many LITU souls out there....

gary

So What is an Umwelt?

First of all, think of what it means to be a human being in the world.
We find ourselves in three sitautions simultaneously -- in time and space as a physical entity, in an environment as an organism, and in an umwelt as a living being.
Take me -- first of all I am a physical thing that obeys the laws of chemistry and physics.
I had a bicycle wreck on 1 October 2007. I landed on my hands with a certain amount of energy. I ended up about 15 feet from my bicycle. Given my speed, my mass, and my path, my final "resting place" so to speak could have been calculated.
Second of all -- I am an organism in an environment. There were literally billions and billions of other organisms sharing that environment with me on that early afternoon. The temperature, barometric pressure, gravity, and the like were the same for all of us. Fortunately for me, the environment was very benign that day for us humans. As an organism, I suffered biological consequences from my accident. My left wrist was fractured ( I am left-handed) and it is now in a restraining splint. The volar plate ligament of my right ring finger was torn, leaving that finger hyperextended and incapable of movement. I also suffered a compound dislocation of my right pinkie. The bone dislocated at the second joint, and the force of the blow turned the bone 45 degrees and forced it through the skin. As a result, these two fingers were put in a hard splint and immobilized. The dislocated bone was put back into place, and stitches were used to close the skin wound. Currently, the fingers are wrapped and tied together with two buddy straps.
Finally, I am a living and acting being an an umwelt. I am painfully aware of the myriad tasks that we call upon our fingers to do, now that I cannot do them so well. I can finally type, but slowly and a bit painfully. Messages will be short for awhile until things improve.

So what is an Umwelt? It is the 'within" world where we live and act. Some theorists say we each have our own Umwelts. I think this is somewhat true, but I also think we also live in interating and intersecting Umwelts. It is true we share environments, but that sharing is much more objective. Umwelt sharing is more personal, but also more communal and public.

More later. Time to take some Advil and rest the fingers :-)

gary

Starting Off

The Umwelt is a pretty big place, even though it is much smaller than any environment.

So I am carving out this little space.
It will help me move my hurt little fingers.
At least for now....

gary