Go ahead, brag. It's a pleasure to think about.
The state rep. in my nabe when my son was small was Joe Lieberman. Very
embarrassing now. Merely annoying then.
Yale does a better job now at being a part of New Haven than it used to, but
the city is decaying badly around the edges, still. And will for a while,
given the state of the economy. I've returned not for the Yale influence,
which I still find baleful, but for the company of family and friends.
Susan
on 11/12/08 1:09 PM, Judy Prince at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> Thanks, Susan. The only name I could recall was Harold, but obviously that
> was incorrect. Haven't been back to Hyde Park for near ten years, and my
> few contacts are mostly northsiders. As a braggy [not really, obviously]
> aside: Barack Obama was my state legislator, and my son attended the high
> school where Michelle had gone. I came to feel that Obama was a singular
> political force, but had no inkling that he'd have been able to move himself
> ahead so fantastically well.
> I do at times miss the community; the UC influence, tho, not so much. I
> agree about the competition for faculty posts now. It was impossible then!
> But now? Painful to imagine.
>
> Chicago itself is a beautiful, grand, tough and brilliant city---the most
> creative theatre city, I think, in the USA.
>
> Best,
>
> Judy
>
>
>
> 2008/11/12 Susan Holahan <[log in to unmask]>
>
>> Wasn't the Chicago Bloom Alan? The one at Yale was Harold. Still is. Alan's
>> dead. He was part of that strange neocon cluster of fairly "great" scholars
>> at Chicago that seemed, regrettably, to include even the Sanskritist Wendy
>> Doniger O'Flaherty.
>>
>> The star-making you refer to did seem to depend largely on bombast. Has it
>> stopped since? I think I see greedy "stars" all over. I'd hate to be a
>> young, aspiring academic now.
>>
>> on 11/12/08 11:50 AM, Judy Prince at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>
>>> Susan, are we talking about the same Bloom that held sway at U of
>> Chicago,
>>> those horrid Great Books seminars, and such? I was a longtime Hyde Park
>>> resident, but never attended UC [graduated U of M]; got the feeling,
>> though,
>>> that bombasting faculty members often became the 'stars', and, therefore,
>>> grabbed up the elite few highly paid professorships.
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Judy
>>>
>>> 2008/11/12 Susan Holahan <[log in to unmask]>
>>>
>>>> on 11/12/08 10:41 AM, Dominic Fox at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> His interpretations of individual poems were often--well--off. Look,
>> for
>>>>>> example, at "The Visionary Company" (very early book on the
>> Romantics).
>>>> Or
>>>>>> don't: it's irritating. He loves to pronounce in large terms, finesse
>>>> the
>>>>>> details.
>>>>>>
>>>>> I believe the term is "strong misreading". Strong critics rationalise
>>>>> their own weaknesses. And rationalise this rationalisation as critical
>>>>> strength.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dominic
>>>>
>>>> You're right. I'd forgotten. Operating under the influence not of
>> anxiety
>>>> but of the great Europeans (Spitzer, Curtius, etc.), I quarreled with
>> Bloom
>>>> in his seminar on the Romantics until I ran out of patience. He
>> quarreled
>>>> indulgently with young women then, no "School of Resentment" allusions.
>>>>
>>>> Susan H.
>>>>
>>
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