Worry. Yes. A bit too much. Change is afoot in the life of Wallace Stevens's web-posting acolyte. New job, big writing project due, etc. That's why next week you'll find me on vacation. Or rather, you won't find me.
Until August...
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This is the sound my cat, Professor Boskowitz, makes when he holds office hours. He's emeritus at Columbia, where he was a student of Trilling's in the '60s. Boskowitz became well-known in the late '70s for his monograph Feline Aesthetic: Disjunction and the Nocturnal Paraphrase. He counts The Liberal Imagination as one of the more important works of the past century and disdains the complacent morality of the entertainment class.
Last month, at Stanley Kunitz's big 100th birthday celebration, Marie Ponsot remarked of his good manners:
Decorum is not decoration, but fitness, where fitness counts.
She is so wise. When did we forget common decency? We out there in the arts, do we have to be uncivil?