Readers here probably could have predicted that the favorite author of my teenage years was Robert A. Heinlein. I discovered his short stories through a next-door-neighbor, and they were my introduction to science fiction and also to serious book buying. On one trip to San Antonio — perhaps the best city in Texas for used book lovers — I came away with fourteen of his books, which made the largest book purchase I'd ever made.
M. G. Lord has a fun essay about Heinlein in the Times today. Apparently there's a big conference scheduled for Heinlein's centennial. "The celebration, set for July 7, 2007, Heinlein's birthday, will consist of three separate sections: one for fans, one for academics and a third for a group not usually associated with fiction, genre or otherwise - aerospace professionals."
This segregation between fans and academics seems very wise indeed. Fans tend to interact poorly with academics analyzing their favorite authors. I've seen an alumni lecture on Tolkien descend into shouting, wailing chaos because of this clash. (In fact, I had to leave the room after a furious argument broke out between the lecturer and several members of the audience over whether Sam knew that Elbereth was Varda on Weathertop, and I realized that I actually had an opinion on the subject.)
I think that one of the main reasons for this conflict is that fans have different standards of authenticity than critics do. Any argument about a work is judged based on its conformance to the text, rather than the argument itself. Speakers are more privileged than others not by their credentials, but because of their familiarity with the material — sometimes as demonstrated in obscure trivia contests.
Perhaps this isn't such a bad metric. I rarely shout at my CD player, but a lecture on Science Fiction managed to offend me enough to actually stop my laundry folding. Dr. Rabkin had really won me over with his theories about science fiction as an outgrowth of the western, as well as the analysis of teenage power fantasies in both genres. I was just getting into his lecture of Heinlein's father figures as two different halves of the Oedipal father, when he slipped up: "Halfway through Starship Troopers we actually find out that this stern drill sergeant really is Johnny Rico's father." What? Suddenly nothing else he had to say carried any weight.
Posted by Ben Brumfield at October 2, 2005 09:36 AMI would've turned it off for another reason entirely. Two halves of the Oedipal father? Give me a break.
Aaaanyway, I read a fair amount of Heinlein growing up too, I remember loving Starship Troopers when I was young. When I was a little older, that rather pompous Stranger In A Stange Land suited my teenage mood pretty well (the gratuitous nudity help somewhat, I must admit). But you know as soon as I started seeking out his books based on his name alone I was quickly disappointed. He was a very uneven and, toward the end, a pretty self-indulgent writer, IMO.
We had a fairly heated talk about fandom around here not so long ago, and I ruffled some feathers. I'm not trying to do that again, not trying to needle anyone, but I think serious fans are often very thin skinned, and they can at their worst become rather infantile about whatever obsesses them. I imagine that the worst cases, at least, have something to do with the majority of hardcore fans I've met seeming socially awkward. And then, of course, many of them are engineers, who probably tend more toward emotional immaturity than the population as a whole. Look around usenet if you don't believe me, especially something like rec.games.go.
Of course I'm not sure academics on the whole are much better. I don't think I've had enough experience with them to say.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at October 4, 2005 03:41 PMI agree that it varies tremendously. Especially towards the end, when it seemed like he was just cranking stuff out. Convergent series is the last refuge of an author who's out of ideas.
One theory I've heard is that anything he produced while he had that decade-long artery blockage shows the effects of anoxia. Perhaps this applies to Stranger, though the first half is up to par. I've discovered that I can drastically increase my enjoyment of the book by just stopping midway through.
Heinlein has one thing in common with Orwell -- the childless man's obsession with fertility.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at October 5, 2005 11:08 AMAnd then, of course, many of them are engineers, who probably tend more toward emotional immaturity than the population as a whole.
Wow, Alan — you try to avoid the trouble you got into about fans and this is what comes out?
Of course I'm not sure academics on the whole are much better.
Rather than getting all defensive about your engineer comment, I'll stick a toe into the hot water myself.
I've been amazed at the workplace politics you find in academia. Not just the sort of breathtaking spectacle KC Johnson writes about on Cliopatria, but the more mundane cliquishness, pettiness, and grudge-bearing better left on the seventh-grade playground. My first job was in a university IT department, and the passions unleashed upon the tiniest administrative, technical or managerial decision were entirely disproportionate to the matters themselves.
Rather than attributing this to the emotional maturity of academics — which probably are at about the same level as engineers — I suspect that the problem is structural. Destructive workplace politics are inversely proportional to the organization's sensitivity to the bottom line. You see the same kind of energy spent on politics in big firms (e.g. IBM in the Eighties), in smaller firms that are not dependent on profit (e.g. dot-com bubble), and in a firm's individual departments that are not measurable by sales made or product delivered (e.g. HR). It's very hard to define a bottom line in an academic instition that's relevant to most of the institution's employees.
I've had friends in academia describe departments "going into receivership" as a fairly normal (if extreme) affair. Apparently this is a mechanism that's put in place when the internal politics become so dysfunctional that no decisions can be made, so a chair from an unrelated department takes over. It is very difficult for me to imagine a commercial workplace that behaved like this without heads rolling sooner or later.
This isn't intended as any sort of condemnation of working academia — there are some pretty obvious perqs to the jobs, and I remember that some of my happiest coworkers at the university were people had left industry and had enough perspective to laugh off the battles about putting terminals in the library. Still, it does raise my hackles a bit when I encounter facile analyses of the corporate workplace emerging from academia.
I'm not dismissing all analyses of corporate culture as facile, mind you, but some are certainly the product of gross generalization and myopic research. My college Gender Studies prof spent much of a lecture talking about the importance of sexual allure to a woman's success in the corporate world (this linking capitalization to objectification of women, and showing that adoption of the colonial narrative was rewarded, etc.) When I pointed out that conventional attractiveness is a debility for women within computer science &mdash possibly due to the emotional immaturity of engineers — she explained that the work she was quoting was based on a study of trial lawyers. To her credit, she conceded that maybe things might be different in engineering, but maintained that the larger point held.
Barbara Ehrenreich's widely-panned Bait and Switch seems to be one of these myopic analysis written from a perspective comfortably ensconced in theory. I found the following passage from her Inside Higher Ed interview to be especially annoying:
I’d like to reach undergraduates with Bait and Switch before they decide on a business career. I’m haunted by the kid I met at Siena College, in N.Y., who told me he was really interested in psychology, but since that isn’t “practical,” he was going into marketing, which draws on psychology — though, as this fellow sadly admitted, only for the purpose of manipulating people. Or the gal I met at University of Oregon who wants to be a journalist but is drifting toward PR so she can make a living.Right now, business is the most popular undergraduate major in America, largely because young people believe it will lead to wealth or at least security. I want them to rethink that decision, or at least do some hard thinking about what uses they would like apply their business skills to.
For someone who has written so much on people trying to make a living, she seems to have a lot of contempt for students who are trying to do precisely that.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at October 7, 2005 08:56 AMWow, Alan — you try to avoid the trouble you got into about fans and this is what comes out?
No offense intended. This is obviously just one topic I should not discuss around here, lest I seem to criticise any group of people with such wanton overgeneralization as "probably tend more toward...than the population as a whole."
Rather than getting all defensive about your engineer comment, I'll stick a toe into the hot water myself.
Thank you.
My first job was in a university IT department, and the passions unleashed upon the tiniest administrative, technical or managerial decision were entirely disproportionate to the matters themselves.
I work at a university, and I have to say the politics seem pretty ordinary. Something occassionally gets blown out of proportion like this, and inefficiency is rife as with probably any government workplace, but on the whole my experience (with staff, I think faculty are another matter) doesn't support this.
Which, if accurate, suggests to me that there may be some particular tendency among those who usually become faculty to behave in particularly dysfunctional ways politically. Is that true? I've no idea, but at least I can assume someone is offended now.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at October 7, 2005 11:22 AMThis is obviously just one topic I should not discuss around here
Oh, be a sport, Alan. This place has been so quiet I've thought about posting on my homebrewing battles with phytase.
the politics seem pretty ordinary
You know, the university IT department I worked in was almost entirely populated by people who'd graduated from the school and then gone straight to work there. I wonder if the lack of outside experience led to the politics.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at October 8, 2005 09:05 AMYou know, the university IT department I worked in was almost entirely populated by people who'd graduated from the school and then gone straight to work there. I wonder if the lack of outside experience led to the politics.
Seems plausible. Where I work that is not the case. I would say I'm probably one of the few people around working here who graduated from this school. It's strange to realize that your coworkers have never even seen the vast majority of the campus they work on. The school is on the corner and right next to a parking structure.
The law school also likes to remain aloof from the rest of the campus. To hear people talk sometimes you'd think it's an autonomous institution.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at October 10, 2005 09:30 AM