Interview as Big as the Ritz

This is the Ritz-Carleton Hotel in Philadelphia, the site of one of my MLA interviews. There were six interviewers, including the chair of the department and an interested graduate student. There was one interviewee triumphantly wearing her MLA suit, thanks to the MLA air diet.

Here's a sampling of the best interview advice I received this year:

1. Don't forget to sparkle.
2. Don't forget to breathe.
3. Talk about how your dream course serves the students, not yourself.
4. Go into more detail about what happens in your classroom.
5. Be yourself.*

*Last night at an informal UW MLA-attendee gathering, my own dept. chair was laughing red wine out of his nose at something I'd said, and spluttered, "Did you show your sardonic humor in your interviews?" When I assured him I had refrained, he replied, "That's probably a good thing." So perhaps as well-intended as "be yourself" can be, as advice from one's beloved goes, it may not be the savviest advice to follow.

This advice all came to me from good friends, and I'm grateful to each of them for patiently listening to me while I relentlessly practiced answering fake interview questions, even at times when they hadn't actually asked me any fake interview questions. Thanks to these kind friends, my interviews went very well.

And now for something completely different... overheard at the MLA:

"... do call me. I love giving presidential addresses--so many people come to them..."
--Gayatri Spivak

"As [so and so] says in a very fine essay entitled 'Pointy Penises'..."
--Joseph Bristow

"Really, it should be fine to look puffy all the time."
--Paige Morgan

MLA Suit Fugue

Both definitions of fugue were in full force on Christmas night as I was packing suit variations for the Modern Language Association's annual post-Christmas convention in Philadelphia. The trick is to figure out how to stretch one's limited supply of professional clothing as long as possible--crucial if one plans to wander around the streets and hotels of downtown Philly for more than two days.

When I was packing my bed looked like this:

My boyfriend patiently looked on as I talked him through the Sunday outfit, the Monday (interview1) outfit, the Tuesday (interview2) outfit, and the Wednesday (just-in-case) outfit, and then he quietly waited for me to finish packing and re-packing my suitcase, wisely offering no helpful suggestions when I realized that my favorite gray Clarks heels would not make it to the convention after all.

After a 5.5 hour flight, I arrived at the downtown Doubletree hotel. A noisy demotion from Nob Hill's Fairmont where I stayed for the MLA convention in San Francisco last year. I unpacked, and my fugue state shifted from variations on a theme ...



to being more of a really disturbed state of consciousness, as I realized that I would need to re-read my entire dissertation (completed in 2007) in order to remember what it was about. Sweet dreams indeed.

Grandma's Favorite Cookies Not Tonight

These are my grandmother's favorite Christmas cookies. A basic butter cookie with an orange-honey glaze, the dough is very pleasing to put together because of the scent that lingers on your fingers from the fresh orange juice and grated orange peel. They are then dressed with a honey-orange glaze and topped with chopped walnuts. I cannot reproduce the recipe here, because it's a family secret. Got it? No recipe. Thus this entire post is a teaser.

And I'll tell you why that's fair: every year at Christmas-time, the Modern Language Association holds its annual job-hunt/meat-market/fish-bowl convention. Folks hoping to obtain a job teaching in the Humanities in an institution of higher education, many of whom are under-employed as adjunct faculty or office drones or baristas, are required to spend upwards of $1,000 traveling to this convention in order to give interviews, if they are fortunate to have them.


But if one were, hypothetically, following my family's recipe for these scrumptious cookies, one might consider pulsing the butter and flour together in a food processor, but not too long because it should be light and fluffy.




This year's MLA is in Philadelphia, the week after Christmas. Three years ago when I commenced my tenure-track professorship quest, after an agonizing eight hours in a shopping mall, I spent over $200 on the most charming black and grey tweed Calvin Klein suit (with a slightly flared skirt) to wear to my interviews. Since last MLA (in San Francisco) I managed to gain enough weight to not fit into the Interview Suit. This has provoked a crisis in our community.

In fact, these cookies can hardly be thought of as innocent in my, um, augmentation.

However, if one were to persevere and figure out the recipe, one might like to know that one must refrigerate the dough for at least an hour before rolling it out.

There will be NO dough in my fridge this year, as I am now desperately following the MLA diet. Yes, dear reader, this means that I have been granted two interviews. And in lieu of purchasing a larger suit for the slim chance of a campus visit, I will lose the ten pounds preventing me from wearing Calvin without busting the seams.

But if one had chilled the dough, one would eventually like to roll it out about 1/8" thick, select several cookie cutters, solicit some assistance, and cut out shapes to bake. See the charmingly plump dough-children? I will not resemble them two weeks from now, in Philadelphia.


After baking them one glazes them. One might be deserted by one's helpers at this point, because picking cookie cutters is fun, while painting cookies with glaze is tedious and sticky. But all under-bakers and assistants swiftly return to sample these treats. Except those attending the MLA, who are neither baking this year, nor sampling. No, we are a committed lot: we are eating air, and we will get a job!

Wuthering WTF

Um... WHAT is happening here?
I innocently enter one of those Hudson Booksellers shops in the airport (um, Fresno? Sacramento? LAX? can't remember--there have been many airports in the past two months), and am confronted with this confusing display. Is that... my favorite novel? All sexed up like so? Right next to that monumental work of genius Big Girls Don't Cry? Alphabetization is definitely working it here. But I don't think that's the source of my confusion. Let's get a closer look.

It's kind of gothic-pretty. I think I like it. But why is Cathy dressed like a gypsy shrew? What's up with the flapper beads and the wild straight-from-the-moors hairdo?


And what's up with Heathcliff sporting the rebel-without-a-cause rockabilly-in-a-vampire-cape look? I'm so confused. This is what happens with Penguin makes a formidable marketing decision like "let's sex up that oldie-but-goodie that no one really reads anymore by having a famous fashion illustrator redo the cover."

Here's the bookflap's justification: "This book is part of a series of Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions designed with original cover art in watercolor, pencil, or ink by world-renowned fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo. blah blah name dropping blah... Toledo and his designer wife, Isabel Toledo, whose dress and coat were selected by Michelle Obama to wear at the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama, are the subject of a book and a museum exhibition entitled 'Toledo/Toledo: A Marriage of Art and Fashion.' blah blah... Ruben Toledo's book design for Penguin Classics represents the marriage of art and fashion to literature. His couture-inspired interpretations of these beloved classic characters and novels contribute a uniquely creative vision to the long history of excellence in book design at Penguin."

So just because Toledo's wife designed the coat Michelle Obama wore at her husband's inauguration, we're supposed to buy this new edition of Wuthering Heights? Since when does political celebrity name-dropping/the fashion industry yield a new interest in a Victorian novel? Do Toledo's illustrations update the story? Will Penguin's fashionista-piquing gamble work in an era of recessionista self-denial? Do fashionistas even read? (Shameless plug: check back in December for my MLA gofugyourself posts) This writer did not succumb, but then LOOK WHAT SHE'S WEARING!


**UPDATE (May 30, 2010)**
This just found, via The Floating Academy: an article from the Guardian about another new cover for Wuthering Heights and the "Twilight Effect."

The Great C19 Books-to-Film blog post

I keep forgetting to call my reader's attention to this other blog post that I actually got paid to do. Check out my list of cinematic adaptations of nineteenth-century stories for Amazon.com.

(here I am at Yale in November 2008 with David Francis' rare, working triunial magic lantern... that's how the Victorians experienced "moving pictures"...)

Bon Apetit? My Own Wife's Quick and Dirty review of "Julie and Julia"

1. "Julie Powell" was too thin for someone so frequently and loudly lauding butter: if Renee Zellweger can gain weight to become Bridget Jones, so can Amy Adams. I'm assuming Julie Powell really did gain some weight from her year of culinary experimentation, though I have not and likely will not read her book.
2. That brings me to point number two: I'd rather read My Life in France. After watching this movie, I want to know more about the childless Julia Child and less about the childish Julie Powell.
3. Julia Child in Paris appeared to be gloriously economically privileged. I find the mid-20th-century impulse of "servantless" middle-class housewives to master the art of French cooking as vexing as the early 21st-century impulse of middle-class foodies to emulate Alice Waters. It takes a lot of money to purchase fresh/local organic produce and a lot of time to make "slow food." Who can afford to do so, and who is excluded from making such "healthy choices"? It's worth thinking about.
4. The film is a pretty, persuasive paean to marriage. Indeed, I found myself falling in love with Stanley Tucci's Paul Child. What a wonderfully supportive, loving and sexy man, I thought (though I'm not sure if I mean Stanley or Paul, actually). And the scene where Julie's husband, personality-lacking what's-his-name, slathers chocolate cake all over his face was completely charming. It is gratifying to cook for someone you both love and lust after. While I can't quite put my finger on what the message about marriage in the film actually was (like, was it "get back to the kitchen, all you wives who love your husbands! but don't get so preoccupied with cooking that you neglect your husband's other needs"...?), I am left with this notion that "Julie and Julia" is at once heteronormative and it legitimates that pesky gendered division of labor that feminists have struggled with for decades.

Pajama Bread

This is a true story. The other evening after work, I put my pajamas on and went into the backyard to pick blackberries. Encouraged by the yield on the backyard bush, I went around to the front yard to pluck juicy ripe berries from the prickly bush on the parking strip. Was I giving my neighbors a little demonstration? Yes. Did I care? No. Well, not until it started raining and I realized I was locked out of my house. What happened was this: while I was in the backyard, *new* housemate #2 came home after a long day in his research laboratory, let himself into the house and locked the door behind him, went upstairs and lost himself in some video game or other (I imagine, generously). A half an hour later, when I wanted back inside, the door would not budge. I knocked on the door: nothing. Then I alternated between pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell for about 45 minutes to no avail. Then I got creative. I tried loosening all the screens on the open ground floor windows: nothing. I tried the basement door: locked, as it should be. Finally I tried the kitchen door: victory! Somewhat chagrined, I let myself in, collected myself, and went upstairs to confront my blissfully unaware housemate. He swore he had no idea I was pounding on the front door. And that, dear readers, is why I did not share ANY of the yield of my blackberry picking labors with him.

Behold, a very healthy yet tasty blackberry banana bread: a recipe I have slaved over for a few years now, and finally, I believe, perfected. The blackberries may be substituted for fresh raspberries or blueberries.

1 1/2 cups white flour
1/2 cup wheat flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 large overripe bananas, mashed
1/2 cup all-natural applesauce
1/3 cup skim milk
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup fresh blackberries

Mix dry ingredients in large bowl (flours through salt).
Mix liquid ingredients in smaller bowl (bananas through vanilla).
Introduce dry ingredients to liquid using that method called "folding" (i.e. do not over mix; use a rubber spatula and lots of compassion).
Now, if you are using ripe, fresh berries, comes the tricky part. Blueberries are sometimes more hearty and can just be folded into the final batter very gently. Raspberries and blackberries are a little more delicate. For this batch, I poured about 1/3 of the batter into the bottom of a "Pammed" bread pan. Then I sprinkled half of the berries on top. Then I poured another 1/3 of the batter into the pan, and sprinkled another half of the berries on top. Then I poured the final 1/3 of the batter into the pan, at which point, I looked at my bowl of freshly picked pajamas-in-a-rainfall-locked-out-of-house blackberries and thought, screw this, I'm loading this bread up with my crop. So I dumped the final extra berries on top, and put the whole thing in a 350-degree oven for an hour. When the bread passed the toothpick test, I pulled it out to cool 10 minutes, and overturned the loaf onto the wire rack with the help of the Russian Redneck who came over with a bottle of wine just in time (he has that sixth sense for determining when is the most fruitful time to visit me).

The beauty of this bread is that if you slice it into 8 equal parts, you get 8 equal breakfasts of 250 calories with 1 gram of fat and 5 grams of protein (and yes, lots of carbs, but nobody's perfect, you know?). I think I'll sport PJs around the neighborhood more often, just for kicks.