What would you think about a professor who specializes in the French literature of the 1920s and 1930s but never read a line by Balzac and has a very vague idea of who he is?
What would you think about a professor who specializes in the Russian modernist poetry but never read a line by Tolstoy and says things like, “Could you tell me what the deal on that Tolstoy fellow is? What did he write about?”?
What would you think about a professor who specializes in James Joyce but never read a line by Dickens or Hardy?
I know somebody like that in my field. This person is a Peninsularist who has never read anything by Galdós and is not sure how to pronounce his name.
That isn’t what I find really curious, though. I also don’t find it surprising that this person was given a very prestigious job fresh out of grad school on the strength of very poor Spanish and zero publications. Neither am I shocked that this person – who still hasn’t published a word anywhere on this planet – is about to get tenure at a very good school. (I know who this person’s Daddy is, so nothing surprises me.)
What I do find incomprehensible is how this individual – who is very very limited intellectually, is not well-read, is not doing any interesting research, is hated by students for teaching in a boring and uninspired way – has managed to convince absolutely everybody in sight that s/he is a rising star of contemporary Hispanism.
“Oh, so you know JJ, right?” people keep asking me. “JJ is such a star! The future of our field belongs to JJ. There is just no competing with somebody so brilliant. I only wish I were as good at research as JJ.”
It seems like wherever I go, I encounter a bunch of folks ready to gush about the Zero-Publications JJ. Of course, JJ keeps announcing that something super impressive is about to be published but 5,5 years after getting a PhD, you either have a record of publications or you don’t.
“Ah, you just wait and see!” somebody told me the other day. “JJ is writing this really break-through piece right now. You might want to hold off on submitting your article on the same writer. It might be of real help to you to see what JJ has to say about him.” The word “JJ” was pronounced with the veneration one normally reserves for luminaries who have had a huge impact on the field.
Of course, I;m not holding off on submitting my article because I do want it to appear in print before the end of this millenium.
I find it fascinating how people manage to create a certain image of themselves and then get everybody to believe it. I have no doubt that JJ’s admirers are being completely sincere. I just can’t figure out what drives them to stick to this vision of JJ, all evidence that JJ is a flake notwithstanding.
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