[The Montana Professor 1.3, Fall 1991 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]
Suite 2245, 175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10160
Paul Trout
English
Montana State University
I knew I was going to like this new periodical the instant I saw it. There on the front cover was an article entitled "The F Word." But I had been hooked by a tricky editor. The f-word at issue was..."fashion"--a taboo word to academics because we're supposed to be unconcerned with the vanities of style.
This funny piece ("Men: The Semiotics of Denim," "Women: The Tyranny of Earth Tones," "Tenure and Taste") turned out to be a pretty good introduction to Lingua Franca: The Review of Academic Life. This new periodical is clever, witty, illuminating, and unblushingly stylish. And many of its intriguing essays do what the "f-word" piece did: take an ethnographer's view of academic life, illuminating the rituals, symbols, mores, and structures we're no longer aware of because we're so implicated in them. Like some New Guinea headhunter watching a video of village life, I've laughed uproariously at seeing the life of my tribe so unsanctimoniously reviewed. Indeed, if there's a subtext to LF, it's that academic life is sillier and more exotic than we permit ourselves to realize. One of our clan, for instance, reads all her conference papers wearing a skirt made of men's ties.
In the premier issue of LF (June 1990), the editors explain that their purpose is to give a unique forum to the humanities and to speak in the true lingua franca of intelligent and informed interest. So far, LF seems uninclined to be a forum for academics, if forum means publishing essays written by them. Most of the pieces are written by freelancers, journalists, or periodical essayists, which means that the material is usually lively, engaging, and insightful. That's the lingua franca I enjoy.
And others too. The Washington Post calls LF "surprising and substantive," "brainy and likable." The Chicago Tribune calls it a "droll and informative bimonthly review that tackles long verboten subjects rigorously but engagingly, and creates a ruckus." I've found every issue a delight to read. How many journals about academics can you say that about?
LF's 50 or so pages cove a lot of ground. There's the obligatory "letters to the editor" section, providing a forum, of sorts, for academics wanting to sound off about one thing or another. Then comes "Field Notes," a potpourri of items revealing strange goings-on in the humanities. We're informed about Emory University making off with nearly the entire French Department of Johns Hopkins, and about two terribly committed sociologists who spent a mere 17 years researching "outlaw bikers and their female associates." Another item tells us about a nifty fund-raising scam at Missouri Valley College, which signs up hundreds of low income students from midwestern cities for federally guaranteed bank loans that will let them attend MVC. Since most of these kids are illiterate and some not graduated from high school, many droop out. But MVC gets to keep the loan money! This entry ended in an inspired bon mot: for MVC, "a gold mine is a terrible thing to waste."
Another regular feature of LF is "Breakthrough Books," where six outstanding scholars in a given discipline name the most provocative recent titles in their field. A different area is covered in each issue.
"Inside Publishing" touches on all kinds of news about academic publishing, from books-in-progress to announcements of new journals and corporate takeovers. This section also regularly asks a book editor specializing in a certain area to explain what his/her publisher is looking for from academics ("What Do Editors Really Want?"). Another regular feature, "Research File," identifies "documents in search of scholars"--archives and collections here and overseas about everything from comic books to the history of labor movements.
LF ends with "Jobtracks," a survey of recent moves into and among senior positions by discipline, including tenure awards.
LF is liveliest and most entertaining in its feature essays. Who could skip an article entitled "Trekkie does Phallus"? Not to leave you hanging, I should explain that it's about a scholar studying women hobbyists who produce and distribute their own pornographic fiction and videos based on Star Trek and other TV shows. No kidd'n. Another essay sends up the "academic legend" that Eskimos have 15 to 100 names for snow ("The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax...Perpetrated by Anthropological Linguists on Themselves"). There is also the de rigueur piece on why "intellectuals love baseball." And "Stepford Writers: Undercover inside the M.F.A. Creativity Boot Camp" argues that "workshop groupthink" is stifling the imaginations of young writers.
Other essays engage more controversial situations and issues. "J'Accuse: How Leon Botstein Confronted a Sexual Harassment Controversy at Simon's Rock College" explores the "libidinal component" of faculty-student interaction. "And Now a Word from Our Sponsors--how a little noticed sex education lawsuit could turn every taxpayer with a gripe into a classroom censor" gives us the lowdown on that "notorious" course at Nassau Community College. "Dealing with Deadwood: The Arizona Approach" clubs Dean Annette Kolodny. "The Candidate: Inside One Affirmative Action Search" focuses on some of the absurdities we reverentially accept as sensible ("blacks, Hispanic surnamed persons, and Native Americans counted as minorities; East Indians and Asians did not"). A sobering piece entitled "Politics and Pedagogy at Dartmouth: what it's like to teach with The Dartmouth Review looking over your shoulder" recounts what happened when philosophy professor Sally Sedgwick accused a DR editor of not citing sources in a paper written for her class.
It's hard to draw a bead on where Lingua Franca generally stands on what the editors describe as the "ferment currently roiling the waters in the humanities." If they have an ideological axe to grind, they're darn good at honing both edges, taking equal-handed whacks at the "dyspeptic" Allan Bloom and at the "eminence grise" of Yale, Harold Bloom. LF has published both a send-up of conservative Roger Kimball ("A World Without Lefties"), and an hilarious parody of deconstructionist criticism that deciphers "Gilligan's Island" ("L'Isle de Gilligan," reprinted from Dissent). In "Oh no, [de] Man again!" they used a "point counterpoint" layout, letting David Lehman and Walter Kenrick go at each other to the general delight of all onlookers.
Although editorial remarks in the first issue seem to favor those whose energies are "focused on reformulating the entire liberal arts agenda," LF may be more intent on simply encouraging the fray! Perhaps the editors agree with Keats, that "though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies in it are fine." LF may have a lot in common with that evenhanded wife who saw her husband in a fight with a bear--"Go to it husband! Go to it bear!" By the way, I'm not the only one confused about the ideological sympathies of LF. One academic assessed LF as "tacitly neoconservative." But another wrote, "sorry to see there are still lefties in this world. Cancel my subscription." Even the advertisers can't draw a bead. The same issue contains ads for both Radical Teacher and the National Association of Scholars! And to which side is this publisher's ad appealing? AMOK Books, with "its fingers on the pulse of deviance," wants the readers of LF to send for its catalog of titles on "extremes" of human behavior, including "mayhem, virus, and decay; sexual impulses spinning out of control; lethal rituals; psychiatric tyranny and schizophrenia; the tactics of individual subversion and autonomy; forensic medical texts and CIA torture manuals; biographies of serial killers and porno queens; anorexic nuns [in] a world without men; and other stark visions of our time." What's unnerving is the possibility that this publisher has done its demographics. Maybe our tribe is more exotic, and erotic, than we dare think.
That reminds me, Lingua Franca runs "personals." Could this one reveal the magazine's cleverly hidden ideological bias? "Pleasure-loving, deconstructive feminist theorist, slender, mid-30s, jaded but not disillusioned, seeks single counterpart for recuperation and responsible free play. Northeast. Send appropriate credentials." If one is not deterred at the prospect of a relationship with a "deconstructive" lover, it's fun to think about what "credentials" could possibly be "appropriate" and mailable.
For volume II (six issues), send $17.95 to LF, Suite 2245, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10160.
[The Montana Professor 1.3, Fall 1991 <http://mtprof.msun.edu>]