And Deirdre McCloskey wins the award for most ostentatious lameness. Not that I have anything really against Deirdre McCloskey; she’s an influential economist, a gifted writer, and has a compelling personal story to boot. But still.
Here’s the thing: the Chronicle of Higher Education asked a handful of academics to divulge their guilty pleasures. Seems like a potentially amusing parlor game, no? Well, as a moment’s reflection would reveal, no. Because you see, what could they possibly say? Most academics, for better or for worse, basically conform to the stereotype. They like reading books and teaching classes, not shooting up heroin or walking around in public dressed up in gender-inappropriate undergarments. (See, I don’t even know what would count as a respectable guilty pleasure.) And if they did, they certainly wouldn’t admit it. And if they did admit it, it certainly wouldn’t be in the pages of the Chronicle.
I was one of the people they asked, and I immediately felt bad that I couldn’t come up with a more salacious, or at least quirky and eccentric, guilty pleasure. I chose going to Vegas, a very unique and daring pastime that is shared by millions of people every week. I was sure that, once the roundup appeared in print, I would be shown up as the milquetoast I truly am, my pretensions to edgy hipness once again roundly flogged for the enjoyment of others.
But no. As it turns out, compared to my colleagues I’m some sort of cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Caligula. Get a load of some of these guilty pleasures: Sudoku. Riding a bike. And then, without hint of sarcasm: Landscape restoration. Gee, I hope your Mom never finds out about that.
But the award goes to Prof. McCloskey, who in a candid examination of the dark hedonistic corners of her soul, managed to include this sentence:
Nothing pleases me more than opening a new textbook.
Arrrgh! Stuff like that sets back the cause of academic non-geekiness for centuries!
The irony is, I totally know what she means.
Guilty pleasure: paying attention to popular culture. Man I loves me some Britney-bashing. Sure, plenty of other people do it, but are academics “supposed” to?
On the other hand, does it take the “edge” off it if I then use the pop-culture trivia as foddor for ridiculing Critical Theory? I’m still rather proud of my “queer reading” of “The Sign”, by Ace of Base.
Does curving out and eating 7 kilos of watermelon with a spoon and putting back the rest in the refrigerator (instead of sliding a little piece and putting it in plate to eat) count as a guilty pleasure in American culture?
Not that I do such a thing!
Guilt is a useless emotion –
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I wonder how much of the absence of actually interesting guilty pleasures on the part of these people is the result not of being in academia but something else – i.e., are the people who answered the question married and in their late 30s, like me? Because back when I was single and in my late 20s, I was in academia, but I actually had guilty pleasures. I don’t anymore because I have a wife and daughter now, not because of anything having to do with academia.
I think Greg Egan has hit the nail on the head. The culture of “coolness” is harming kids’ perception of how the world actually works. Witness the decline of the hard sciences in universities in the UK. I read SF as a kid, and thought maths was “cool”. I was thought geeky by my peers because of it. Still am, to some extent.
Incidentally, Greg, glad to hear you’re writing SF again, looking forward to “Incandescence” next year. I think I have just about all of you books, including “An Unusual Angle”.
Wait, she admits to enjoying opening a textbook – presumably for teaching purposes? If you’re up for tenure at a Big State University, that’s downright perverse.
Well, I’ve been known to read novels by people like Greg Egan – but I can’t think of anything else off-hand. Where’s my “angel” smiley, goddammit?
Seriously, Mark, how about making tee shirts that say “once you have tenure its all edible panties, firearms and blow”? I’d so totally buy one. I know a bunch of assistant professors who’d buy one.
I think I may have the worst guilty pleasure for an academic – tests. I actually enjoy taking and acing a nice, challenging test. Nothing too grueling, mind, but a good couples hours of test is a thrill and its invigorating to come out knowing that you effing owned that thing.
What makes this one so bad is that it leads to ostracism both by your peers and the general populace.
Done! See http://cosmicvarance.spreadshirt.com
Sadly, we couldn’t do mugs.
What I find pathetic about most of their responses is that they’re all of the “job interview question” category: “Well, sir, I’d have to say that my greatest weakness is just working too hard and loving the company too much.” Give me a break.
From The Guardian: Guilty pleasures of intellectuals
It’s slightly more salacious, listing pro wrestling, Stalinist nostalgia, and Project Runway. There’s nothing in it about beating off to coffee table books about architecture or anything really interesting, though.
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