“I think you’ve confused ‘close reading’ with ‘convoluted analysis.'”
“Intersectionality theory applied to Dostoevsky is a recipe for disaster…”
“Verb modalities vary so widely across languages as to to defy categorization.”
We began at 9:15 sharp. I did a short introduction and overview of the conference, gave them the essential ground rules, bathroom locations, etc, before we broke for the first round of papers.
I attended Clare’s paper, it was in one of the first groupings of the day, in the Humboldt room. It was good. Some of the nuance on Nabokov went over my head, but the bit on Kierkegaard’s aesthetics was spot on. If nothing else I gave her credit for putting these two unique intellectuals together.
Afterwards at the mid-morning coffee/tea break I wandered over to where she was sitting and holding court. There were four or five folks at the table.
She had said something about life cycles, how metaphysics tended to shift with age amongst academics and anyone, really, who was reflective.
I had to say my piece.
“So, okay, in Either/Or, which you mentioned, Kierkegaard sets up two stages of human life, the aesthetic, which he develops nicely in the first part, and the ethical in the second. My memory, which your paper corroborated, is that the duty of the ethical man is to reveal. It always troubled me why aesthetic man couldn’t do the same thing.”
“Here’s where I think Nabokov has it different. He wasn’t a great revealer himself, in either his fiction or in his memoirs. Yes, there is plenty that is revealed, but almost more that isn’t. The hint, the tiny detail, mattered more to him than the precis, the broad brush, the heavy duty revealing. I almost sense for him that their was honor in reticence, keeping something back.”
Another figure approached the table.
“Forgive me for barging in, if you don’t mind.”
We turned to look up. A heavy-set man in a tweed coat and overly abundant eyebrows had brought his cup of coffee over to our table. His owlish glasses outlined two close-set eyes punctuated by a bulbous, pock-marked nose.
“I really enjoyed your paper, Dr. Smirkov, provocative even pugnacious.” He was deferential, almost ironic by employing her academic title.
I disliked how the fellow forced his alliteration, as well as high-jacking my own comment. I might have muttered “pompous” under my breath. Of course it was Norman Bletchley.
Norman the rat from Pepperdine. Every academic conference session always has someone at the back of the room, ready to spring at the first Q and A opportunity. Their question is always highly technical, rarely relevant to the paper presented, but designed to highlight their own expertise. Obnoxious to a high degree. He was the one.
“But why the dichotomy? There is integration between stages, seems to me, Kierkegaard doth protest too much I would say. I think you’ve taken a position too extreme to be borne out by the evidence.”
Clare shot me a glance, one eyebrow cocked.
Norman not only did not notice, but characteristically plunged on with his polemic, whether there was a gate to the corral or not. At least he hadn’t done his bit during the question and answer period and saved the audience from his execrations.
“Have you read Kierkegaard’s unpublished works?” There was challenge in Clare’s voice.
Norman tried to assert that he had, but a few questions from Clare put paid to that claim. She was clearly accustomed to the maieutics of academic arguments.
Sarah had appeared at my elbow and pulled me away to attend to some conference business. I tried for a graceful exit, but only got a fairly disgusted look from Clare, although I did see her give Ms. Willoughsby a long appraising look.
The conference lurched towards noon, and food. With notes in hand I launched into my speech.
It went okay, not perfect, although I detected some background sniggering from the UCLA crowd, who knew my penchant for using “circulation” as a metaphor in academic settings.
Only once did my focus waver, but a quick glance to Sarah restored my composure, and we broke for another array of panels.
The day oozed by in smeared, broad stroke colors. I attended a few afternoon papers, one on John Locke’s time at Oxford (which overlapped with Harvey’s.)
I committed one gaffe, which troubled me more than I would have thought.
In between afternoon sessions, I was speaking with a colleague and saw Clare wheeling towards the door that led to the hallway for the restrooms. I held it open for her, in what I considered to be a careless, unobtrusive manner, but she shot me a glance that said “patronizing pig” in capital letters, yet kept her mouth tightly compressed.
My first reaction was a sharp stab of annoyance. What had I done wrong? I held doors all the time, if someone had both hands on bags of groceries, or were elderly, or… I was aware of the unconscious implications of my action. But these marginalized groups were so touchy sometimes.
By five thirty that afternoon I was entirely grateful for the opening of the wine bar before dinner. Many of the papers had been predictable droning affairs, Clare’s had been the best of the day by a fair margin. I found her sitting next to a table, sipping a red wine.
I figured I needed to get difficulties over early and took a deep breath.
“Look, sorry for the door business earlier. I suspect you took it for old-school male behavior, but I didn’t intend it that way.”
“That’s okay.” Her eyes met mine, not unfriendly. “I shouldn’t have made the face that I did. It is just the continual offers of ‘help’ that get me going. Two things happen when folks see you in a wheelchair: one, your IQ drops thirty points and two, everyone figures you’re so hopeless you must need help every moment of the day.”
She looked at me evenly. “When your independence is abridged, what is left is ever more significant. I cherish simple stupid things, like opening a door under my own power. When someone does it for me, it tends to do two things: shifts the relationship into a power-differential footing, and shines a spotlight squarely on my own disability. Neither is wanted.”
“I’m sorry.”
The faint smile of forgiveness warmed my soul.
“You doing okay? Enjoyed any sessions this afternoon?” I was hoping, maybe fishing, for positives.
“Thanks for asking. Yes, fine so far. And whoever picked your wine did a nice job.” She held up her glass. “Zinfindel it is.”
“That’s Sarah Willoughsby, the one who dragged me off earlier today, she’s been marvelous, handled the local angle on the program, done a million things.”
“She’s at your college?”
“Even better, my own department.”
“You’re a lucky one then.”
She asked about my own work, always a dangerous proposition to anyone with research interests. Crack the spigot open and you get a flood.
Harvey of course was amazing however you cast him. I talked about those early 16th and 17th Century medical pioneers, how they were light-years advanced from their medieval predecessors, all busy with their Galenic stratagems, leeching patients to regulate their “humors,” possessing no knowledge of microbial distress agents, and attributing plagues and sicknesses to watery miasmas, all that.
And how Harvey had blown all of that out of the water with his magisterial De Motu Cordis in 1628. My whole skin got tingly just describing that milestone publication to Clare, outlining what he must have felt when he got the first copy from the printers, what it would mean for medical science and the intellectual fervor of that exuberant century.
Harvey had been just one of the earliest to go empirical. Understanding by observing, then taking things apart to gain knowledge of underlying structures. I told her how every morning when I woke, I looked at my hands with their veins and pink-white overall color, felt my pulse—that heart that lived even when I was asleep and which Harvey had been the first to identify as a pump in a closed system! Pushing blood through my body, into the lungs for fresh air, “pneuma” as Harvey called it, and ensuring that I was alive for another day.
Harvey defied easy analysis from just about everyone. He wasn’t a classic empiricist, his stunning discovery, really no other word for it, of the circulation system didn’t really alter his actual medical practice. Still did the same Galenic things, bloodletting, adjusting humors, all of that. It took further generations to put more power into clinical practices as a result of the better understanding of circulation.
And his network! I went on, describing the early origins of the Royal Society, Harvey’s short but distinguished time at Oxford during the Civil War as a Royalist, rubbing shoulders with those practicing “chirurgy.” All amazingly brilliant, it almost made me want to live back then, until I started to think about dental care. Or a ruptured appendix. Or kidney stones. The “cures” for all these ailments could kill. I stopped short, nearly out of breath. Of course I was talking to a person in a wheelchair. Probably she wouldn’t have lasted a week in her condition back in those days. I suddenly grew embarrassed.
“Sorry, you got me going.”
“No, no, that’s fascinating.”
I steered the conversation into other directions, and asked about her work at ASU. I was wondering how she managed in the desert heat.
I got a sidelong look.
“Spring semester is not so bad, but when fall term begins in August, it is frightful hot. The wheelchair rims are aluminum,” she grabbed one for emphasis, “they conduct heat extremely well and get hot enough if they’re in the sun too long they burn your hands. I’ve always worn gloves.” She pointed to a pair of bicycle style, half-fingered gloves I had noted on her hands earlier, folded up neatly next to her on the table.
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