Society and the Profession, 1958–83

Abstract

The question that he frames in all but words Is what to make of a diminished thing. Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird” When your women are ready and rich in their wish for the world destroy the leaden heart, we've a new race to start. Muriel Rukeyser, “More of a Corpse Than a Woman”When I was asked to write about the impact of society on our profession over the last twenty-five years, it occurred to me that the period also measures my own lifetime as a professional. I took up full-time teaching in 1957, the year before I received my doctorate. I gave my first paper at a Modern Language Association convention around that time, participated in producing two sons, and published my first article. I left one job, joined in antinuke, anti-ROTC, and prounion activities, and got fired from the second job. I remember complaining to my graduate school director, en route to a third job, how painfully remote upstate New York seemed from everything I valued. Said he, flatly, “You can publish your way out of any place.” Perhaps that was so, then; certainly I acted on that instruction. But I never really put it to the test, for somehow my career swerved that splinter and never returned quite to the groove.