My So-Called Career, or, Tales of MLA Past

This week, believe it or not, is the annual convention of the Modern Language Association in Philadelphia. That august professional group for college teachers has been meeting the week between Christmas and New Year’s since the dawn of recorded literary criticism.

The popular story is that the men who taught Literature needed to get away from the wife and kiddies after Christmas and meet in some cosmopolitan area to exchange ideas with each other (and body fluids with local tarts). I’m just saying it’s the popular notion of the timing. In recognizing today’s more “family friendly” university and the more diverse nature of the modern professoriate, the convention is being moved by about a week. 

Next year’s convention will be in January. In Los Angeles. Callooh! Callay!

I’m not in Philly this year. But earlier today, I started following it on twitter (#mla09). This was after being alerted by my publisher that my book was on display next to Isherwood’s A Single Man.

Mine's the little white one on the left.

The twitter feed has been kind of fun: especially a guy called “samplereality,” who is there, and a woman called, “amandafrench,” who is not. (I think that’s probably her real name, not some Bart Simpson phone prank: “I need a man to french!”) She’s been “tweckling” from Brooklyn. These are the geeks, man. 

My last MLA conference was in 2006—the last time the association met in Philadelphia. It was one of those times I went thinking I might have a job interview then didn’t get an interview but went anyway. I hung out a lot with my friend, Laurie, a scientist from Philly. She liked mingling with the literary types, who at least dress better than her scientist friends. 

The best part of the convention for me was the Gay and Lesbian Caucus party, held at the gay bookstore in Philly, Giovanni’s Room. I ran into an old friend from graduate school days, Bob, who had just had his first book published. By Routledge. (Book envy.) There it was in a nice stack in the bookstore. He had also achieved tenure at a private university on the east coast—the place he had taken a lowly one-year appointment about nine years earlier. So: book, tenure, prestige. 

Meanwhile, I also had a book coming out, although it wasn’t ready for that MLA. And it was my third. But I hadn’t achieved the kind of job he had, the kind we all think we’re going for when we work on the Ph. D. Along the way, we teach composition, the occasional literary survey course, and eat beans and rice.

Along my path, I also wound up working in the TA Development office at the University of Minnesota for my last two years as a graduate student. That turned into something of a specialty for me, and since then I’ve found myself more “marketable” as an administrator than as a teacher. I’ve held a series of administrative appointments since then, including my current job as Dean of This and That at a community college in the California desert.

Bob and I chatted while I watched a very Handsome Fellow browse books. I’d seen Handsome Fellow the previous day at an MLA session. 

At this point, readers, I had been single for about six months. The relationship ended after 13 years, and the ex-bf and I were still friendly. But my dating, nay, my meeting-people skills, never very strong, had severely atrophied. So when I saw Handsome Fellow at the MLA session I made a split-second decision that went contrary to all previous similar situations: I sat near HF and well within eyesight. Yes, I ogled him. I think he noticed. (No, I didn’t TALK to him!)

Back at Giovanni’s Room: as Bob and I are chatting with our lit crit and lambrusco, I actually took HF by the arm and brought him into the conversation. I learned his real name. I learned he was working on a dissertation, although he was already an attorney. I learned he would start a guest teaching stint at a college in Bob’s city. I learned a lot, dear reader. 

Bob, HF, and I continued the conversation at a nearby swanky restaurant. For HF and me, the conversation continued the next morning. But that’s another story.

This was meant as a tale of my career, as seen through the lens of the MLA.

I don’t remember the first time I went. I do remember my dissertation advisor telling me later, “Oh, MLA’s a bore.” I wish I had said to him what I had thought: “It depends on whose cash bar you go to.” For I had discovered, as he had plainly not, the GLBT Caucus and it’s frabjous cash bar. 

Through the GLBT Caucus, I got on my first MLA panel. Except it was cancelled. The panel was going to get me an interview. Also through the caucus, I got my first chapter in a published anthology. Except that they cut my chapter at the last minute. The chapter was going to get me a job. 

And so it went, the promise of MLA interviews (I had one for seven at-bats) leading to the drowning of sorrows at the cash bar in anonymous hotel ballrooms in great, and not so great, cities. 

However, however...

MLA 1996 (Washington, DC) proved to be all it was supposed to be. Dr. Freeman and I proposed a panel that was accepted and was not cancelled. The panel led to our first edited collection, which was actually published (in 1999) and won a prize. That book led to the next, which led to the one after that.

The first book by Berg and Freeman.

All this publishing—academic work, most of it—did not lead to the dream job that I had envisioned for myself. It did not even lead to the dreary job I half expected: teaching writing to lunkheads at some fourth rate college in some conservative state. 

Instead, I have a difficult, unexpected, academic and well-paying job in a place I like, and might actually grow to like more (can’t say “love” yet). The literary scholarship continues as a non-paying activity. Like blogging.

I expect to attend the MLA2010 in Los Angeles next year. Dr. Freeman and I are pitching two ideas, and we expect one of them at least will catch hold. 

And who knows, maybe HF will be there as well.