tangential reference to one Hoffman

[Maria Ticinovic]

risking the annoyance of some and the boredom of many, I've decided to 
abandon lurker status for a minute with this sortof moronic post 
regarding one heavily decorated Dr. Hoffman of Pynchon's alma mater 
Cornell (that is so, ain't it?).  Anyway , I was sitting in my 
cosmology/lit seminar, carving a relief of King Kong ripping the top off a 
Weinerschnitzel franchise (No, All!) on the 800 year-old table in our 
meeting room, when i was jolted from my malaise with the mention of a 
free upcoming lecture series, in fact, one lecture in particular.  It's 
called "One Culture", to be given by this guy Hoffman in a (belated?) 
(rip-off?) response to Snow's "Two Cultures" deal.  Now, some of you all 
tipped me off about that Luddite one-culture tract by, uh, our hero 
(haha), and it seems to me that this Hoffman guy may have known about it 
and all.  My question is, anybody know this guy's story? I mean, was he 
at Cornell when Pynchon was? Then again, maybe I should be directing 
this waste of bandwidth to Mr. H. himself.  It should be interesting 
anyway.  In the brochure, the biographer gives this pretentious list of 
the man's many accolades, including something like 20 honorary degrees 
(or maybe it was ten--anyway, it beats Prince Charles, so it should be 
good...).  I wonder if TP will form part of the subject.