(Fwd) Re: tangential reference to one Hoffman

[Barry Westburg]

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:        bwestbur at arts.adelaide.edu.au
To:        pynchon-l at sfu.ca
Subject:       Re: Two Cultures @ Cornell
Reply-to:      bwestbur at arts.adelaide.edu.au
Date:          Tue, 23 Jan 1996 07:38:28 +930
Sorry! I sent this to an individual address (Conte's) when I really 
meant it for the Pynchon list. 
> 
> 
> On Sat, 20 Jan 1996, Maria Ticinovic wrote:
> 
> > 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. 

Cornell (consider its eclectic origins, philosophy, science, 
shoemaking..) has a traditional interest in that topic. I recall in 64
or 65 that F.R and Q.D. Leavis (Famous British Critics, Skeezix!) came
to
 Cornell and lectured to about 2000 folks on that subject. 
Too late for Pynchon to be in the audience, I guess. Anyway, it 
was a lot of cheval-merde, excuse my franglaise. (BTW I was one of
their student hosts. The famous pair were astonishingly inept, and
disorganized--utterly  overwhelmed by big ugly America and especially
intimidated by our argumentative students.). The eclecticism of a
Cornell education is sort of tradition, anyway, and
 I like to think that TRP took a course in Conversational Quechua
 along 
with anything else his heart desired. Wouldn't mind seeing his 
transcript. I'm sure somebody has already bronzed it, though. 

Barry
(Another shy lurker)