(very P, as in Paranoid) complotski in the groves of academe?

[Michael Bailey]

from the excellent article on the duellists (thank you heartily!!)

"A little digging turns up that Metcalf was the editor of the Sun from
'60 to '61.  Metcalf also started at Cornell on a math scholarship
before turning to English (The Cornell Daily Sun, Volume LXXIV, Number
2, 24 September 1957, p. 6, "25 National Scholars... Cornellians Get
Scholarships, Fellowships"), not unlike Pynchon, who started in
engineering before turning to English. Metcalf graduated from Cornell
with high honors in English in '61 and is now an English professor and
a leading dialect specialist with a long CV."


-- aha -- so i scent a plot afoot, at Cornell, to "turn" ambitious
students in math and engineering, to the unacknowledged legislative
field of English Literature!

who was the James Jesus Angleton type, one might well wonder, casting
his seine amongst the intellectual elite in their juvescence in
Ithaca?

was it perhaps Vladimir "the Lepidopterist" Nabokov, netting them for the Cause?
are they still at it?

http://english.arts.cornell.edu/  perhaps the answer lurks here!!!!!

here is an obit that makes me want to drop the paranoid tone (as the
judge told Curly, in "Disorder in the Courtroom" - "Drop the
vernacular!" to which Curly replies, "it's a doiby!")

this gentleperson, Rea Keast really seems like a good dude and his bio
places him at Cornell in the 50s -- one might also note his birthplace
in *Malta* Illinois:

 IN MEMORIAM

WILLIAM REA KEAST


William Rea Keast, professor emeritus of English, died June 27, 1998.
Rea, as he was called by friends and family, came to The University of
Texas as professor of English and chair of the Department of English
in 1972 after a distinguished career of teaching, scholarship, and
administration at the University of Chicago, Cornell University, and
Wayne State University, which he served as president from 1965 to
1971.

Rea was born on November 1, 1914, in Malta, Illinois, and graduated
from York Community High School in 1932. He went on to the University
of Chicago, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and received his
bachelor’s degree in 1936. His doctoral studies were interrupted by
World War II. From 1941 to 1946 Rea was on active duty in the armed
forces, rising to the rank of major. Returning to the University of
Chicago on a Rockefeller Postwar Fellowship, he completed his PhD in
1947 and joined the faculty of the Department of English as an
assistant professor. In 1951 he moved to Cornell University as an
associate professor and was promoted to professor in 1957. The focus
of his scholarship and teaching was English literature of the
Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and his greatest love was for
Samuel Johnson. Later, when he came to The University of Texas, he
liked to tell young assistant professors in the field that the surest
way to an understanding of this period was to read straight through
Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language. The essays he wrote on
the Dictionary are models of scholarly inquiry and set a gold standard
for all later studies of Johnson and lexicography. In recognition of
his scholarship Rea was named a Ford Fellow for 1955-56 and a
Guggenheim Fellow in 1958-59.

By this time Cornell had discovered Rea’s exceptional administrative
talents, naming him chair of the Department of English in 1957. Five
years later he became dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and in
another two years vice president for academic affairs. In 1965 he was
chosen as president of Wayne State University. His inaugural address
to the academic community at Wayne State concentrated on the role of
the urban university in a rapidly changing society. The tumultuous
later sixties in American cities and on American campuses were
especially challenging to university presidents, but Rea Keast faced
them with courage, conviction, and grace. At a critical moment in May
of 1968, he articulated his vision in an important address whose very
title reveals a lot about the man and the times: "The Object of the
University is not Power, but Truth." That such a view was not popular
in all quarters may be gauged from a novel of the period, Them, by
Joyce Carol Oates, in which the Wayne State president is proposed by
one character as a target for assassination. It is said that Rea later
queried Oates about this: "What made you imagine that?" The story goes
that she replied: "Imagine it? I heard it." During his presidency, Rea
gave a great deal of thought to problems of academic administration,
and at the end of his term as president was chosen to chair the
Commission on Academic Affairs for the American Council on Education.
One result was an important book on university governance, Faculty
Tenure: A Report and Recommendations by the Commission on Academic
Tenure in Higher Education, that came out in 1973 during Rea’s first
year as chair of the Department of English at UT.

At UT, Rea was especially dedicated to promoting the careers of
younger faculty, especially those without tenure. For someone who had
achieved such distinction in academic life, he was very sensitive to
the needs of those just starting out and generous with his time in
reading drafts of articles, offering encouragement, and suggesting
avenues for publication. He was very conscious that a department is
not only an academic unit, but also a social one. He and his wife Mary
Alice opened their home for gatherings, small and large, to which the
most junior faculty were as welcome as the most senior. He was
unusually engaging in conversation, amiable and charming in ways that
seemed to acknowledge the ideals of the historical period that he
studied. One of the greatest luminaries of the eighteenth century,
David Hume, once wrote that life’s two greatest pleasures are study
and society. This is a view that Rea must have shared, for he not only
excelled in both but also combined the two pursuits in ways that made
him a splendid friend, colleague, and mentor. He brought to the
Department of English knowledge and experience that served to broaden
departmental horizons and encourage the faculty to set the highest
standards of scholarship, teaching, and service. For this legacy, the
Department of English will always be grateful, counting Rea Keast as
one of its most distinguished members.