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

[David Payne]

Thanks for this!

The rumor about the dueling article seems to have been started by an article from May 5, 1978, in the Cornell Sun written by Baxter Hathaway, an apparently brilliant English professor. Pynchon wrote about Baxter in the into to Slow Learner.

Hathaway comes down hard on W.R. Keast in his article, basically accusing him of starting a cultural/political war within Cornell's English department which pitted writers against scholars. (I'm oversimplifying a bit--and Hathaway probably was, too). 

Anyhow, according to Hathaway, Keast was on the scholars' side, and, if I'm reading Hathaway's insinuations correctly, Keast is largely responsible for Nabokov's departure. (Nabokov was in the writers' camp, not the scholars'.)

Basically, I think it was this: Is Cornell's English Lit program a creative writing program (which Hathaway would've wanted) or a program for training people to read literature critically (which Keast would've wanted)?

I think this debate was influential to Pynchon, but that's just my gut instinct, and I don't have any way to prove it -- or, honestly, any good way to extend that belief into any meaningful statements about Pynchon's works.

Where does Pynchon show a pro-writer and anti-critical stance? Or am I off base here?


----------------------------------------
> On Feb 11, 2013, Michael Bailey wrote:
>
> 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.