Turning the tables

By ninety degrees

My old office had a Steelcase desk in one corner and two single-person study tables tucked alongside. When the math department moved into new quarters, my new office had a desk unit complete with an extension that left no room for my student study tables. One of the tables quickly found a new home as study location in the hallway just outside my office. The second was soon claimed for the men's restroom, stuck in the corner of the entry way, a convenient place to drop off books and binders before doing one's business. Everyone was happy as we settled into our new digs.

In the subsequent years, two small problems have arisen with the restroom table. For several weeks in a row, the table would mysteriously vanish from the men's room and reappear in the entry alcove of the women's restroom. A stealthy tug-of-war ensued. The table was quickly stolen back by the men each time the women absconded with it. No culprits were ever identified, but I claim credit for having resolved the matter. I bravely visited the warehouse in the college's maintenance yard. Amidst the broken bookcases and banged-up desks I located a small cast-off table that I promptly requisitioned for the women's restroom. Once it was delivered, peace reigned.

The second problem arose during the past year. Despite years of being positioned with its long dimension aligned with the restroom's door, suddenly the table was positioned perpendicular to its old orientation. Naturally I switched it back. A week later, it was turned again. Grumbling, I restored it. You can anticipate the sequel. For several consecutive weeks, the table oscillated back and forth.

Just as mysteriously as it began, the table twisting came to an end. Did the miscreant simply give up or did something cause him to decamp. What will happen when school resumes in the fall? The anticipation is killing me.

The new car, part 2

Let's make a deal

I am a mission-oriented shopper. Decide in advance what you want. Get in, get out. Done. Browsing is for bookstores only. Nothing else. Unless, of course, it can't be helped.

It could not be helped when my car died a couple of days after Christmas. When the service agent told me how much it would cost to bring my vehicle back to functional life, I asked to be referred to the sales department. Before long, I was in the clutches of an eager sales representative. Let's call him “Pete.” We immediately embarked on a magical mystery tour that I have yet to understand, but which I will strive to relate. Except for some small details and slightly rounded numbers, this is exactly what occurred.

New or used?

Pete asked me where I wanted to go, the used-car lot or the new vehicle showroom. There were some holiday specials to make the new cars more attractive, but I preferred to see what the used lot had to offer first. (I really didn't expect to end up pricing the new automobiles; I'm more of a bargain hunter than that.) Pete had two cars on offer that he thought I might like, especially since both were updated versions of my deceased vehicle. One was a 2007 hybrid and the other was a 2006 V6. The V6 was perky like my old car (also a V6), but the 2007 hybrid was no slouch. The hybrid was listed at $13,500. The V6 was a year older, but was listed at $18,000. I took each car out for a test drive and decided on the hybrid. I wanted to move into the 21st century.

It was about 4:30 when I made my choice, mere hours after my old car had been pronounced dead. I didn't haggle. It's not my nature. I was ready to go. I was not, however, taking into account the time-consuming rituals required by the process of car purchasing.

I had my checkbook in my pocket and I was ready to pay cash. The sales rep turned me over to his manager. The sales manager was bluff, unkempt, and overly friendly. I didn't really care. I could pretend to be buddies for a while. He handed me some paperwork to fill out. The manager—let's call him “Jim”—disappeared for several minutes into the rabbit warren of offices adjoining the sales floor while I sat on a plastic chair at a Formica table and sipped some water that Pete had fetched for me. When Jim returned, he pulled out the chair next to mine and took a look at the form I had filled out. He scratched out a big chunk of it because I was not applying for credit.

“With tax, license, and fees,” he said, “it comes to fifteen-five.”

It seemed sufficiently shrug-worthy. “Okay,” I said. ”Exactly fifteen thousand five hundred.”

“That's right,” he said, and watched while I wrote out a check. But he left the check where I placed it on the table. “Hang on a minute and I'll be right back,” he said.

A special offer

This time it was a longer wait. I was getting fidgety and irritated. I just wanted to get it over with and figured that a trouble-free customer like me should have been whisked through with a little more efficiency. But only half an hour had trickled by since I had said, “That one.” It was hardly at the ordeal level yet.

Jim was back. He sat down at the table. He had a piece of paper in his hand. It bore an easily-read number: $16,600. I scowled. My check for $15,500 was still on the table in front of me.

“We're going to be giving you a discount,” he said.

I kept quiet. In my opinion, the number in his hand did not reflect a discount. Jim was ready to explain how wrong I was.

“Your car was posted on our website at a special price, which we have to respect for walk-in customers, too. We're dropping the price a thousand dollars for you.”

Okay. That did sound like a discount.

“Sounds good to me,” I said.

“And we're going to offer you a two-year extended warranty on the car's electrical system for only twenty-one hundred, which is a great deal for a hybrid like you're buying.”

Ah. An extended warranty. Dad used to make a lot of money selling those extended warranties to customers who purchased consumer electronics from him. Dad's advice to family members: Never buy an extended warranty.

“No, thanks,” I said.

Jim acted startled. Maybe he was.

“It's a great deal. The whole thing comes to only sixteen six.”

“Yes, I can do the math, but I'll pass on the extended warranty.”

“You sure?”

“Quite sure.”

Jim pulled himself together and stood up, the piece of paper still in his hand.

“Okay,” he said. “I'll set things up.”

“What do I do with this check?” I asked.

“You won't be paying that much,” he said, so I tucked it back into my checkbook.

Pete came over while I was loitering at the showroom windows, watching the sunset. He asked me if I needed anything.

“No. I'm just curious how much longer this is going to take.”

“Oh, no more than another five or six hours,” he said.

I gave him a sharp look. “Just kidding!” he assured me, an awkward smile on his face. I was not particularly amused.

Happy ending

We had killed an hour and a half by the time Jim emerged to conduct me into the inner sanctum where their finance guy was ensconced in a messy, paper-crammed cubby. With a heavy Slavic accent, the finance guy asked me to take a seat in front of his desk. He proceeded to collect my signature about two dozen times on about fifteen different documents. (I'm not even counting all the places I had to initial.) The finance guy mentioned that they had a special offer on an extended warranty for my car's electrical system. “This is a very good deal for a hybrid. They are very complicated.” I assured him I was declining the opportunity. He mentioned it three or four times before I was done signing papers. He finally stopped after I inked a document that stipulated I had been offered the extended warranty and had turned it down in the full knowledge of how wonderful it was.

“Do you know how much this car is going to cost you?” asked the finance guy.

I was wondering if I would be ambushed at the last minute and end up refusing the deal.

“I already cut a check for fifteen-five,” I said, “but Jim says that's not right.”

“Yes, no way are you paying that much.”

That, at least, seemed the right response. He punched some numbers into his computer, scribbled things on the final document, and turned it toward me for my perusal and my signature. I was paying $14,150.

“This is it, then? I can cut a check for this amount?”

“Yes. That exact amount.”

In retrospect, nothing makes more sense now than it made that night. The dealer could have sold me the car for $15.5K. I even cut the check. Then we went through this rigmarole where they tried to get me up to $16.6K. When the fat lady finally sang, I was paying only $14.2K. What was up with that?

It sure wasn't my steely-eyed resolve and virtuoso bargaining skills.

The new car

Where's the key?

Two days after Christmas, my car's transmission gave out. After more than sixteen years of dependable service, the vehicle had reached the end of the road. Of course, first I had to get off that road. Since it was an interstate, several helpful fellow drivers seemed to think it was useful to honk their horns and flash their headlights at me. I suppose that was to inform me that my car was in difficulty. Frankly, I thought the fact that I was poking along with my flashers going should have provided a clue that I was aware of the situation, but I guess it was nice of them to be so considerate.

Anyway, once I made my herky-jerky way to the next exit, I managed to creep along the frontage road to a nearby shop. (Since I have a talent for mitigated bad luck, the nearest shop was the one that normally did the maintenance on my car anyway.) The boy who checked me in jotted down the car's mileage and grinned at me: “You're the winner by a mile, sir. Biggest number today.” Yes, an odometer sporting well over 300,000 miles will do that for you. Of course, at that point I was not yet certain that I had finished accumulating miles on that particular car. But I did have a sneaking suspicion. When the service agent told me how much it would cost to replace the transmission, my fears were confirmed and I caught a ride to a nearby dealership. (Therein lies another story; something for later.)

Thus I began the new year in a new car. New to me, anyway. I'm now tooling about in a 2007 hybrid and gradually learning to deal with the 21st century. First of all, I no longer have a key. This freaks me out. I realize that most readers will not be surprised by this, but most people don't cling to a car for sixteen years. I had become completely adapted to that old car. Knobs and switches were all reached reflexively, no looking required. All quirks were completely internalized. Now I have to run a mental check-list before driving off, referring to the owner's manual to save me from pawing randomly at the console while trying to drive.

It's driving me crazy. (Ha, ha; “driving.”)

Good thing school is out. I'm at leisure to poke about town and learn my car's quirks. I've made one trip of significant length (down to Turlock to catch my editor while he was visiting family). That went fine, if a bit white-knuckled. Since the new car is a hybrid, I've learned not to jump when it “stalls” at stop signs. Nope. It's just shifting to electric mode.

I have a little list of things I wish I could fix, now that I'm getting used to the new car. For one thing, why is the B-pillar so wide? I'm meticulous about looking over my left shoulder at my blind spot (good work, Mr. Russ; your driver-ed class programmed me well) before moving into the lane on that side; the new car has a pillar half again as wide as my old car. Why? (Good thing it's not wide enough to hide a nearby car. I'll get used to it.) The inside door grip is farther back; recently, however, my hand has been hitting the right place when I reach for it. I'm getting there.

But that key thing? It's not like old times. No more going to the hardware store to have them grind out an inexpensive spare for me. I have only this one electronic unit that sits in my pocket and causes my car to recognize me. Very convenient but weird. Today I returned to the dealership and ordered up a spare to keep at home. It's worth it for my peace of mind.

“I miss keys,” I said to the manager of the parts department.

“You said it!” he accurately replied. “It's something that wasn't broken, wasn't it?”

Nope. Not at all. But they “fixed” it anyway. And these new-fangled electronic lock controls? They don't even have a button to keep the darned kids off my lawn!

Trifling with tradition

A dangerous experiment

The initial notice came from my mother, who called with information about the family's holiday plans: “Thanksgiving dinner will be at your brother's.”

I felt a sudden frisson of anxious concern. And skepticism.

“He has your permission for this?”

“Oh, I think it's a great idea!”

My suspicion was not alleviated. Surely Mom was in denial. Or perhaps she had forgotten the lessons of the past, back when we tried this experiment before. As best as I can recall, it was in the early seventies. Perhaps late sixties. The family had quite overwhelmed the grandparents' dining space. Holiday dinners were served in shifts—menfolk and children at the first sitting, womenfolk and stragglers at the second. (I often managed to prolong my meal through both shifts, occasionally provoking my obese aunt to remark “I hate people like you” as she regarded my scrawny frame.)

In the year in question, someone (I don't know who) hit upon the idea of relocating the family holiday meal to my godmother's home. She had a spacious dining area with ample room for folding tables and an adjacent kitchen counter with stools that the kids loved. My avó (grandmother) was prevailed upon to give her assent and the new world order was implemented.

As I recall, my grandmother did a minimal amount of cooking that year and all the main dishes were prepared by my godmother, Mom, and aunt. Avó was enthroned as guest of honor and scarcely allowed to lift a finger. She presided over the adult table in a regal manner instead of bustling to and fro between kitchen and dining room. She seemed serene.

That's why it came as a shock and surprise when she burst into tears upon returning home and wept the afternoon away. There was no holiday mess in her home and no lingering cooking odors in the air. Avó sat in a home bereft of any trace that it had been a special family holiday and it sucked all the joy of the occasion out of her.

We never made that mistake again. For the rest of my grandmother's life, every subsequent Thanksgiving was squeezed into her home. While others gradually took over more and more of the cooking, Avó was unambiguously in charge of the event and no one trifled with the matriarch's prerogatives as queen of the kitchen and hostess of the event.

Hence my trepidation. While Mom appeared to be on board with my brother's plans, I wondered whether she remembered her mother-in-law's emotional trauma at being displaced.

On Thanksgiving morning, I arrived at the old homestead to find my brother in Mom's kitchen, carving the Thanksgiving ham. Our mother was hovering over the turkey, which was nearly ready to remove from the oven. Shortly before noon, a stream of pans, dishes, and bowls were conveyed outside to the runabout (an electric-powered light utility vehicle used to run errands on the dairy farm) and trundled next door to my brother's workshop. The shop floor had been cleared of current projects (like my brother's rebuilding of the family's old Willys-model Jeep) and a series of round tables and folding chairs set up in the open space—with enough room left over for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren to run about like maniacs. The pans, dishes, and bowls were arrayed on a long buffet table, people filled their plates to overflowing, and Thanksgiving dinner got underway.

“How does it feel to have dinner with everyone else, Mom?”

The question came from my brother.

“Pretty nice,” she replied, smiling, with no hint of reservation.

The leisurely meal lasted well over an hour, winding down with a dessert service. Mom and Dad were at the table where I was seated, so I kept an eye on her, nursing an abiding suspicion. Eventually various family members began to take their leave in order to meet other responsibilities. (My goddaughter would rack up five separate Thanksgiving events by the time she finished visiting relatives and in-laws and close friends.) Before the event had quite broken up, Mom announced that we would be meeting in the same venue for Christmas and my brother nodded his head in confirmation.

“That was really nice,” she said, as we left. “And such a relief!”

I guess those who remember history are sometimes doomed to worry needlessly about repeating it.

Pavlov's button

Try pressing harder!

There is a big intersection near the post office in my town. It has multiple lanes, including turn lanes, and stop lights and crosswalks and buttons for pedestrians to press when they want to cross. Yesterday I was stopped at the light, waiting for it to turn. Two teenage girls on roller skates were on my right, fidgeting as they waited to use the crosswalk in front of me. The blonde was pumping the crosswalk button. If one press is good, won't a dozen presses be better?

Having done her duty, the blonde shuffled on her skates while keeping a keen eye on the Walk/Don't Walk sign. Just to be safe, however, the brunette scooted over and pressed the button several more times, presumably in case her blonde friend had not done it correctly. It was a busy intersection that morning and they were not getting instant gratification, so the blonde skated around the light pole and mashed the button again a few more times, pumping it with great vigor.

At last the lights changed, but it was to allow a pair of turn lanes to empty out and the Walk sign did not light up. The blonde's mouth opened in astonishment and she reacted as if she had been slapped in the face. Outrage! And banged the button a dozen times, pumping it in a fury.

The turn lanes emptied, the lights changed, and the girls were at last given the green light to skate across the crosswalk. Their mission was evidently only half accomplished, because they had wanted to reach the diagonally opposite corner and had one more crosswalk to navigate. Hence they began to take turns assaulting another crosswalk button.

They must be a barrel of fun in elevator lobbies.

The invisibility suit

Can you see me now?

The local university has a number of facilities scattered throughout the region. One of those installations is in my neighborhood and I drive past it every day that I commute to work. For a couple of years now I have been irritated by the sign in front of the building. It's an upright slab of concrete—a latter-day stele—that displays the university logo and the street address. My irritation was occasioned by the university's indifferent maintenance. A dark mold-like stain had been permitted to accumulate across the upper edge of the sign, obscuring part of the address. I'd wrinkle my nose at it in distaste every time I passed by, tempted to fetch a bucket and brush and give the sign a good scrubbing. But I never did.

Recently, however, I strolled past the sign on foot. The university facility sits between my home and the auto shop where I take my car for maintenance. I often walk home instead of sitting around in the waiting room (I could use the exercise anyway). Although I was not carrying a bucket and brush, I could not resist the temptation to saunter across the lawn to inspect the sign at close quarters. What was that mess that disfigured it?

The sign is tall, but so am I. With a bit of a stretch, I could reach up and run my fingers across the upper edge of the sign's face. The stain no longer looked like dark mold. It looked as though a lawnmower or edger had sprayed the front of the sign with a finely chopped mixture of grass and dirt, a kind of organic gouache, crudely applied. It seemed unlikely that any mower or edger would throw its ejecta quite that high, but whatever it was, that's what it looked like.

The crusty material came away easily when I brushed my fingers across it. I rubbed a little harder and more rained down in a powdery shower. I was in an awkward position, stretching up to reach it, so I simplified my task by climbing up on the ledge of the sign's plinth. Now I could reach all of the obscured portion of the sign and industriously rubbed the dark crust away. The lettering of the facility's street address was far from pristine (oh, for a bucket and brush!), but the surface was no longer obscured and the address was easier to see.

It took only a few minutes, but I was in no particular rush. Cars drove past on the adjacent road and people walked down the sidewalk leading to the facility's front door, but no one gave me a second look. I was artfully disguised and thus invisible to all passers-by. People looked right through me. It was quite amusing. Since school was no longer in session and summer vacation had started, I was not wearing a tie (which, I admit, I usually wear during the school year as a badge of power and authority—tremble before me, students!). In fact, I was wearing overalls, which rendered me as transparent as any maintenance worker you'd ever care to see. Or not see.

I finished my task unmolested, my fingertips rendered dusty but otherwise undamaged. The sign had been freed of its squamous disfigurement. I completed my walk home. Now, when I drive past the sign, I smile. Vigilante maintenance has struck again!

I must try to control these bizarre impulses.

Busy, busy, busy

Oops, dropped another!

A funny thing about being a writer: Once you've published a book, it makes it exceedingly difficult to keep writing. Land of Milk and Money is far from being a blockbuster hit, but its demands on my time have been unceasing since it was published last summer. Many juicy topics have begged for my attention, but I haven't added a single word to this blog for over a month. Appalling!

A new pope resides in Rome. I should write about the inevitable American schism, already de facto and in danger of becoming de jure. Our governor in California wants a linkage between student success rates and funding for public schools. Danger! My family is as wild and wacky as ever. (Cue the heart-warming theme music.) I've plunged into reading the literature of the Portuguese-American diaspora. I have reactions!

And, of course, there are the events associated with running to and fro to book events, up and down California, on TV and radio, and even the East Coast. In light of recent events, it's just a little spooky that I was at the Dartmouth campus of the University of Massachusetts, where one of the Boston bombers was enrolled. No, I don't think I met him while I was there. Terrorists tend not to come to book readings. Perhaps they should.

And here is a friend's conception of the UMass Dartmouth campus under lock-down.

Music. Therefore, God.

A different fine-tuned argument

The resident curmudgeon at the American Record Guide decided to share a few theological nuggets in his column in the November/December 2012 issue. Editor Donald Vroon has had personal experience of God through music, and shame on you if you don't acknowledge this as proof of the deity's existence:

I have often said that music is spiritual in its essence. It reaches us thru purely physical means (sounds) but it conveys so much more. (Actually, I believe that all spiritual values come to us thru physical things.) Music has always been viewed as divine, and the power of music makes it impossible to deny that there is a God. I think that is so obvious to the true music lover that we suspect that anyone who persists in denying God is fighting his own inner conviction that there must be. And he may have good reasons for that, but he may also be blinded by a false faith in reason and/or science that fails to see how limited their vision is. It may very well be that the largest, most important realities are beyond reason and science—both too simple and too complex for them.

As arguments go, it's not a particularly strong one. The foundation stones are shot through with the weakening striations of “I think that is so obvious” and “It may very well be.” Nor can I say that I am especially impressed by his wide-stance, have-it-both-ways declaration that some things are “both too simple and too complex” for comprehension by reason and science. Here, instead of tautology (“I believe because I believe”), he invokes internal contradiction. Sorry, Donald, but the Venn diagram blobs for “too complex” and “too simple” don't intersect.

Vroon cites Easter Vigil services as further evidence of his experience of the divine:

[T]he bishop stands up, spreads his arms, and shouts “The Lord is Risen”—and joy breaks forth: bells ring and peal, the organ comes to life and roars, the lights go up, and the candles are put out. And we sing! And every year at that moment I lose conscious control of myself and burst into tears. My surroundings vanish and I am on a higher plane—and I don't want to come down again.

Higher plane? Vroon is caught up in a well-choreographed theatrical event (with better staging than most religious spectacles of my experience) and equates that with ascending toward God. At least he's consistent. He continues:

That is exactly the same response I have to parts of Mahler—and Wagner, Strauss, and Bruckner.

Hey, me too! Vroon cites my favorite composers. But I don't confuse a deep emotional response to thrilling music with mystical communion with a godhead. In fact, I draw a conclusion opposite to that of the esteemed Mr. Vroon: If humans are capable of generating such profoundly stirring experiences, then where's the evidence (or the need) for positing divine intervention? While it's true that Mahler and Bruckner were imbued with religious feelings that they were trying to work out (while Wagner and Strauss mostly just worshipped themselves), Gustav and Anton place no obligation on me to give God credit for their compositional genius. I recognize it directly.

I have experienced enough with music to begin to rise to God.... I have tried to write about this a few times, and I am never satisfied that I have dealt with it adequately.

Indeed not. Perhaps because you want your ecstatic experience of music to entail more than emotional enjoyment and the physical impact of an endorphin rush. For me, the enjoyment is enough.

Did not do the math

An example of undercutting

If a large fraternal organization invites you to be the speaker at its annual fundraiser, you should definitely accept. If that same organization asks you to contribute a signed copy of your novel for the silent auction, you should provide it. If they reserve a table in the lobby for a local bookseller to hawk your book, your delight should exceed all bounds!

However...

If they put a starting bid on your book of $25 when it's being sold for $21 in the lobby, don't be surprised if your book is left behind on the auction table. Oops!

Corporations are people

Well, kind of

Nothing is more important to the continuing success (or failure!) of an organization than its hiring process. Bring in the wrong people and you're doomed. Bring in the right people and you have a fighting chance. Hence I never pass up an opportunity to serve on one of my college's hiring committees. Despite the onerous task of wading through dozens of thick application packets, it's worth it in order to participate in the selection of my future colleagues, supervisors, and support staff. It's also educational.

As you might imagine, some applications make more interesting reading than others. Each candidate's personal statement of interest strives to distinguish the candidate from other, supposedly less qualified, applicants. The candidate has to tread the fine line that separates persuasive self-promotion from repellent bragging. One must also take into account one's audience and do the necessary homework to research the target institution. I have quite lost track of the number of letters addressed to Large Community College that say, “My lifelong dream is to work at an educational institution as excellent as Medium Community College.”

I presume that was a search-and-replace failure while preparing different packets for LCC and MCC. Proofread your submissions, people!

Of course, there are more subtle errors than merely getting the college's name wrong. One particularly fascinating example springs to mind as a perfect illustration of a candidate that did too little homework in preparing his application for a faculty position. Here's a paraphrase of the key paragraph:

In an era of shared governance in community colleges, I have vital hands-on experience that prepares me to be especially effective and productive as a professor at your institution. While serving as department chair at Country City College, I was tasked with the job of providing instructor-perspective input to the Dean of Education in creating faculty assignments. Although the actual responsibility of making faculty teaching assignments rests with the Dean of Education, it was frequently necessary, in order to meet semester deadlines, for me to present the Dean with detailed faculty-assignment proposals as a fait accompli. I thus, in effect, did a significant portion of the Dean's job during the four years I was his faculty advisor and therefore possess actual administrative experience at the management level that should enhance and inform my contributions as a new faculty member at Large Community College.

As the members of the LCC hiring committee sat around a long conference table and passed around the application packets for comment, several of us took special notice of the unique qualifications of the candidate from Country City College. Imagine—we could hire someone who had actually done a big part of his ineffective supervisor's job!

We were not prepared to make any decisions at that point because the hiring committee was awaiting the arrival of its chair, who had to wrap up a prior meeting before joining us for candidate screening. When he arrived, the application from the CCC professor was on top of the stack at his end of the conference table. He spotted it and immediately picked it up.

“Well, here's a name I recognize! He was a faculty rep on my advisory team when I was Dean of Education at Country City College!”

Big bad seven

HT to HT

This really crept up on me: the seventh anniversary of the launching of Halfway There. I started this blog shortly after completing my third and final stint in graduate school, needing to do something to keep my powerfully over-educated brain busy. Either that, or to sublimate my compulsion for keyboard pounding.

It's often been fun, although occasionally disappointing. How can certain segments of the world resist the rationality of my pellucid prose? Yet I strive to avoid the conclusion that people who disagree with me are either foolish or evil (although occasionally they seem to be both). Such a conclusion would be bad for amicable family relations, seeing as so many of my relatives insist on doing silly things like supporting the right-wing policies that suck the marrow from their bones. But I preach at them in vain just as they do at me (except, of course, that I use truth and they use falsehood).

In recent years the sublimation of my keyboard-pounding jones has taken the form of novel-writing, but one modestly successful publication is not likely to be the start of a burgeoning career in fiction. Perhaps after the movie rights are sold or the opera version has its premiere. We'll see. In the meantime, school is back in session and it's only a matter of time before a few more “weird student” stories are collected.

And maybe we'll make it to the 8th anniversary.

Reviews are in!

★★★★★ 

Do me a favor? People have been asking me if there's going to be a Kindle version of my novel. The answer is a firm maybe. It will happen only if the publisher gets the notion that there's a significant demand for an e-book edition. Would you please go to the Amazon page and click on “I'd like to read this book on Kindle”? Thanks!

A few unsolicited reviews have trickled in since last month's publication of Land of Milk and Money. The good news is that they're positive. Right now there are three five-star reviews on Amazon, although one of them appropriately notes that it was written by a friend of mine. (Thanks, buddy!) The other two, however, are by people I have never met and don't know. I have to thank them for taking the time and trouble to post such positive reviews of my book. Muito obrigado!

 Here's what Karen Davis of Maryland had to say:

A "read straight through" delight, July 31, 2012

Disclaimer: I read the author's blog, but I don't know him. Still, his writing there is delightful, so I was prepared to enjoy the book. I just wasn't prepared to enjoy it quite so much. I started it on my commute to work this morning, and finished it this evening, doing little else but read. The story hooked me, the characters are vivid and convincing, and the narrative structure pulled me right in. At first I paid a lot of attention to the dates provided, but fairly soon I felt grounded enough in the family's life to be able to place when things were happening — what seems a bit haphazard at first is anything but. The huge family, bound together by the dairy farm, unravels in an inevitable and real way after the death of the matriarch, who knew that "land, houses, and cows" — and money — would come between them. Her attempt to prevent that serves as the spark, and we get to know them all before we learn how it all ends. (Or maybe not "all".) This book is a joy to read.

Jeffrey W. Hatley then weighed in with the following:

A Wonderful Book, August 6, 2012

Short summary: This is the best work of fiction I have read in a very long time, and you should absolutely read it.

Long Summary:

The first thing I should mention is that this is not the type of book I would ordinarily read. If I were browsing the book store, I probably would not have been gripped by the book's synopsis on the back cover. I bought this book because I'm a long-time fan of the authors blog, so I was familiar with his skilled writing.

This book greatly exceeded my high expectations.

Written in an episodic fashion, Land of Milk and Money uses short, non-chronological anecdotes to tell the story of several generations of the Francisco family and their dairy farm, as well as the legal battle that ensued when the family matriarch passed away. While this may sound like a slightly confusing way to write a story, it is not; the author uses it masterfully, creating three-dimensional characters and relating several decades-worth of incidents, resulting in a book which is a model of clarity. The author does helpfully include a Cast of Characters in the back of the book, but one quickly learns all of the major players and ceases to need this cheat sheet.

Despite being about a legal battle, Land of Milk and Money is light-hearted, and I often found myself chuckling at Candy's follies, Ms. Onan's ineptness, Jojo's ingenuity, and Paul's pedantry. By the book's conclusion, I had developed an attachment to many of the characters, and I can't help but feel that there are even more wonderful anecdotes that didn't make the cut. While I doubt it's in the making, I would certainly read the sequel!

Land of Milk and Money is an extremely fun read, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Please, read this!

Nice! How could I possibly quibble with that? (Although I admit that I did correct one misspelling because it's difficult for me to resist such things.)

By the way, Jeffrey is completely correct. There were a number of omitted anecdotes. Here's a little list:

The voyage to Brazil
The wearing of the green
Alberto's wisdom
If I might have a word
Visit to the University Farm
I want to be a priest
A night at the opera
Want to be a teacher?
Walking past the church
The Einsteinian cow

All but the last of these episodes were written up and included in the manuscript at one point or another. The first one, The voyage to Brazil, was published on-line at the Comunidades site early last year while the manuscript was still under consideration at Tagus Press. During the editing process, the segment was flagged for its comparative length and for being too much of a distraction from the main plot. I had to (reluctantly) agree.

“The wearing of the green” is based on an old blog post from 2005. The time of red and green amused me enough to want to recycle it, but my editor deemed it peripheral to the plot. As he noted in an initial reading of the manuscript, “the story of Paul's evolution from child prodigy to mathematician is well-enough told and does present a focal point for an alternative assimilation narrative, [but] I'm not altogether persuaded it fully coheres with the rest of the book.”

Yeah, busted! He singled out several of the more autobiographical segments and recommended them for deletion. Of the ten deleted titles above, I see that fully seven of them were episodes of this kind.

What will I do with all of the chunks of text left over from the manuscript's slimming process? I don't  know. While most of them don't stand alone very well, neither do they form a coherent whole. Perhaps they are fated to go into literature's dustbin. Although crowded, I'm sure the literary waste receptacle can make room for these leavings. And who knows? With a little bit of patience, they might eventually be reunited with the anecdotes that survived the winnowing process, but ... on the shelf or in the dustbin?

Hey, Idiot! Buy this!

Selling to sociopaths

It's a problem as old as gaming itself. Stay home and just keep playing, or get to work on time so that your coffee-breath boss doesn't ride you like a rented scooter. Who says you have to choose? Your PS/3 stays at home, but the game goes with you. Never stop playing. PlayStation Vita.

Have you seen the charming advertisement? Do you identify with the tragic sufferings of the poor gameplayer who has to decide between soothing recreation and gainful employment? Do you rejoice upon learning of Sony's brilliant solution to the dilemma? With a PlayStation Vita you can keep playing anywhere, even as you're strolling to work! Even as you cross busy intersections with never a care about speeding traffic! Even at your desk after you survive the trip to the office!

No doubt many hot tears of relief and gratitude were spilled when Sony unveiled its “Never stop playing” commercial. Anyone who was in fear of actually getting a life was now miraculously granted a new lease on irrelevance.



But perhaps I overstate the case. Surely you might still be considered relevant by the survivors of the victims of the multi-vehicle pileup at the intersection where you stepped off the curb without looking. These things happen. Hope you didn't lose your place in your game!

Anyway, there are more direct ways to hurt people than stepping into their path. You could get Crackle.com instead. It has an even more devil-may-care approach to the welfare of the unfortunate citizens of reality. With Crackle.com and a smart phone or other portable video device, you can watch commercial-laden movies for free whenever you want. Even while riding a bicycle! As the Crackle.com commercial demonstrates, you can happily bike through the middle of a picnic or outdoor wedding ceremony while your attention is riveted to the screen. Not even nirvana could be better than this! Besides, those people in the park were just being stupid when they failed to take into account the possibility of bike riders under the influence of Crackle. I mean, it's like all their fault!

Crackle marketing has yet to upload the ad celebrating the destruction of a picnic and disruption of a wedding, but an earlier promo spot is just as true to the theme. With Crackle.com on a portable video device, you can conveniently destroy your neighborhood from the comfort of your riding lawnmower. Now who wouldn't want to do that!?

Oh, right. Sane people.

The long-delayed procrastination report

Perhaps I'll do it later

Years ago, while first reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, I was quite taken with his program for self-improvement. He worked up a list of virtues—thirteen in all—and set himself the task of fully embracing them. Franklin did not, however, want to get carried away:

My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix it on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro' the thirteen; and, as the previous acquisition of some might facilitate the acquisition of certain others, I arrang'd them with that view.

I have entertained even more modest objectives. In particular, having confessed to a particular gift for postponement and inanition, I have striven to raise my level of productivity and reduce the amount of time devoted to languor and lethargy. I chose three goals, thinking that they were eminently achievable and not unduly ambitious. Nevertheless, as I will now report, the results have not been impressive.

Ice cubes

To begin with the best, I am pleased to declare that the ice-cube initiative has been a brilliant success, although I fear this indicates that only the most trivial tasks are within my grasp. Having observed that I was too often reaching into my refrigerator's freezer compartment to find the ice bucket empty, I decided that this should no longer occur. Hence I resolved never to take the last cube from the bucket without replenishing it from the ice cube tray. (No, I don't have an automatic ice maker.) Without exaggeration, I can state that it has been more than two years since I have found the bucket empty. My steadfast resolution has not wavered and the bucket is never allowed to sit empty. Let us raise a toast to my success! (Would you like some ice with that?)

The dishwasher

The kitchen counter gets crowded when cups and dishes and silverware are allowed to accumulate. Surely it would be better if used items were deposited in the dishwasher instead of added to the unsightly counter clutter. Of course, this is difficult to achieve if the dishwasher still contains the clean contents of its last wash cycle. The obvious solution was a solemn vow to fully empty the dishwasher and move its contents into the cupboards at the earliest opportunity. Should I find, for example, no clean glass in the cupboard, I should not reach into the dishwasher to extract one. No, that should be the signal for unloading the device and thus ensuring its readiness to receive the used glass once I am done with it.

My success in this endeavor has been only partial. Half a dozen glasses have been known to gather together on the kitchen counter before their number suffices to impress upon me my neglect of my resolution. (And, no, hiding a couple more in the sink itself does not excuse my behavior.) If there were a report card, the entry for this item would carry a “needs improvement” annotation.

The laundry

Surely it is unseemly and an indication of some residual barbarism to pick through the basket in the laundry room each morning to find the day's ensemble. Civilized people, it seems certain, have their garments on hangers in closets or folded in drawers. At least, I have certain vague recollections of this practice. Nevertheless, there is a measure of convenience in the fact that one's favorite pants and shirts tend to be near the top of the basket, the simple consequence of being most often worn and washed. While it's true that delving deeper may occasion the discovery of some lost-lost item deserving of being restored to the rotation, it's also a bit of a bother. The course of least resistance is lined with khaki trousers and blue button-down shirts. A scandal on multiple levels, I know.

Since I am aware of the situation, even as it persists, I have taken the bold step of designating a laundry-folding day in hopes that a salutary force of habit might develop. Franklin kept a little notebook in which he charted his successes and failures (“I was surpris'd to find myself so much fuller of faults than I had imagined”). I have a little whiteboard in the hall outside my bedroom. Every day it reminds me that Friday is folding day, and now that I think of it, I do believe the last time I emptied the laundry basket and folded clothes it was indeed a Friday. Back in May, perhaps.

Oh, look. It's Friday again. Hmm.

Living in Inertiaville

In the state of Catatonia

The spring semester ground to a halt several days ago. As usually occurs after a prolonged stint of intense effort, I lapsed into a semi-coma when it ended. My grades filed, I folded myself up into a tiny space of inaction.

I'm resting. Or something.

Some of my colleagues treat the filing of semester grades as a starter's pistol. Bang! And they're dashing off to foreign climes or holding parties or gorging on movies. School's out! Party time!

I can barely move.

My friends barely suspect the degree to which I shut down when the school year ends. I'm afraid I get overwhelmed by all of the deferred secondary tasks that accumulated during the busy times. Buridan's ass is reputed to have starved because he was fortuitously situated at the midpoint between two identical stacks of hay. Two stacks? Heck. I feel encircled.

Thus it has been that books remain in unsorted stacks, sheafs of papers sit unfiled, laundry rests unfolded in baskets, newspapers pile up unread in the recycling bin, blog posts remain unwritten, and an entire residence awaits a much-needed top-to-bottom clean-up job. (And let us not speak of my office at school.) Instead of attempting anything on the long list of things to do, I've slouched on the comfy chair in the living room, remote control in a flaccid hand, chuckling at the inane antics of Father Ted, the hijinks of Rocky & Bullwinkle, and bits of Fry & Laurie. I've let Simon Schama lead me through British history. (My video tastes are eclectic.)

Of course, it's not all couch-potato viewing. I also take naps. And I have been plowing through lots of books. I do that all the time, but pick up the pace during the summer. Reading is a useful and constructive activity, but I fear I'm using it in alternation with watching television as a way to avoid performing other tasks.

What to do? What to do?

My past history suggests that my suppressed sense of personal responsibility will eventually generate enough pent-up pressure that I will—any morning now—explode into a spate of furious activity that will strike out big segments of the mile-long to-do list. But it hasn't happened yet.

Perhaps writing this post is a kind of mea culpa that will nudge my conscience closer to the trigger point....

Nope. Not yet.

The disconnections

Hawking my wares

I have a long list of summer events in California's Portuguese-American community. It looks like I'll be doing a modicum of traveling this summer to promote my book at some of them. Since the small university press that is publishing the novel is without a generous travel budget or promotional expense account, this is going to be a shoestring operation. Every bit of free publicity is going to be valuable and social media will play its part.

Last year I started to try to drum up endorsements of the type that might play well as cover blurbs or as quotes in promotional materials. While my favorite quote is my sister's prediction that I'm going to get into “a lot of trouble” (but it's fiction—honest!), I also managed to get positive comments from a few real-life professional authors. Just enough to give my work a smidgen of credibility.

Of course, not everyone who I approached was interested in plowing through a 350-page manuscript from an unknown author. (Imagine that!) I did, of course, offer more modest samplers of selected pages, reducing the time commitment substantially. Clever writers, however, figured out that the best way to reduce the time commitment was to politely (or brusquely) decline the privilege entirely.

A couple of my friends were classmates with Joan Didion at UC Berkeley, working with her on student publications at the university. “Go on, write to her!” they said. “What could you lose?” Nothing, certainly. Which is also what I gained. The inquiry via Didion's publisher was absorbed into a black hole of silence.

I got a more substantial reaction from Joyce Carol Oates: a terse note from her assistant explaining that Prof. Oates reads only the papers of the students in her writing class and if only I had inquired before sending a packet of pages, I could have saved myself the trouble. Heck. I knew that! I sent the pages in the long-shot hope that they would be tempted to peek at them (and discover a masterpiece!) before consigning them to the recycle bin. The professor's gatekeeper, however, discharged her responsibilities meticulously. That is, of course, why she has that job.

In October, as I recounted previously, I boldly bothered Jonathan Franzen during his speaking tour of northern California. When he admitted to reading “just about anything,” I naturally thanked him and promptly shipped off a few dozen pages in care of his publisher. As the weeks went by, it seemed that I had run into another Didionesque black hole, but this week I discovered otherwise.

It simply takes Franzen a lot of time—unsurprisingly—to plow through all of his fan mail. He did, however, eventually run into my packet, opened it up, found the stamped, self-addressed postcard that accompanied the sample manuscript pages, and decided it was worth taking a couple of minutes to scrawl me a note and drop it in the mail. He said my novel was “a worthy and entertaining project”! Huzzah! Another useful book blurb! From the bestselling author who garnered the National Book Award for The Corrections!

Um. Not really.

Franzen was being polite. A more extensive quote from the postcard makes this clear:

[Your novel] seems like a worthy and entertaining project, but I'm afraid it's too far from the mode of fiction I produce & support for me to be able to help you. I appreciate your thinking of me, though.

Shucks! See how much better that is when trimmed down to five words? Or, with a judicious ellipsis, even better: “a worthy and entertaining project ... I appreciate.”

If only I had a conscienceless public relations person (is that redundant?), we could make hay of this. But no.

Speaking of hay, though, reminds me. Jane Smiley isn't returning my messages!

April 1

Where fools rush in

“Fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me ... you can't get fooled again.” —George W. Bush

I have no use for April Fool jokes. They are, as a rule, nasty little things. Most of them are—mercifully—painfully obvious and stupid. They do rather little harm. There is, however, a particular type of April Fool joke that I find especially noisome. Jokes of this type are crafted, perhaps unthinkingly, to sound completely true, without even a hint to give the hearer a sporting chance of penetrating the ruse. These are just callous excuses to slap an unwarranted label of fool on someone. There is scarcely a better way to get me to put you on my list of persona non grata.

Examples include such choice items as

• “Jenny won't be in class today. She's in the ICU after a car accident.”
• “Grandpa fell down and broke his hip!”
• “I just heard on the news that there's a fire in your apartment complex!”
• “My doctor told me yesterday that I have melanoma.”
• “Did you check your in-box? There's a memo from district office about layoffs in our department!”

Now how would you feel after expressing alarm or concern, only to have someone grin like an idiot and then yell “April Fool!” at you? Yes, I want to slug people like that (but I don't—usually). I actually experienced two of the above “jokes” and my response to “April Fool!” was an understated “Jerk.” In both cases I froze out the inane prankster for an extended period of time. One was a cousin. It was a small loss.

A form of humor based entirely on telling lies and then insulting the people who believe them. What's not to love?

Just sign here

Getting serviced by the financial sector

Most junk mail is pretty easy to ignore. Of course, when it comes bearing the label of your bank, it's important to give it a quick scan to ensure the “Important Information About Your Account!” is something significant (“We are pleased to inform you that we are raising our fees to serve you better!”) and not just another gimmick to sell you something you don't want (“And our protection service comes with valuable premium points that you can redeem for free gifts and services!”). This particular letter from Bank of America offered a streamlined mortgage refinance option. I had to consider it seriously.

As a fortunate survivor of the housing bubble, I'm in a home that hasn't lost value and isn't even close to being “under water.” (Hurrah.) A few years ago I did a refinance with BofA that shaved a point off my interest rate and took my monthly payment down a notch. Was BofA's offer an opportunity to do it again? I pondered awhile, but eventually called the 800 number.

“Barbara” was delighted to receive my call. She pulled up the information on my current mortgage, asked a few questions, and then gave me a tentative quote that would have a very nice positive impact on my bottom line. I could get my mortgage rate lowered by another full point. Since I used to have a two-digit interest rate in the “good” old days, I was duly impressed that my already-low rate could go even lower. Furthermore, it looked like the streamlined process was genuinely streamlined. My previous refinance had been recent enough that BofA was waiving the appraisal and a bunch of other potentially costly (and time-consuming) hurdles in the mortgage process.

I said “looked like.” Isn't it cute how naïve I can still be, despite my advanced years and allegedly keen intellect? The first detour from the refinance superhighway seemed innocent enough, as Barbara explained that she was not a BofA employee: “I'm an independent mortgage broker who does the initial processing on each account and then turns it over to an account manager at the bank. I'm a contractor rather than a bank employee.”

“Okay, I understand,” I said. “BofA doesn't have to provide you with any benefits since you're an independent contractor.”

Barbara laughed.

“That's right, but it also frees me from the bank's schedule and it's up to me how much time I put in and how many mortgage applications I process.”

Sort of like a piece rate in a sweat-shop. But I didn't say that.

Barbara told me I would receive a couple of application forms in my e-mail. I was to fill them out and return them to Barbara's account manager. The account manager, as an actual bank employee, would take the next steps.

And that's what “Deborah” did. She sent me a nice follow-up e-mail confirming that she had received the initial refinance information from Barbara and would appreciate receiving my responses to the information forms within a week, so as to expedite the process.

It still sounded good to me.

I quickly sent in the forms and then got a second message from Deborah: Could I please submit a notarized certification of my living trust and a letter of explanation concerning some confusion over my residence address? I didn't know what a “trust cert” was, but it didn't take long to get that straightened out and obtain one. The address matter was even simpler. I sent a letter explaining that my home was in the same neighborhood as the apartment complex where I had once lived. Thus I had resided in two different locations with very similar street addresses. The confusion in my address was apparent rather than real. Please disregard the earlier (but similar) address.

Done!

Then silence. I sent Deborah a message after a few weeks. What's up with my refinance application? She wrote back that she would find out for me. But then I heard from “Liu” instead. While Deborah was on the West Coast, Liu was calling me from the East Coast. She now had my refinance application and wanted me to know it was in good shape. However, she needed me to provide a “trust cert” and a letter of explanation about a supposed ambiguity in my residence address. I explained that these had already been submitted to Deborah. Weeks ago, in fact. Liu explained in return that she did not have these documents in her Florida office and would I please send them again? It seemed the course of least resistance, so I resubmitted the information.

More waiting. We were not simply off the refinance superhighway, we were chugging along on the local bus, stopping over and over again. I finally got another message from BofA: Had I renewed my homeowner's insurance policy? Was BofA the beneficiary?

They were concerned that I had less than 90 days before my policy would lapse, so the renewal was a matter of interest to the bank. I wrote back:

“While the existing policy is less than 90 days from its expiration (though I will not let it lapse), this is not my fault. I began this refinance process in December 2011, over 50 days ago.”

So there!

I had, of course, no idea what the bank's next response would be. As it turned out, it wasn't from the bank.

“Hello, Mr. Ferox. My name is Brenda and I'm following up on your application to refinance your Bank of America home mortgage. I need to ask you just a few questions before moving your application to the next step.”

“Yes, Brenda. Thank you. What are your questions?”

“First of all, I need to know if you have a notarized certification of trust and, second, I need to get some clarification about your residential address.”

I heaved a loud sigh into the phone.

“Brenda, I have already submitted both of those things. Twice.”

There was a short pause at the other end.

“Well, that figures,” she said.

“It does?”

“Oh, yes. Happens all the time. Where did you send the information?”

“First I sent it to a BofA office in San Jose and then I sent it to a BofA office in Florida.”

“Okay,” she said. “They're passing your application along, but they're not passing along the accompanying information. I suppose it's just simpler to keep asking you to send it each time. My company works for BofA in processing loan applications and I see this all the time. Sorry.”

“So what do I do?”

“If you give me your e-mail address, I'll send you a message that you can reply to. Attach the documents again and I'll get them directly.”

“So it's just simpler if I send them again?”

“Sorry, but yes. Exactly.”

I sent them again. Three times now. And counting. The financial “services” sector seems to bear an inappropriate name.

I hope that they keep using my phone number and my e-mail address. I'm afraid that if they mail anything they'll send it to my old address. (I should probably send them an explanation!)

Dates in conflict

Personal priorities and education

“Rob” was a good student, so I was unaccustomed to having him linger after class to ask questions. To make things even more unusual, Rob insisted on waiting till everyone else was gone from the room. Evidently he did not want any classmates to overhear his question. Rather tentatively, he voiced his query:

“Is it okay if I take our next exam a day early? On Thursday instead of Friday?”

Oh, no problem. I can answer that question easily: No.

I was, however, nice enough to give Rob a reason:

“Sorry, that's not possible. The exam doesn't even exist until the night before. I don't finish writing it till we've had our review session.”

In fact, I sometimes tweak an exam after I find out what students have questions about. If we spend a lot of time on a particular topic, I want to be sure that the topic is not neglected on the exam. For example, if my students want to work especially intensely on mixture problems, then I'm more likely to choose a problem of that type to include among the various application exercises on the exam. (And—I admit it—I don't worry too much about the likelihood that this slightly disadvantages the students who choose to skip the review session.)

Furthermore, I dislike the very notion of giving exams early. The student who gets special treatment by getting the exam in advance is obviously subject to the temptation to leak information to friends in the class. The less opportunity for that, the better.

Rob seemed to be surprised by my answer. Perhaps he had had instructors in the past who wrote all of their exams at the beginning of the semester. Not me. I'm much more adaptive than that. Or less farseeing.

Rob was also dismayed by my answer.

“It's not really my fault, Dr. Z. I got tickets to a concert before the semester started, and I wasn't expecting to enroll in a class that met on Fridays.”

“Nevertheless, that's what you did, Rob. The conflict is of your own making. You have a conflict between our exam date and the concert date. I don't have a good way to accommodate that and it's not my problem to resolve it anyway.”

“Well, could I take the exam later? Would that be okay?”

“Sorry, Rob. Think about it. I post the solution key on-line right after the exam. I'd have to withhold it from your classmates all weekend and leave them in suspense so that you could be accommodated. They wouldn't get the answers until Monday, until after you've taken the exam.”

Rob hesitated a moment.

“Oh, I was meaning to tell you. I'm going to be out on Monday, too.”

The conversation ended soon after that.

Wherein I fail

The Impostor Fantasy

My friends and acquaintances are very helpful in keeping my ego in check. They are ever ready to assure me, especially recently, that I am no good at false modesty. As someone who strives to excel in every endeavor he undertakes, it is understandably greatly disappointing that my self-deprecations are so unsuccessful. For some reason, friends and family do not accept my frank admission that I am a dilettante and poseur. It is a puzzlement. I ponder wearily how to remedy the situation, but inspiration fails me. I confess that I do not know what to do.

I felt like a fraud.
So I learned to fly an airplane.

When did this all begin? I am not certain. Perhaps the most recent spate of failures began when I told some friends I had stumbled into writing a novel. It was a purgative event, rendering the pent-up demons of old family feuds into a fictional form, exorcising ancient controversies by reducing them to narrative form. Much-told tales had been written down where others could see them and smile. Tragedy had been tamed into a tragi-comic story, which I shared with several friends.

At 50,000 feet I thought:
“A fraud is flying an airplane.”

I explained to people that I wasn't “really” a novelist—just someone who had written a novel-length manuscript. After all, I'm just a math teacher and not a littérateur. People scoffed. One particularly sly friend pointed out that using a word like “littérateur” was a dead giveaway. Clearly I fancied myself an author. In response, I confessed that I was an author: an author in the field of expository mathematics, with contributions enshrined in a number of texts and supplements and magazines—and a couple of writing awards to my credit—but not really a fiction writer.

So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.
I docked at Cherbourg and thought: “A fraud has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.”

This was deemed evasive. Did I not intend to seek a publisher for my quasi-memoir? I confessed that I was interested in shopping it around. The first readers had been extravagant in their praise (of course, they were friends), raising my expectations and causing me to dare to think the story had commercial prospects. I had even sought an agent. This was, clearly, proof positive that I was now a fiction writer—and my biggest fiction was my pose that I was not.

So I took a space shot to the moon.
On the trip home I thought: “A fraud has circled the moon.”

I failed at finding an agent interested in my manuscript, but instead I found a university press that was eager to look at it. Several months passed while their reviewers read it, but eventually my novel was accepted for publication. When I met the professor who was the editor-in-chief, I ever-so-modestly mentioned that it was an extraordinary stroke of good fortune for a non-novelist—a math-teaching non-writer—like me to get his manuscript accepted. The good professor scoffed at my characterization: “You wrote a novel. It's being published. You are, by definition, a novelist. In fact, you should be thinking about future writing projects.”

I had to grin. A professor of foreign languages was lecturing a professor of mathematics about what is true “by definition.” He had me there.

So I took a full page ad in the newspaper and confessed to the world that I was a fraud!

One of my colleagues dimpled when I recounted my recent failures at modesty. “Oh, Zee,” she said. “Don't you know about ‘fishing for compliments’? You're just trying to get people to tell you how wonderful you are.” I would, of course, have denounced this vile calumny, but it seemed to hit pretty close to home. Yes, perhaps I protest just a little too much. If I'm really anxious about being a dilettante in foreign fields of endeavor (and risking embarrassing pratfalls), wouldn't it make more sense to stop drawing attention to it? If only I were a naturally taciturn person—

I read the ad and I thought: “A fraud is pretending to be honest.”

During the late seventies, I had a Jules Feiffer cartoon posted in my graduate student office. The “impostor fantasy” amused me greatly, as well as speaking to deep-seated fears. Naturally I was reminded of it and was pleasantly surprised to discover it still resided in my decades-old files. It gave me renewed inspiration:

I felt like a fraud, so I wrote a blog post...