Mixed Nuts

December is synonymous with holiday parties –
awkward social gatherings of people you really only see at annual
holiday parties. The host is usually the most bumbling member of the
bunch: the middle-aged woman in the glittery Christmas sweater who
bounces around from one unsuspecting guest to another, telling stories
about the cute things that her dog has been doing and harassing each
of them with cookies shaped like Christmas trees.

My third cousin once removed is usually the proud entertainer of our
family's yearly holiday party, and she is no exception to the
stereotype. A round woman standing at about 5 feet, she is small
enough that her head is the only one not to scrape along the garland
that she has strung from every doorpost.

Her children are, well, nightmares. As I make my way into her home,
usually carrying several gift bags as a buffer, three year old Tommy
and his older brother Curtis come at me with their sticky hands – "My
present, my present!" I barely make it to the sofa unscathed before
the dog attacks; I can feel him humping the back of my leg, and I know
that this one will be a memorable evening.

I've brought those few "back-up gifts," the unscented candles and
festive bottles of hand sanitizer and leftover Christmas cookies in
tins, in case I run into a member of the family that I have not
anticipated. "It's so good to see you," I say, patting a man on the
back and searching for his name – he must be an uncle something or
other.

Of course there will be no actual meal, just a table spread with
crackers and cheese and assorted fruits that all of us will loiter
around self-consciously, crossing our arms in front of us and hoping
that no one will approach us to initiate conversation.

Uncle *Giorgio is sitting in the middle of the sofa, calling the
children over to him one at a time to sit on his lap. "Merry
Christmas, you little rugrat. Now, pull my finger." He's pulling
quarters out of his pants pocket in lieu of presents, flicking them
off his thumb and into their tiny little palms. He beckons to me, but
I pretend not to notice – last year I think I felt something when I
sat on his lap, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't a candy cane.

Aunt *Carla, who insists on my calling her "just Carla" now that I'm
not a teenager, is handing out homemade Christmas cards in the
kitchen. There is a picture of her family on the front, enclosed in a
Photoshopped Christmas wreath, and on the back is an update of
everything that her children have been doing this year. Bill and his
partner got a new apartment in Queens. Katie started her first year at
University of Maryland this year, but decided to leave at the end of
the semester to keep the baby (look at her belly in the picture!). We
were able to bail Jason out of jail this past August (silly high
school boys and their pranks), so he'll just be doing some yard work
around the neighborhood – wave if you see him.

Sitting on the couch at our family holiday extravaganza, hoping to get
drunk off the eggnog and becoming complacent with the dog gently
copulating with my kneecap, I wonder if the end-of-the-year parties at
college aren't just as uncomfortable.

You scan the roomful of drunk teens in reindeer ears, searching for
familiar faces while simultaneously taking note of all the exits (just
in case). You find a friend, a fellow Physics major with an equally
distressed look on his face. "Professor Arbeitswalze is dancing on the
bar. Again."

Mingling is, of course, essential, getting to know the members of your
department who usually sleep through your morning class together, but
a confrontation with a professor outside the classroom is always an
unnerving experience. It's like watching a documentary on the
Discovery Channel: Observe is the animal in its natural habitat. Now,
watch as it migrates far from its home, hunting for food. It sees
fresh meat, and it begins to stalk from a distance at first, then
approaches its prey and attacks – "Why haven't I received your paper,
Smith? It was due Friday at 5pm." You watch as the victim fights for
its life, looks to its kind for protection, and finally submits. "It
was due on Friday? I'll get that right in to you. Really. No, really."

The chair of the department has thoughtfully provided a keg, and you
are able to persuade the drunken bartender (with a little bit of
cleavage) to give you a free glass of unlabeled beer. It tastes like
urine, you observe, walking past your advisor who has his mixed nuts
resting on the corner of the refreshment bar. "No, how you doin'?" He
winks, aims a finger pistol at you. Luckily you dart out of the way
just in time.

"Duuuuuuude," says a small boy you've never met before, draping his
arm across your shoulder, "I know you." He looks too young to be a
college freshman, too tiny. You pat him on the back and he slumps
over, and though you try to pull him back up onto his feet his heavy
body will not budge. There is nothing to do but to look to the left
and right, swallow another sip of beer, and step over his sleeping
body.

I come back from my trance when I feel something slobbery and wet on
my hand – the dog has brought me a barbecued chicken wing, and my
cousin comes shouting towards me, "bring that back! You little sh--."
She trails off into the distance, but I can hear the clicking of her
high heels as she chases the dog into the dining room. I search the
faces in the room, some familiar, some alien (in both senses of the
word), and I wonder how I can possibly be related to these people. But
really, I love them; yes, even the curious man in the corner who has
continued to lick his fingers long after he has finished his dinner.

Each one of them is a part of me in some strange and wonderful way,
helped to form some small part of my personality; they are linked to
me inextricably. And each one of them will be giving me a present
before the night is over.

Washington College: Bob Day and Lit Culture on Campus

I entered the Literary House through the side door, Edith purring anxiously and nuzzling my ankles until I eased the door open enough for her to escape out onto the porch. I felt like an outsider staring into the strange faces that stared blankly back into mine until I finally broke the silence, asking, “Do you know if Professor Day is in yet?”

“He doesn’t have an office in here anymore,” remarked a stodgy blond girl, finally surrendering a smile as I shifted awkwardly about the room.

I could hear his polished southern voice echoing from the stairwell with all of its quiet sophistication and colloquial charm, so I hurried up the stairs in the graceless way that tardy people often do and found that he was running a few minutes behind as well. Fumbling with a tie that he has probably never worn, combing his matted hat-hair with his fingers, he welcomed me into the room as he was preparing to have his photograph taken.

This man is an enigma to me, a fascinating blend of passion and patience, refinement and humility, enlightenment and curiosity. He promised that his class would change his students’ lives in a reference that he made to Nabokov in our syllabus, and having come close to the end of my time with him I admit with unimpeachable certainty that my life will not be the same because of one professor and his course.

There is something present in him that provokes enthusiasm in his students. It could arguably be his “outbursts of low grade profanity” or his eccentric sense of humor that ignite the rooms that he enters, but there is more. There is an admiration in him that draws out an admiration in others – admiration for the authors that we read, for the prose, and for the teacher himself.

Says Senior English major Jill Ward, “ I think most of us just sit in the class listening to the wisdom drip from his tongue, waiting just to lap it up and retain whatever bits of it we can ... he's an amazing man.” This is a man who claims that his appreciation for books is his only strength, the only thing he feels comfortable bringing to his students, confessing humbly that he does not believe himself much of a scholar while simultaneously praising the other members of his department for their brilliance. Yet when has another member of the department inspired such inquisitiveness and creativity? With a Lit culture that already seemed to be on the decline, I was concerned for the loss of its initiative entirely as one of its driving forces steps down.

I voiced my concerns to fellow student writers first, who were inclined to agree that something was amiss with our creative society. Second semester English major Allison Fischbach was disappointed to find that WAC did not publish an annual literary and art magazine, discovering that “for a liberal arts college focused on writing, a large portion of the student body seems to ignore the creative writing publications.”

New to the department as well, Mary DiAngelo agrees that the writing program seems to “fly under everyone’s radar.” She says of the Lit House dwellers and such, “[the program] seems to be a sort of exclusive club.”

Allying with many other upperclassmen, Aileen Brenner was disheartened that students are incapable of majoring in Creative Writing at the college with the largest undergraduate literary prize in the nation. “For a college so proud of its creative writing department,” she asserts, “I'm upset that there isn't more of a department and more opportunities for learning in it, such as a major option with a thesis.”

But what does this have to do with Professor Day? Sophomore Della Roberts explains, “everything I wrote in my creative writing classes was forced and dry, but it was different with Professor Day's class.” Rather than having students examine literature on a technical level, Day allows students to read for the simple pleasure that it brings. Directions in his syllabus include: “Take your time. Read slowly and with care. Reread passages you admire. Throw away your cell phones. Do not connect your literary life to Google. Admire sentences. Paragraphs. Punctuation. Lists.”

I went to Professor Day, told him how I felt about the decline of literary culture on campus and asked him about some of his own philosophies, hoping to gain some insight. This is what he had to say:

Me: So, I heard a rumor that you’re retiring. I really hope that’s not true, because I know that a lot of students will be very disappointed.

Day: Well goddamn, how nice! Well, I am going to become an adjunct professor. After this semester I will retire as a full time professor. I’ve got some writing to do … so yes, it’s true. That’s why I gave you all my ties, I’m going to announce it to my students on the last day of classes, so I will ask you to wear your ties.

Me: Sort of like the scene from Dead Poets’ Society?

Day: I like to think of myself as a live writer and not a dead poet, but I guess so, something like that.

Me: Well, enough about your leaving. What about your years here at Washington College? Your teaching style is so refreshing. Why do you choose to emphasize the students’ appreciation of the literature more than the examination of its technical aspects?

Day: I only teach classes I would want to take, and I take all the classes along with the students. I’d like to write all the papers I assign. I don’t have a lot of strengths in literature, but I have one good one. I read with affection and admiration. Students who want to study literature with me respond to my peculiar assignments with splendid work. Their stuff is … full of beans and rice.

Me: As such a strong advocate for creativity and literary appreciation on campus, how do you feel about our writing culture? Do you feel that it is, well, ‘in decline?’

Day: One of the reasons literary culture is no longer the supreme culture is because other cultures have grown up, and good for them. There should be lots of intellectual cultures on a college campus; it’s important that each student has a home.

Me: What about the society you spoke of here during the 60’s and 70’s, for instance, when Allen Ginsburg tried to levitate Bunting Hall – do you feel like we have devolved since then, or simply changed?

Day: Allen Ginsburg’s dead. Hell, I may be dead. I don’t even know. Every generation has its own wildness. I don’t know about this generation, but I’m sure they’re crazy enough. But when it comes to literary culture, don’t wait to be invited. Show up. Revolutionize it if it doesn’t have any zip, because as far as I’m concerned students are the Z-I-P of literary culture.