Voracious

 Every high-level academic I have ever known is a voracious reader. We read, or have read, vast quantities. Just saying... Even low level academics are readers. 

Usually, you have to read in your own field, in the course of doing research, and also just to keep up generally with things.

Then, you usually have some side interests, as well, and a general knowledge of history, philosophy, etc... 

You will know a lot of things superficially, and a few things well. Breadth and depth. 

There is also maturity. I was smart when I was 28 and just got my PhD, but my depth is greater now.  My total score: depth, breadth, originality, and quickness of thought, is probably better now.   

Suspect

 Someone in Grad school, in David Halliburton's theory course my first semester, said that in a capitalist society scientific facts are generated in the same way that industrial products were, through a capitalist mode of production. I thought that was a strange idea, so I asked for an example, and the example offered to me floored me.  The person's example was a scientist who argued for genetic component in intelligence, on racist grounds. 

Now, this racism is despicable, but it had no bearing on the phenomenon of which it is supposedly an example. This has nothing to do with capitalism, etc... There wasn't some actual mode of production of scientific data infected by capitalism. It was simply science in the service of something bad. 

I could have protested, but instead I felt humiliated, in a strange way. I knew instinctively that I couldn't argue, because even if I knew I was right there was another part of the picture: I realized that there was a different standard for arguments in this academic milieu, which was Stanford's Modern Thought and Literature program. (I was in comp lit., but we both shared this theory seminar as our intro course.) If you could tie something to politics in a crude, inaccurate, handwaving kind of way, that is all you had to do to win an argument.  The reference to racism sealed the point, because those are magic words for winning an argument.  Of course, most science is not about heritability of intelligence, and most scientists reject that idea, in fact. How can this be typical or illustrative in any way?  

Strangely, the person in question is someone I personally like and still count as a friendonfacebook. 

Another friend from High School who I like posts cringe memes on Facebook, inspiring stories of achievement written by AI.  They are written in the dark and stormy night style. Other leftist friends post cringe worthy content as well. There is something wrong with me temperamentally, because I find this kind of thing unbearable.  

When I was a kid

 When I was a kid I was trying to figure out how poetry worked. I wasn't a gifted writer, but I was curious about how it worked, kind of like from an engineering perspective, though I would be a sorry excuse for an engineer. I studied it from a college textbook when I was 12, maybe, and then went through the whole Norton Anthology. I just tried to figure it out from the inside. I still wanted to be a poet. 

I went to school with certain poets, figuring them out, like William Blake, WCW. I've done this with Borges, Frank O'Hara. I still do this in music, with Monk. 

I found a place in academia where I could continue this, and rose near to the top of this world. I studied languages, became an expert in my own subfield. 

So if anyone else reading has done this, how can we place a value on work that does not reflect an equivalent level of dedication and training?  How can we say that it also deserves praise?  

Training

 Imagine, then, two people of the same aptitude.  

One reads voraciously, learns languages, trains himself to write, learns about a variety of other subjects, (history, art history) plays music, figures out how to succeed in academia, rises to the top of an academic field.

The other: pursues a non-academic career, does fine. Main hobby is watching sports, maybe.  

The variability is in two factors: the opportunity, usually provided by a certain amount of "privilege" growing up, and the drive to do actually do it. I had both. I could have easily had the same privilege and same aptitude, and done nothing with it. 

The training is about 90% of the academic's value. It is work: training oneself to do all these things at a top level, but also expanding the brain through music and language learning. The non-academic could have done it, but didn't.   

Only a reduced percentage of the population get a doctorate or equivalent.  Even for a smart person it is not easy. 

Of these people, only a few get to research jobs and publish. Of these, a certain percentage is more or less on the top. It is an elite proposition, and it takes a lot. This is why academia, structurally, is elitist. 

Disorientation

 Here in Barcelona I went to restaurant one Sunday soon after I arrived. It had one of those fixed menus and they advertised "jazz moodd todo el día."  [sic]  They had good music, perhaps some Sonny Rollins followed by Miles, etc... The food was a little salty but not too bad. 

A few days later I started to go to one of the outside terraces near where I live; did it several times, having some beer or wine and tapas in the past few weeks. Then yesterday, I went back to the "jazz moodd" place.  Not as many places were open, and I had the same food more or less, but sitting on the other side of the restaurant this time. I was starting the suspect something, so I exited from the other door, onto another street, and there I was, at the outdoor terrace I had been frequenting on several other nights. It was the exact same restaurant, just experienced somewhat differently: day vs. night, one street vs the other, outdoors or indoors. The wait staff was different during the say. 

 I hadn't really noticed the name the first time, so even though I knew the outside place was called "Ginger" I didn't really associate it with the "other" place at all until I had another daytime meal there.  

Dante

 I saw in an interview with Borges (by Piglia) that he didn't think you needed to translate Dante into Spanish. Instead, you should read Dante in Italian, by learning another dialect of Latin. He had read the commedia several times himself, unsurprisingly.  

He always says that the scholarly editions of Dante in Italian are quite good, which is not hard to believe.   

Dream of New Yorker

 I had a mini-story accepted by the New Yorker.  But when it was about to come out (in the dream) it was merely a negation of my acceptance. Not exactly a letter of rejection, but something that had that same effect.