Quietly, while no one was looking, I’ve slipped back into poetry mode. Shutter your windows and lock up your ampersands; everything that I can reach belongs to me.
A bit of a polyglottal thought today, as I was originally going to make a post o’er at my genre blog; Myspace is suffering from one of it’s intermittent half-hacks this morning, however, so I thought I’d make a premature attempt to tackle one of my Great Themes. Then I got some fruit juice in my system and thought better of it. In its place, some jotted thoughts on reading.
First, the perils of the Wiki. I know many folks consult the English job search wiki, and it is without question a formidable resource in the arsenal of the job seeker. I only became apprised of its location about three weeks ago myself, however, and I’m glad that I’m a latecomer to the game. Even as a sideline reader I find myself unduly fascinated–not only by the maddening vagaries of the academic job market but also by the collective sensibilities of the job seekers. Were I to return to the search, I don’t know that I could responsibly manage the impulse to monitor. The wiki seems to superadd a layer of knowing communal anxiety to what is already an excruciating process; knowledge, as it turns out, isn’t always power. Nor is it half the battle, no matter what G.I. Joe might think.
As way leads on to way, I got to thinking about the act of critical reading more generally. I’ve mentioned here before that I anticipate the completion of a volume of poetry in the next year or so, and I had the good fortune to sit down with our two resident poets, Jeffrey Bean and Robert Fanning, and grill them for insights. They were kind enough to make time and offer me their sense of the process, and I go into the next stretch armed with a better sense of ends and objectives. Because I process information oddly, however, I also hatched a new imperative that will apply to all my writing, at least for the time being. I think I need to free my readers and release them back into the wild.
Don’t get me wrong: I have five kindly readers, the kindliest on earth. Part of the reason I send them my work is that it gives me pleasure to do so; the feedback has become something of a secondary effect, incidental to my attempt to do my readers proud, to let them see the finest manufactures of my mixed-up mind. Only recently, however, have I come to recognize more fully the odd obligations that responsive reading entails. When push comes to shove, I’d rather not subject my readers to them.
I don’t think I’ll elaborate, as it’s a newish thought I’d like to let stew in my cranial crock pot for a spell. I will, however, own up to a neediness I need to overcome, though I think such meta-needery is part and parcel of the act of writing in isolation. Since my writing was a private act for such a long time, the desire to be read and heard is new to me. Given my proclivity for self-possession, I have a tough time making sense of that desire. Writing with a sense of readerly needs is central to my practice, but my needs as an author (with all the wiggedy connotations of the term that I have yet to accept) are newish variables in my little equation. They are something like an alien presence, and I’ve seen enough movies to know that I ought to dissect them and steal their technology. I am nothing if not a product of the times.
In any case, I ought to be writing, so write I shall. What I’ll do with that writing, however, is anybody’s guess.
I like having the jobs wiki — mainly because I can keep tabs on whether or not my top choice school has made any moves. (It hasn’t.) It’s hard not to check it every hour or so (lately, especially), but it gives me peace of mind knowing that I’m still in the running.
At other times, though, the wiki can be maddening. It has a hold on you once you’ve discovered it.
P.S. about having a reader… I know how you feel. I have a friend with whom I trade short stories. We thrive on the feedback, but sometimes it feels like we’re simply feeding our insecurities by making sure our writing is good enough to someone else. For me, at least, it’s a confidence game. I haven’t had time to write anything creative lately, but I’d be more inclined right now to keep it to myself and just decide that if it’s good enough for me, then it’s good enough. That’s not exactly writing with the reader’s needs in mind, but my creative writing is for me anyway.
I appreciate the many virtues of the wiki, but I think it will cause one or more job seekers to poke out their eyes with brooches and wander the streets of their respective Thebeses. The blogs of three or four candidates that I’ve surfed since the start of this particular job season alternate between commiserative optimism and abject despair, largely because they know (or think they know) exactly where job searches stand thanks to the wiki. A few folks in your shoes (waiting to hear back from their top destinations) must become paralyzed as they check back hourly to see if the search status has changed. Moreover, if I had had access to the wiki the year I was hired by CMU–the year I interviewed at MLA in December and was called for a campus visit the last week of March–I most certainly would have locked myself in to a new lease on my apartment and a new contract at Auburn before all the results were in. That sobers me a bit.
Thankfully, my lease is up at the end of August, so although I might end up having to pay double rent one month, at least I’m not going to have pressure to sign the lease again without having any idea if I’ll have a job for the fall. So I’m okay there. But you’re right. There are pros and cons to the wiki. Now that we’re halfway through January, I’m wondering if my top choice is going to be able to schedule campus interviews for the end of January like they’d hoped. Heck, it’s possible that people NOT on the wiki have already been invited. Only about a third of the people applying to the jobs are posting on the wiki, so perhaps the wiki can also give you a false sense of confidence. (Another con…)
I have a feeling that job seeking, paradoxically, is something you shouldn’t overthink.
I agree completely, but in the throes of the job search it’s tough to achieve any real intellectual distance. At interviews themselves I’m surprisingly good at being “in the moment,” as the kids say, but left to my own devices I’m usually living moments down the road, which makes the waiting rather anxious.