The · Affected · Provincial’s · Almanack

Taken from a review of a recent biography of Goethe:

Conventional biographers...often appear to wish secretly that Goethe, the great author, had not wasted so much time in Weimar fretting about the condition of the roads or the lack of an adequate fire brigade. One cannot imagine Gustave Flaubert or Thomas Mann or James Joyce worrying about such things. Intellectuals, in the modern era, do not engage in practical politics or public works. They stand at the sideline and criticize. That is their function. But Goethe puts a challenge before us.
As Armstrong says: "He is a new kind of hero. The real task is not merely to criticize power, but to exercise it well; on the other side, the task is not merely to make 'pure art' or conduct 'pure research,' but to bring art and knowledge into fruitful engagement with experience. Goethe's example is powerful because he undertakes these tasks as a creative artist of the highest order. So, the integration of art and life doesn't — when we fix our attention on Goethe — look like a grubby compromise."

John Tresch, Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania, sat in on one of my readings last fall. Here's an excerpt of his incredibly kind letter:

"Last autumn I had the dagger-like pleasure of attending the public reading you magnanimously bestowed upon the Kelly Writer’s House of the University of Pennsylvania. Although I was already under the spell of your elegant, uproarious, and erudite volume, The Affected Provincial's Companion, I was delighted both by your ensemble, with its delicately outré combination of lavender and mossy green, and by your presentation, with its mélange of wit, extravagance, and modest breaks for the drinking of water.

Rather than grant you the warrior’s repose you had so forcefully earned, following your oratorical exertions I took the liberty of requesting your handwritten dedication upon a copy of your verdant tome for a dear friend of mine. (This friend has subsequently inaugurated a Whimsy Reading Circle in the outskirts of Chicago.) Yet more presumptuously (astonishing even myself), I dared to say a few words to you about my research into France in the nineteenth century, and, perhaps slightly less impertinently, about a course I will be teaching at Penn on aesthetics and technique next year. Your graceful response to these pleasantries stoked my audacity to a feverish blaze. Recklessly, I dared to presume upon your patience yet further and ask whether, by any ice-swan's chance in the Inferno, you might be willing to visit this class and deliver a light dusting of brilliance to a room of eager yet undercultivated minds on the topic of the theory and practice of dandyism."

[...]

"Although your calendar certainly now grows weedy with invitations—- to pyramid excavations, opium tastings, limousine-demolition derbies-- I wonder if there is any reason to hope that you might be enticed to return to the desert of West Philadelphia for a conversation with our class. Permit me to bore with details: The course’s marquee will read: “Instruments in Music and Science, 1750-1850.” In fact the course will be co-taught by myself, bringing a perspective from the History of Science (“dropping science,” one might say) and by a dear colleague, Emily Dolan, opalescent pedagogue of the Music Department. Emily has also devoured each word of your book and matched, gasp by gasp, my enthusiasm for the possibility of an appearance by you. The course will address the usual scholarly detritus: matter and mind, beauty, genius, cat pianos, electromagnetism, natural history, phantasmagoria, and weather-related mania. Ideally, your entrance will have been preceded by inquires by Kant and Foucault into “What is Enlightenment,” as well as texts by Hoffmann, Poe, Baudelaire, and other technicians of taste. On the general topic of transforming the persona into a work of art and tempering the delicate instrument of the self, I can think of no more exalted expert than yourself. [...]"
......

Help teach a class in an Ivy League university. This is comparable to the thrill I felt when I was told that the library at Yale had acquired a copy of my book for their permanent collection. How could I possibly say "no"?

I've also been asked to serve as a board member for the 215 Festival, an annual literary event held in Philadelphia. It should be great fun. Past luminaries include Amy Sedaris, John Hodgman, Robert Christgau, Sarah Vowell, Dave Eggers, Harvey Pekar, Patti Smith, etc. The other person who was asked to join along with me is a Jeopardy champion, American Philosophical Society-person, and a Ph.D. candidate at Penn. Goodness. Perhaps I'll simply serve coffee and pick out flyer fonts while the other members actually make the real decisions.

Chats on New York indie radio. Appearances on European television. Custom pocket squares. Surreal parties held in my honor in taxidermy-choked houses. Breakneck rides on Vespas through San Francisco. This whole movie nonsense. I'll say this much for the book: it will never sell millions of copies, but the opportunities and the wonderful people it has brought to my door have enriched my life immeasurably. It's both overwhelming and humbling.

~W