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(Tenured Radical)

Thursday, January 05, 2006

ABRAMOFF ON
THE FETISHIZATION
OF THE MONOGRAPH


The strangest voice weighing in so far on the “fetishization of the monograph” debate currently raging among American academics is Jack Abramoff, the disgraced former lobbyist whose extensive corrupt dealings may bring down both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Few thought Abramoff, whose career has been about deal-making in Hollywood and Washington, would care about university departments’ traditional insistence on a book manuscript for tenure, but one person isn’t surprised: his roommate at Brandeis University:

Jack Abramoff was my room-mate for two years at Brandeis University. We were both English majors, class of ‘81, we were both originally from southern New Jersey. Jack was not raised an Orthodox Jew. Jack, in my estimation, was one who adhered to his own particular forms of discipline. He was also, in high school, a weightlifter. Orthodoxy and weightlifting, among many more of Jack’s habits of the time, required this strange form of self-imposed discipline. Our tiny campus apartment, really three rooms, was strictly kosher. Jack disliked drugs, and never would drink much beyond wine for Shabbat. His head was always covered. Jack and I would often discuss politics, arts, history, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, and more.


[Note: This page has now been removed from the blog where UD found it. She therefore cannot vouch for its authenticity.]

Abramoff’s combination of interest in weights, strict adherence to orthodoxy in general, and engagement in the poetry of Stevens, led him, he tells an interviewer for the New York Times (the interview will appear soon in the Sunday magazine, and will feature, UD is told, a full-length photo of Abramoff in his Orthodox/mobster look), to consider studying Stevens in graduate school and writing "a big heavy hardback book" about him called Domination of Black. Now, though, "it's a blessing I didn't go into the field. They're desecrating the rule of the book. It's a disgusting concession to modernity."