has been named the first recipient of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. The new lifetime achievement award, announced Thursday by Librarian of Congress James Billington, will be presented at the 13th annual National Book Festival in September.

Essays about DeLillo by UD can be found here and here.

And here’s a short essay of hers about a story of his – “Midnight in Dostoevsky.”

… did it again. At 9:35, in this speech today, he again cited Keats as the author of the line “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

In this post, UD pointed out that the source of this line, about as unKeatsian a line as I can think of, is John Milton:

318. On His Blindness

WHEN I consider how my light is spent
E’re half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide,
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, least he returning chide,
Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d,
I fondly ask; But patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best, his State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.

No one seems to care; there wasn’t any commentary when he did it before; there’s no commentary this time. Two people – UD and a reader – care.

It’s the only card he has left to play. Even then, it’s not a good one, since he’ll have to claim decades of mental illness.

This would be Emory law school professor Michael J. Broyde, object of multiple in-depth accounts – here – of his very odd behavior. Emory is already reviewing him for having made up internet identities whose function appears to be flacking his own work and excoriating that of competitors (à la the so-far more famous Orlando Figes). This is, to be sure, puerile and malicious of Broyde, and it seems to have put an end to his other career as a religious bigwig.

But there’s more, and with it we enter Woody Allen territory.

Apparently Broyde created another online identity, this one with the purpose of providing historical evidence for various of his theological arguments.

The second identity, claiming to be an 80-something Ivy League graduate and Talmud scholar in 2010, alleged he’d had conversations with now long-dead sages in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The alleged conversations were used to produce a manufactured history of statements from long-dead scholars that buttressed an argument that Broyde had made in a highly-touted article published in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal. Broyde, in a later publication, subsequently quoted this second identity’s alleged findings as further proof of his original argument.

To puerile and malicious, add – if true – academic fraud.

This man was reportedly a finalist for grand rabbi of London.

**************
UD thanks Tzvee.

UD is a major fan of Robert Zaretsky, a history professor at the University of Houston. She found his remarks on Christopher Hitchens, religion, and death to be among the most thoughtful his illness inspired.

Zaretsky’s recent remarks on France’s disgraced chief rabbi are similarly thoughtful; they are the only ones I’ve come across which put this farcically hypocritical man in a larger French perspective.

There’s one paragraph, though, whose prose I’d futz with a bit.

There is no good time to steal other people’s words and thoughts, of course, but now is an especially bad time to do so. The political scene in France has grown toxic, thanks in part to a series of corruption scandals on both the right, involving former president Nicolas Sarkozy and the illicit funding of his party, and the left, with the former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac trapped in a series of lies about Swiss bank accounts. President Francois Hollande’s floundering government, contested in the streets by conservative and reactionary movements, has been unable to reverse either the withering of the economy or the burgeoning of unemployment, much less halt the European Union’s politics of austerity.

On one level, these are great sentences, the kind of packed-with-detail sentences we try to get our students to write. So there’s no Scathing Online Schoolmarm here, none of my complaining about bad writing…

On the other hand, there’s room for improvement, no? I’d first take out some filler, some unnecessary words that weaken the punch of the sentence:

‘There is no good time to steal other people’s words and thoughts, of course, but now is an especially bad time to do so. The political scene in France has grown toxic, thanks in part to a series of corruption scandals on both the right, involving former president Nicolas Sarkozy[‘s] and the illicit funding of his party, and the left, with the former budget minister Jerome Cahuzac trapped in a series of [note redundant use of this word] lies about Swiss bank accounts. President Francois Hollande’s floundering government, contested in the streets by conservative and reactionary movements, has been unable to reverse either the withering of the economy or the burgeoning of unemployment, much less halt the European Union’s politics of austerity.’

*******************************

In the second sentence, the problem is excessive and sort of clashing ings: floundering, withering, burgeoning… And I don’t know about you, but often when I see floudering I waste time pondering whether it shouldn’t be foundering … Which isn’t a criticism. Everyone gets to use the English language. And in fact assuming you believe Hollande will be able to keep his government up and running, floudering is right and foundering is wrong…

On withering and burgeoning, I actually think the simple use of fall and rise would be better, even though this seems counter-intuitive, since we’re always supposed to be looking for interesting, dramatic, fresh ways to say things. Yet simplicity in cases like this one is arguably better, since rise and fall keep me focused on the content of the statement, while withering and burgeoning are giving me mixed metaphor palpitations (they’re not really a case of mixed metaphor, but I’m still getting the palpitations).

I suspect the proximity of all these theatrical words (withering floundering burgeoning) is playing into my palpitations…

Nor does it help that after these perhaps too physical words we end with a very abstract phrase: politics of austerity.

So – In no way a bad paragraph, but I guess a bit jumbled between abstract and concrete words.

A rather mushy editorial from the University of Cincinnati AAUP notes the absence of anyone who knows much of anything about education on the university’s board of trustees. Why not take advantage of what the writer delicately calls Stan Chesley’s “legal difficulties,” and replace him with a person who knows more about universities than about making money?

Chesley, you recall, is the disgraced former BOT member whose “astounding greed” has gotten him disbarred in multiple states.

It’s true that once you wipe out all traces of knowledge about universities from your BOT and pack it full of hedgies and Chesleys and bears oh my, you run the risk of serious institutional embarrassment when the SEC or some other agency comes after one of them. UD has followed many stories of BOT members who’ve resigned in disgrace because of shady business dealings.

The editorial writer is certainly correct that viewing your Board of Trustees as an ATM machine is unwise.

You put all the people who come to help you or who just happen upon you at serious risk. The method is appealing because it’s easy to mix the household material, and death comes fast and reliably.

Even if, like a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic this morning, you leave notes in your dorm room warning people off, exposure to others may well happen.

Six people were treated at a hospital; a hazmat unit spent hours cleaning up the building.

It’s like this — Imagine that someone comes along today and accuses Silvio Berlusconi of bribery, fraud, abuse of office, and solicitation of minors for sex. Although he may be totally innocent of these particular charges, Silvio has a decades-long record of allegations, trials, and convictions on just these categories of charges.

Similarly, Auburn University, one of America’s scummiest sports factories, has been in the grade-changing, fake-independent-study, cash-for-athletes game for decades. As the writer for MrSEC.com notes (I quote him in my headline), that school can do all the internal investigations it wants. You and I know that Auburn smells, and always will. So we figure – probably rightly – that it’s guilty of this most recent batch of charges.

… spring.

I post something on this blog every day, most often of course something related to universities. But here I am, 5:50 PM, just starting in on today’s writing, and I’m posting that I’m not posting.

Not posting something about plagiarism, athletics, conflict of interest. Not posting about poetry.

I think, as the song I link to up there goes, that I have spring fever. I mean, spring fever’s part of it, part of the restlessness, the difficulty concentrating, the tendency to wander to the garden and do something – anything – to stay outside on a cool sunny day in the Arboretum And Bird Central Station which is Garrett Park Maryland. The Solomon’s Seal is out, the fallen cherry at the top of the hill puts out white flowers. The white-flowering dogwood that shelters the topiary bulls has been hammered by heavy snow the last few winters, but its lost limbs have allowed it to clarify itself, and it’s more beautiful, more Japanese – in my green and white garden – than ever.

So I wander about, feeling that it would be madness not to be wandering about.

As always, in these supercharged settings, I’m thinking mainly of the dead world-lovers for whom I’m taking up the task of loving the world. Gillian Rose, Tony Judt, Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Lasch, and Paul Monette can’t be here – neither, for that matter, can George Orwell and Albert Camus – and I take seriously my role as proxy world-lover for them. Their writing taught me why I should love existence, and now I’m parading my gratitude.

The restlessness is more than that, though. Now that my fear for my sister-in-law is over – she lives in Watertown, and was hunkered down, alone, during the shootouts – I have time to think about what it must have been like for her, and for her neighbors. Relief and sadness come at me at the same time. Also some crazy sort of pity for the depraved little fucker in the boat, bleeding, trembling, trying to do himself in but too weak … Hiding out in the neighbor’s yard like some sick kid’s game…

We sent Joanna an assortment of Beacon Hill chocolates – survivor’s chocolates, we called them in our jokey note… All part of conjuring the event as farce rather than tragedy, and why not.

It’s what the song says. I feel so gay, in a melancholy way.

… in this post. I said that he would crawl into a hole and kill himself.

He apparently did just that. Or he tried to.

Authorities believe Tsarnaev may have tried to shoot himself before he was taken into custody Friday night because of the trajectory and location of the bullet wound in his neck, a source familiar with the investigation said Sunday.

The shot was fired at close range, the source said, suggesting the wound was self-inflicted.

I thought he’d do it because I remembered George Zinkhan, a University of Georgia professor who killed three people (including his wife) and then went missing. He was found in a shallow grave with a bullet he’d put in his head.

Stanley Chesley, big important rich dude in Cincinnati, got his friend the mayor to defend him as “someone who always stands up and fights for the little guy.”

Seeing as Chesley’s multiple recent disbarments have to do with him ripping off the little guy for millions and millions of dollars in profit for himself, the mayor’s defense seems a bit off.

Anyway, it didn’t work. His fellow trustees at the University of Cincinnati “gave Chesley until 5 p.m. on Monday to resign.” Chesley refused, maybe figuring that fantastic defense from the mayor would do the trick.

After a few days, though, Stan figured out the way things were going and resigned. Not only from the university, but from his law practice.

**************************

One of the committees that argued for Chesley’s disbarment referred to his “astounding greed.” If astounding greed barred people from university trusteeships, we’d need to get accustomed to three-person BOTs… You don’t even see Brown University scrutinizing Steven Cohen. On the contrary, they’re defending the guy.

I think Brown’s approach is jail or nothing. If not jail, he can stay.

Once UD gets tired of chronicling the depraved big-time sports programs at the University of Tennessee, she can turn to the UT med school in Memphis.

… notes Huma Yusuf in the New York Times, and indeed this blog has followed with amazement the mandatory gender segregation at a number of university-sponsored events in British universities.

In February, during the annual Pakistan Future Leaders’ Conference at Oxford, which brought together student delegates from more than 40 colleges, a Pakistani friend who is on a fellowship at the university joined a panel discussion on Pakistani politics. During the debate, he was taken aback to hear some participants champion the role of religion in state affairs and call for the revival of an Islamic caliphate. “The only revolution that can work is one brought through Shariah law,” one participant said. Another speaker dismissed the Pakistani Constitution as “human law” that is irrelevant in the face of “divine law.”

It took my friend some time, and several conversations with pro-democracy students who recognized them, to understand that his fellow speakers were [radical Islamic] Hizb-ut-Tahrir activists. “Their interventions were meticulously planned and very disconcerting,” he told me. “It’s clear that they’re very committed to their cause.”

British universities are being remarkably indolent about dealing with the problem. Or maybe they don’t think it’s a problem.

… containing the philosophy of Leopold Bloom as it appears in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce, of which you may have heard.

It’s going to be a handmade book, and… well, watch the film. It tells all.

Now that Joyce’s work has been liberated from the grasp of his grandson, projects like this one are flourishing. UD is excited, and has just done her bit – by way of a financial contribution – to The Works of Master Poldy. She can’t wait to see it.

… the second bomber, UD‘s sister-in-law watches the news and stays inside.

********************

A WBUR interview with Joanna last year, about a show she curated at the Museum of Fine Arts school.

… who lives right in the midst of it in Watertown.

While Mr UD was talking to her ten minutes ago, she noted a swat team entering a house just across the street from hers.

She says she is basically watching television and talking to the people who are calling her.

She has “enough rice and sugar for about a month. Dinner and dessert!”

********************

She just called again. Swat team in her backyard. She heard someone say Hands up.

I’m not making this up.

*********************

Another call. All clear.

*********************

But she is definitely very rattled.

**********************

UD will venture a prediction: If this person has any shred of a rational mind left, he has crawled into a hole somewhere and killed himself. Police will find a body.