Blogs and Bartenders

In a copy of the New York Review passed on to me by a friend, I came upon an account of three books about Julius Caesar. Maria Wyke, the author of one of these books, Caesar: A Life in Western Culture, was described by the reviewer, Mary Beard, as “one of the leaders of the recent turn toward the study of the later ‘reception’ of the classics, which now forms a significant and popular element in many university classics courses in the US and the UK. Her 1997 book, Projecting the Past: Ancient Rome, Cinema and History, is a central text in many of these sources.”

Thirty years before, I was at work on my doctoral dissertation, a study of the way the representation of ancient Rome in American popular culture changed during the nineteenth century from identifying with the Roman republic to identifying with the Roman empire (coupled with the confidence that, as a Christian empire, that of the United States would not fall). In the dissertation, I looked at popular novels—some famous, like Ben Hur, some best left on the microfilm where I found them. I also looked at neo-classical sculpture and early film. Not only not encouraged, but actively discouraged, by members of the English Department, I never did anything with dissertation, once completed, but put it in a box. Who knew?

I learned a lot about expository writing doing my dissertation, having to turn my intuitive, inductive style head over heels to produce top-down, deductive prose. This came in handy when I worked as a technical writer, and informs (to use some of the old academic lingo) my current teaching of argumentation for public speaking. But tonight it feels like there’s been a waste. Back in Boston, years after finishing my degree, a friend at a Quaker residence told me that a Stanford grad student in English would be staying for a few days as a guest. I don’t remember whether I told him, or just thought, that I didn’t want to meet her, but the dinner table made avoiding her impossible. In fact, I enjoyed talking with her, and found she shared many of the issues I had had with the department. Of course she asked about my dissertation, and when I told her both about the topic and its less than enthusiastic reception, she said, “You were ahead of your time.” I didn’t believe her, but maybe she was right. Who knew?