Calendar Mystery 16: THE REEVE'S TALE
Characters:
Chris Josephson, age 28, professor and creative writer; owner of Sandy
Point lighthouse
Frank Zanetti, age 23, detective sergeant
Gertrude Grindahl, English department chairperson at UMD
Marsha Newsome, Assistant Dean for Equity at UMD
Jennifer Soule, Dean of Arts & Sciences at UMD
Vera Ericson, owner of Vera's Cabins on the North Shore
Sebastian Ericson, age 19, tempura and charcoal artist; Vera's grandson
The goings-on in this chapter illustrate the dark underbelly of the `Price principle', namely, that in any business or industry, one-half of the work is done by the square root of the employees. Put another way, the department has 25 professors (not counting adjuncts). Five of them (including Chris) are to be credited for one-half of the department's research and creativity. The other 20 professors are umdie-dumdies who know how to manipulate the system, but when it comes to actual productivity, it takes five of them to do the work of Chris or any of his four stellar colleagues. A five-to-one gap in productivity. Same thing goes for other staff members. "What are these other people doing with their time?" you may wonder. This chapter offers a glimpse of that.
Corresponding to the Price principle' there's a corresponding Pareto effect': In any domain of human endeavor—business, industry, the arts, scientific research, whatever—one-half of the rewards go to 20 percent of the participants, while 80 percent share the other half. The Pareto effect' is usually quite unfair, but it's part of human life, even in Marxist-oriented societies that try to circumvent it by stealing from the rich. In Chris's domain—creative writing'—the Pareto effect' is explored in a postscript to a book on Postmodern Artistry in Medievalist Fiction', where it is noted (for example) that in a sample of 49 creative writers, the attention of critics is skewed by academic fashion, such that out of 6,526 books and articles, 5,231, or 71 percent, are devoted to 4 authors (Carlos Fuentes, Julia Kristeva, Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco), leaving 29 percent to be shared (or not) by 92 percent of the creative writers. Some medievalist' authors, like Andrew Davidson, Nick Tosches, and Giulio Leoni, are ignored altogether, even though their work is as good as any other, and sometimes better. Lit crit' is even more corrupt than academic publishing.
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This chapter backtracks a little, to the bit in chapter 14 where Chris told Jesse Kovic that his friend Chris had been hauled before the campus Equity Tribunal. Chris knew he was getting blindsided when he found three officials waiting for him in the departmental office: Dr. Grindahl, the Assistant Dean for Equity, and the Dean of Arts & Sciences. Chris declined an invitation to sit. He reached into his pocket and turned on the tape recorder, just in time to record Grindahl transforming herself into Ms. Grendel: "Mr. Josephson, it's our duty to process a double complaint," she said.
"Professor," Craig said.
"What's that?"
"You said Mr. Josephson', Craig said. It's Professor Josephson, or Dr. Josephson. I always address you as Dr. Grindahl'. I ask that you extend the same courtesy to me."
"I can't believe you just said that!" Grindahl exclaimed. "I expect an apology."
Chris stood stone-faced and silent. He remembered Frank's warning: "Never apologize to a feminist. Whatever you say will be used against you."
"Well, then!" Dr. Grindahl exclaimed. "I suppose we must be formal." Craig wondered why a department chairperson was running the meeting when an academic dean was present. Oh, well, it's women. They have different ways of doing things. But what's the point of an organization chart if you don't use it?
"You say you have a `double complaint'. Does that mean you have two complaints by one person, or one complaint each by two persons?" Craig asked.
"A double complaint," Ms. Grendel repeated. "First, you intimidated your students by bringing a white male police officer to class to talk about rape. That was insensitive. Second, you exposed the students to inappropriate texts that present rape as comedy."
"I taught the Reeve's Tale. It's a fabliau by Geoffrey Chaucer, an English poet living in London at the end of the fourteenth century," Chris countered, pretending that he had to explain who Chaucer was to the chairperson of the English department.
"Rape is no laughing matter," Ms. Grendel continued. "And you did these things without trigger warnings. You caught the students off guard and caused them distress with disgusting subject matter."
"I beg to differ," Chris replied. "Officer Zanetti spoke to my class about two specific rape complaints and related them to the Reeve's Tale. His point was that rape is a criminal matter even when it's complicated by other factors, which happens with the `mistaken bed-trick' episodes in the Reeve's Tale. Rape is still a crime, even when it's complicated. That's all."
"Don't you think it would have been better to invite a woman police officer to speak on such a sensitive topic?" Marsha Newsome chimed in. She was the Assistant Dean of Student Life for Equity, recently arrived from Brown University, where she had been a student counselor.
"Officer Zanetti visited my class as a volunteer," Chris replied. "Introduce me to a woman police officer who is willing to give a class lecture for free, and next time I'll invite her."
"Well, women already suffer from a twenty-percent wage gap. If you expect them to volunteer to give free lectures, you increase their suffering," Marsha Newsome said.
Gertrude Grindahl brought up another complaint. She rummaged through her oversized handbag (symbolic of feminist baggage, Chris thought), and pulled out a section of the `Tribune'. She flipped to an inside page that presented photos of Sandy Point lighthouse, the ceremonial wigwam, and Ojibwe dancers accompanied by two bagpipes. Among the spectators, some children appeared to be imitating the dancers.
"Ethnic appropriation," Grindahl proclaimed, as if this were a felony.
"These men are members of the Waabooz clan in Orr," Chris said. "They were guests on my estate on Sandy Point. As it happens, the shaman, Amik Ziibaang, lives with me, and one of the braves, Peter Red Crow, is a guest in the caretaker's house, where a local artist named Sebastian Ericson is preparing charcoal sketches of him." Chris pointed to images of them in the photos: "This is Red Crow, see! And here's Amik Ziibaang. The younger men in the powwow were good enough to teach the children an Ojibwe war dance."
"Just as I said," Gertrude Grindahl said: "ethnic appropriation," an insult to Indian culture. And where are the women? The powwow is awash in colonialism and toxic masculinity."
"These men are my friends," Chris said. "I don't think of them as Indians', nor native Americans', either. I call them by the name of their clan, which is Waabooz, or by their nation, which is Ojibwe."
"Whatever you call them, they deserve a letter of apology for ethnic appropriation," Grindahl said.
"And a promise not to do it again," Marsha Newsome chimed in.
"Actually, the shaman and I sponsored a Halloween powwow," Chris replied. "The Waabooz brought headdresses and festive costumes for sale. Anyone who wanted could dress up as Ojibwe warriors and maidens and learn a traditional dance. It was Amik's idea. His clan needed the money."
"Horrors!" exclaimed Marsha Newsome.
"Like I said, the powwow was presented by the Waabooz clan. You don't even know what `Waabooz' means, do you? And there's more," Chris continued. "The shaman proposes to sponsor a Thanksgiving powwow."
"Horrors upon horrors!" exclaimed Gertrude Grindahl. "Dripping with hero white privilege. Even worse than that hetero slut Pamela Anderson last year, when she posed topless in panties and a fancy headdress for Halloween to mock native cultures and the murder of indigenous women. Whitey in feathers perpetuates the genocide of indigenous Americans. They're a culture, not a costume for you to wear. They oversexualize. You're complicit in the rape of one out of every three Native women."
"Actually, I didn't wear a costume," Chris replied. "I was too busy hosting the party. But you're right about one thing. Man is a biped without feathers."
Grindahl grimaced. She hated Chris's habit of mocking her with classical allusions that he knew she wouldn't get. Never mind that the Minnesota taxpayers pay her to know stuff like that.
"These things wouldn't happen if Sandy Point lighthouse went public, as it should have done years ago," Newsome said. "The lighthouse is part of the city's iconic profile. By rights, it belongs to all the people."
"Or else taken down," Grindahl interjected. "It's a phallic symbol, a sign of toxic masculinity, not to mention generational wealth. And all coming from a cis-gendered straight white male who teaches rape-apology in his classes."
Chris laughed at the notion that he was `straight'.
"What's so funny?" Gertrude Grindahl demanded to know.
"So many postmodern memes," Chris replied: "ethnic appropriation, toxic masculinity, white privilege, straight male privilege, generational wealth, rape-apology. You people don't love the Ojibwe. You don't even know them. You just hate straight white guys, that's all."
Dr. Jennifer Soule, the academic dean, grimaced. Being older and wiser, she didn't like the direction the interview had taken. As a chemist, a clear-thinking scientist, she didn't like it that Grindahl and Newsome couldn't see the boundary between feminist theory and personnel issues. She surprised them with an intervention. She excused Chris from the meeting. Chris learned later that Grindahl and Newsome wanted to forward the `Chaucer complaints' to the campus Equity Tribunal for disciplinary action. The Dean vetoed them, but not for long.
"It's our duty to make the campus a safe space," Dr. Grindahl retorted. "Perhaps there are institutional remedies. We could purge Chaucer from the curriculum, and monitor off-campus speakers."
"Banishing Chaucer, you have committees for that. It's in the purview of the English department," Dean Soule remarked, addressing Dr. Grindahl. Then she addressed Marsha Newsome: "As for monitoring off-campus speakers, your boss is the dean of Student Life. She is free to develop a proposal. Anything like that would have to be approved by the Faculty Senate and the President. Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you follow university procedures."
So much for that. Marsha Newsome and Gertrude Grindahl circumvented the college dean and forwarded the case to the Equity Tribunal, which included them plus one of Grindahl's students. The Tribunal hearing was pretty much a repetition of the preceding interview. No need for a rehash of tiresome postmodern memes.
Meanwhile, Frank Zanetti and Sebastian Ericson developed a friendship. It started with a campus tour. Frank reminisced about his time in night school and Sebastian talked about his ambition to study art. Sebastian was quietly shy when they visited the Art department and talked to an art historian there, but he got more talkative when he was alone with Frank. When they visited the college art museum, Sebastian was conversational enough about the paintings and sculptures of faculty and students.
Frank asked Sebastian what he thought about the paintings. "How does the competition measure up?" he asked. "Do you think you can beat them at their game?"
"I'm sure I can learn from them," Sebastian replied. "But they don't exhibit charcoal sketches. No human figures, either."
"They've all gone abstract. It's the latest fashion," Frank mused.
"Maybe it's because human figures are difficult. They require technical skill, and a lot of time," Sebastian said. He explained the process that he had discovered: "When I portray a man or a woman, I start by sketching them nude. When I'm satisfied that I've got it right, I sketch in the clothing. Otherwise it looks like there's a stick-figure under the clothes."
His comments were overheard by a third person, a thirty-something man who Frank took to be one of the art professors. He invited himself into their conversation by stating his own dissatisfaction with abstract are, and worse, with conceptual art. "Look at this," the professor said: "A white canvas with a black dot in the center; a jar of urine with a string of colored beads dangling out of it; a mound of elephant dung, probably purchased on e-bay, dried and painted with stripes of red, white, and blue. Is it elephant shit, or a signifier of American colonialism?"
"Is that your interpretation?" Sebastian asked.
"It's the artist's interpretation," the professor replied. "I'm reading from the printed program. See!"
"Signifier of American colonialism," Sebastian read aloud. "Sure enough."
"But America never had colonies in Africa or India," Frank protested.
"It's a postmodern conceit," the professor said. "No technical skill required. As for the jar of piss with the beads, the title tells the tale: `Manhattan Beads'."
"And the white canvas with a black dot?" Frank asked.
"Who knows?" the professor said. "Maybe it's the postmodern notion that every point in space and time is the center of the universe. If you pay attention to all the postmodern memes, eventually you'll get the hang of it. That's what conceptual art adds up to."
Frank introduced himself to the professor, and explained that he was taking Sebastian on a campus tour. "Maybe one of your future students," he said. The Professor introduced himself as Don Evans. It was his first semester on campus, hired to teach `life studies', sketching and painting human figures.
"I'd like to see your portfolio," Evans said, and to Frank he said: "You'd make an ideal model in my advanced workshop on human figures." He exchanged phone numbers with Sebastian and with Frank.
"Are you going to show Evans your portfolio?" Frank asked Sebastian as he drove him to his boardinghouse.
"Maybe," Sebastian replied, and asked: "Are you going to pose for his `life studies' students?"
"Maybe," Frank replied.
Sebastian challenged him: "I'll show Evans my portfolio if you agree to pose for his workshop."
Frank laughed. "You've got me on that one," he said.