Pedantic is not a compliment

It is a list that gets longer.  A list that gets longer primarily because I am retired, which has released me from the otherwise stressful and time-consuming tasks of grading essays and attending committee meetings.

What is the list?

It is not a to-do list.  Those who have known me for a long time know all too well that I don't do anything.  I used to be a living example of GBS' "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach."  Now, I neither do nor teach!

The list is perhaps pedantic, reflecting my old profession.  A "pedantic professor" is an alluring alliteration.  It is also tautological; aren't professors pedantic?

The list of authors of fictional works that I have recently read:

Tahmima Anam's The Startup Wife;

S.J. Sindu's Blue-Skinned Gods and Marriage of a Thousand Lies; 

Anuk Arudpragasam's A Passage North;

Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future.

These authors get added to the list that includes Alan Lightman and Jhumpa Lahiri.

What is so special about these authors?

They earned their PhDs before they became fiction writers of note.  Not honorary doctorates, but earned!

Anam, with Bangladeshi roots, has a PhD in anthropology from Harvard.  Sindu's PhD in creative writing is from Florida State University, and is part of the vast Tamil diaspora.  Arudpragasam, a Sri Lankan Tamil, has a PhD in philosophy at Columbia University. 

Compared to these young authors, Jhumpa Lahiri is old, and Lightman, and Robinson are way old!  Oh, their credentials: Lahiri has a PhD in renaissance studies; Lightman is a big-time physicist as well with a PhD from Caltech; and Robinson's PhD is in English.

They have doctorates and are also wonderful storytellers.  Their stories are statements on the human condition, which will make us think about the path ahead that we humans need to carefully and consciously tread.

Whether they are anthropologists or physicists, the stories they tell easily and immediately convey the remarkable breadth and depth of their understanding.  When Anam writes about the startup culture, it is more than mere anthropology at work.  Robinson's science fiction is not perhaps what one would expect from an English major.

(I am confident that my old classmate and friend, Vijay, would have easily belonged to this group of PhD writers had he been born in the US, which allows the youth to take the time that they need to tap into their potential.  The India of old, on the other hand, compelled him to make a choice early in his life, which is what he did.)

But, I am not sure if reading fiction is something that people do anymore in huge numbers.  I couldn't get students to get excited even about the short stories that I curated for them in a course that was about understanding the world through short stories.

Quite a few years ago, I noticed on the first day of classes that a female student had the last name of Steinbeck.  As students introduced themselves one after another, when it came to her turn, I remember asking her if she was related to the Steinbeck.  When she excitedly said yes, I asked her if she was asked that question all the time.  Her response shocked me: In her couple of years in college, I was the first one to ever ask that question.  Naturally, I took a couple of minutes to engage the class about Steinbeck, and it was even more depressing that very few had ever read anything at all by Steinbeck.

Now, in retirement, I can read whatever I want like I did before I was laid off.  The only difference is that I now don't have to ever think about whether what I read would be of interest to students.

And I can develop my own lists that mean nothing to other people!