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I spent the time between Christmas and New Year’s at the Embassy Suites in center city Philadelphia. As it happened the Modern Language Association, which was scheduled to have this year’s meeting in New Orleans, canceled and rescheduled in Philadelphia. And since I am now living in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, I decided to attend with the sole purpose of reuniting with my friends. Indeed I managed to avoid every single session and symposium and cash bar and even the book exhibit, seeing as I no longer care what the latest freshman comp text looks like. (For a sense of what the annual MLA convention is like, read David Lodge’s Small World.)

My closest friend and I had decided to have a party–hence our location in the Embassy Suites. We invited all our displaced colleagues (well, all the ones we like) as well as our fellow medievalist friends. A trip to the fabled Reading Terminal Market, which is just as wonderful as I remembered it from my childhood and from my long ago commute on the Reading Railroad, provided the cheese and crackers (and a hoagie–which I am not supposed to eat and which I couldn’t bear not to have), and my friend tromped to the nearest state store for the wine. After years in New Orleans and Las Vegas where alcohol is sold (and given away) everywhere 24/7, it is a shock to return to the iron monopoly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and its strict liquor laws.

In any case the party went very well–everyone we wanted to see and no one we didn’t. Of the people from New Orleans, after 16 months, exactly one of us has a permanent address and a secure position for next year. All the rest of us are in limbo in temporary quarters with no clue as to where we will be and what we will be doing in the coming academic year. If this is the case with people who have PhDs and tenured faculty positions, what can life be for the many poor and poorly educated displacees scattered all over the country? The sad truth is that New Orleans is currently unlivable, and it will be decades before that changes, if it ever does. Even the people currently squashed into the small inhabited areas are finding that daily life is unendurable and are seeking to leave, even if, like me, they have nowhere in particular to go.

The MLA convention is the major job market for academic positions in English and foreign languages.  My (all-suites) hotel was a favored site for interviews. Typically the interviews are held in someone’s hotel bedroom, and everyone (including me) who went through the hiring process before sexual harassment became an issue has stories to tell about inappropriate behavior induced by the bedroom setting. So suites are better. I have a lot of experience stretching over a couple of decades in the MLA meat market, many years looking for a job and many years searching for candidates to hire.  So I spent a fair amount of time hanging around the hotel lobby people-watching as the candidates, eager and anxious, made their way to their interviews and returned to collapse into the arms of their support groups. One thing is for sure–the faculties of American universities are on track to be more diverse than they are currently. In one hour I chatted at random with six candidates, only one of whom was born in the US. The others were from Senegal, Germany, Argentina, and two different Asian countries, which, judging from the names of the candidates, were not China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, any place in the Indian sub-continent, Vietnam, or Thailand. However, ethnic diversity notwithstanding, 95% of the candidates were wearing black suits and white shirts/blouses. Long ago everyone wore tweed, and in the more recent past it was de rigeur to appear dressed to hike the Appalachian trail. I know from my years on the search committee that after several days of interviewing, all the candidates mush together, so if I were a candidate I would at least wear a red blouse in hopes of standing out amongst the penguins. I would also wear something that fit. Fellows on the chubby side, forget the pants with double pleats that break over your tummies. Ladies, avoid jackets that hit just at the broadest part of your butts and draw a horizontal line that says, “Look how fat my ass is.” Well, I hope all the eager young things get what their hearts desire, and if their hearts are smart, they will desire something other than an academic career.

The highlight of my holiday was dinner at Lacroix which is every bit as good (or better) than Le Bec-Fin (at least as I remember it from thirty-odd years ago) at about half the price. Lacroix is one of those places that serves tiny bits of amazing food artfully arranged on enormous square plates with a lot of “drizzles” filling up the space. You have your choice of any three, four or five plates, served in any order, each plate holding about four ounces of food.Â

The meal started with an amuse bouche of about a teaspoon of fish paste with a tiny crispy waffle. The first plate I chose was beets. This consisted of a plop of pureed beets, a tiny cylinder of roasted red beet, three little triangles of roasted golden beets, three circles of raw candy cane beets which would have been better cooked, and some walnuts scattered in the drizzle. All of the cooked beets were very good if you like beets, which I do, but the raw beets were, well, adorable to look at, but….My second course was a seafood soup which was incredible and unlike anything I have ever tasted before. Now, I spent 25 years in New Orleans, and I am accustomed to excellent seafood soups, seafood gumbo, corn and crab soup, oyster and artichoke, lobster bisque, but this was something else. First, it was served foamed like a latte. It came with a little piece of salty toffee candy, and the idea was to stir in the candy until it melted. Whoever had the idea to season a seafood broth with salty toffee was a genius. Amazing! The soup was accompanied by about half a tablespoon of lobster ceviche. My final plate was a small slice of spiced duck breast and a piece of squash the size of a postage stamp. It’s a good thing that there was plenty of excellent bread. I had two half slices of olive bread. Finally the dessert was included whether you had three, four, or five plates. There was a dessert that featured beets, but since I had already had beets, I let that go, even though I was very curious.  I chose the ice cream selection which was five scoops the size and shape of pullet eggs served in a dish the size and shape of Noah’s ark. The flavors were bitter chocolate, vanilla bean, Earl Grey, chestnut, and I don’t remember the fifth. (Miller’s Law: in any series n, I will remember n minus 1.) Finally there was a tiny chocolate filled with hazelnut, a butter cookie the size of my pinkie fingernail, and half-postage stamp size lime gelatin candy dusted with sugar (on the order of aplets and cotlets if you have ever had those). Plenty of alcohol was consumed, but not by me. I stuck to ice water and decaf coffee. Not surprisingly I did not feel bloated or overfull after dinner, but I also didn’t get hungry in the middle of the night.

Nowadays I always check restaurant menus to see what is available for vegetarians. Alas there were only two suitable dishes–the beets and a wild mushroom salad. Since it takes three plates to make a minimum meal, what was a vegetarian supposed to do? Eat one of the plates twice? Have the cheese service at a considerable extra charge? Eat two desserts? I didn’t ask, so I don’t know. Too bad a restaurant of that caliber has little to offer the many veggie folk out there.

So that was my holiday. Hope you enjoyed yours….Â

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