PMB figures you should bear a few things in mind that will make dealing with your resident literature scholar a more endurable, even pleasant experience this holiday season. After all, your token scholar will likely return home (family), attend an office holiday party (colleagues), or ask you to please move at the bookstore (random encounters!), so read up and prepare to deal with them. They can get grumpy over the holidays because of the inflated ratio of consumerism to personal wealth that a lit. scholar typically experiences at this time of year.
The Myths In No Particular Order:
1) A book is always a good gift.
There are so many reasons why a book is quite often not a good gift. The main reason is that any book is a reminder to a lit. scholar of how many books are on the impossible to-read list, which is comparable in volume to Borges' Library of Babel. Accordingly, unless the lit. scholar specifies a book or type of book, s/he probably won't have time to read the book you've gifted anytime this decade. Feelings of guilt--both personal and professional--will compound exponentially for every day the gifted book goes unread.
It's also true that, despite common misconceptions, lit. scholars actually don't fetishize books as much as they sometimes lead you to believe. Often it's worthwhile for a lit. scholar to pretend that s/he loves books that much, and feels the need to pop a handful of aspirin upon a Kindle sighting just to avoid having a brain hemorrhage, in order not to have to spend 20 minutes explaining to you the difference between a scholar trained to think of a weekend trip to Victoria's Secret as 'a narrative' and a the two-for-one-bra-sale sign as 'a text,' and a book collector.
2) Lit. scholars have holidays.
No. Even though two weeks of vacation time in a calendar year is scant enough to be a legitimate human rights concern (and a crime against humanity), at the very least your boss probably gives you that. Not so for the lit. scholar, who has no vacation, ever. And just to underscore that fact, many of the largest literature conferences occur in late December/early January. And when do you think that conference paper is going to get written? Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, and all that...
3) Lit. scholars enjoy talking about books...with you.
Suppose you're at a holiday party, and you've just been introduced to your friend's fiancee, whom you're told is a particle physicist by trade. Would you ask him what his favorite subatomic particle is? Do you suppose he prefers bosons to leptons?
If that scenario sounds ridiculous, you should then understand why 'what is your favorite book' is the worst question you could possibly ask a lit. scholar. And, to clarify, the reason for this is not 'because there are just sooooo many great books!' The reason for this is because for lit. scholars, books are objects of study just like bosons are for particle physicists. Accordingly, no lit. scholar wants to have a conversation with you about books that would be the particle physics equivalent of 'so, do you enjoy the electron neutrino? Because I always found it sort of dry.' The wonderful thing about particle physics is that most people rightly understand that they don't know anything about particle physics. The awful thing about literature scholarship is that most people don't understand that they don't know anything about literature scholarship, but assume that because they can speak and read English they can carry on a worthwhile conversation about it. Wrong. Possible conversational alternatives: 'How's the weather in (where you live)?'; 'What are your thoughts on tax cuts?'; 'What is your favorite type of dumpling?'; 'Do you like sports?'; 'Do you remember when Sheetz sold fried macaroni and cheese bites, which was awesome? Do you think the FDA shut that down?'
4) Lit. scholars are drunks and philanderers.
Despite what Hollywood would lead you to believe, it's not true. But lit. scholars are happy that Hollywood pays attention to them. Given the film treatment, it's no wonder why this image of the lazy, underworked, oversexed, Dionysian literature professor persists; but it's a fallacy to assume that simply because people do a lot of work on fiction, they live fictive lives.
5) Lit. scholars want to become writers.
If 'what is your favorite book' is the worst question, 'do you want to become a writer' is the second-worst. Again, it would be absurd to ask your friend's physicist fiancee if he wants to become a quark; so why would someone who studies literature want to become a writer? Or, to put it more fairly, even if someone both studies literature and wants to become a writer, why should the one beget the other? I suppose an apple and an orange are both roughly spherical objects, and both mosquitos and airplanes fly, and both clouds and q-tips are white and fluffy; but commonalities (like being on opposite ends of the literary production process) don't always bespeak a larger relationship. If you want to become a writer, quite possibly the worst thing you can do is become a lit. scholar first.
There you have it. Tread lightly this holiday season!
