GTA Available for SEEJ Editorial Assistant

[James L. Rice]

Dear Steve,                                     May 29, 98

Greetings to you and Irina.  Just checked my email and saw your GTA
announcement, a SEEJ ed assistantship for 3 years to work in a program of
English/Comp Lit.  I just alerted our student Christopher Syrnyk by voice
mail.  It seems to have his name written on it.  He is our BA, has been in
our Russian MA program since '93, passed his generals in Russian literature
two weeks ago, is writing an MA thesis on dogs in Russian literature (a
segment of which, on Siniavsky, was presented at the San Diego AATSEEL a few
years back). Early in our acquaintance, 8 to 10 yrs ago -- can it be? --
when he was in 1st quarter of 1st-year Russian (a section demolished by the
instructor, a very erudite Pole with excellent Russian and English, who
eventually got a Complit PhD here, but was totally incapable of giving THE
RIGHT answer to students' questions, furnishing instead 6 or 8 skew answers
in the form of a grammatical disquisition, all in English just a touch TOO
good for a lot of the troups -- I found out, auditing in the third week, too
late!), Chris described himself as "a former world-class altar-boy," from
which he has many an amusing anecdote.

Actually that topic, dogs, began with me as a party game or parody when I
was an undergrad, but I tossed it out to Christ (stick-like) years ago, and
he "ran with it" -- but has yet to bring it back to lay at my feet!

He's a Portlander, grew up without his parents' Ukrainian, and is
essentially a Russianist, though for better or worse with benefit of ALL the
Slavic linguistics courses, including OCS, given by my colleague emeritus
John Fred Beebe, a walking encyclopedia of linguistics, world ethnography,
comparative religion, geographical topoi and toponyms of now and yore, etc
etc (see, with Jakobson, the book prepared by Beebe from ROJ's kartoteka,
PALEO-SIBERIAN LANGUAGES & PEOPLES: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY, a tome also
set by Beebe on the line-o-type.)

Chris Syrnyk emerged from Beebe's orbit, as so many of us from hither or
thither, as no Slavic linguist, but in the idiom -- "he's been there."
He also took some courses with our new linguist Cynthia Vakareliyska (student
of Lunt and Yokoyama & auditor of innumerable Chomsky mystifications down
the river, tenured with us last spring) -- and she too was not his cup of tea.

But he also began writing poetry long ago, and is deeply involved with
English and American Poetry, esp many moderns and contemporaries.  He was my
research assistant paving the way for a Brodsky 3-week mini-course on the
poetry of Hardy, Frost, and Auden that was to be given at UO (one of JB's
dozens of cancelled engagements in the early '90's).   Also worked as GTF
step-n-fetchit for Siniavsky when he was he for a term, and more recently
for Losev (helping out with a Brodsky memorial on May 26, 1996, late JB's
birthday, with Ufliand, young Ustinov, and others participating -- esp a
great ace from Jerusalem whose name escapes (then at Stanford): they all
stayed in Losev's rented mansion, and it was a great circus. Ufliand has
been a good Keenan friend since 1959, -- many anecdotes.).

In other words, Syrnyk already IS complit (as I keep telling our benighted
folks in COMPLIT, now COLT for short, previously -- when dear Irving
Wohlfarth ran it for a decade -- CLIT: "ALL lit is compl lit." <and esp, one
might add, Russian lit, which wears its CLIT on its sleeve.  It is, in any
case, an axiom well known to Syrnyk, who also practices it.)

About five years ago Carol Emerson went all out trying to get Chris a 5-year
deal at Princeton. He went on a pilgrimage there, she took him with some of
her students to see Shostakovich's Ledi Makbet at the Met <for which she
wrote the program notes) etc.  The psychopathology of everyday life
intervened, in the form of an existential crisis: Syrnyk somehow neglected
to go around and take the required GRE exam, so it all fell through. (Of
course the 5-year package would have had to be won by indian-wrestling with
other yoonits). That year Chris (whose father died at 30, probably the
Freudian crux of things at that time, '93 or so) was engaged to 3 women
<serially and legitimately, I hasten to add>, married the third after
wriggling off two hooks. (#1 was an affluent exec with Mobility
International, #2 was a high-powered divorced grad student in complit, #3
was and is a delightfully lovely and alert teenage checkout girl at Safeway,
whose dad is a biker.  So you see, Syrnyk is not a complete fool.)

At the moment Chris Syrnyk has applied to the Wisconsin Madison PhD program
in Slavic, having traveled there with wife (Kelly) for their AATSEEL chapter
conference last month.  But as soon as I read your announcement it seemed to
me that that the kind of work (for SEEJ) and the scope of a comp lit program
(with people like you -- and Irina? -- around) is much more the kind of
thing, and environment, for him.  Also, that he might just prove to your
liking as well.

He reads French and/or German -- I forget exactly which.  (ONE of these is a
requirement for our MA in Russian, but I think he has both.)

Another wonderful topic he's been working on for several years is the
concept of SMEKH in literature -- first, in PRESTUPLENIE I NAKAZANIE.  Not
only humor, the comic, etc., but also more specifically SMEKH as action, as
communication, as characterization.  You probably know that lately the
psychology labs have been coming up with interesting observations about
function of laughter across cultures, sexual boundaries, etc. But his
interest long antedates those reports,
I have tried to persuade him that this is a great topic for the Back Burner (PhD
diss).  He's been all too impatient with his own stuff that seems an already
projdennoe mesto, has had trouble focusing and progressing (be it dogs,
laughter, or whatever) -- all basically the existential low-grade depressive
anxiety, that is, common garden-variety thesis-retention.

Getting him in to take his MA generals was a masterly maneuver by me, as his
advisor.  He wanted to dangle and brood, perhaps on and on.  (I'd urged him
to take them with some more advanced MA candidates four years ago, since
he'd taken about all the courses we have on the books.  But he wouldn't.)
But now he is in motion, and I think it's clear that what you describe is
more suited to his interests, more flexible, than a traditional or
latter-day Slavic PhD program AT THIS POINT (though that needn't be ruled
out for later).

Amidst my drafting this, he returned my call and I told him about the job
announcement, gave him your address (not locating your phone number).  He
will try to phone you after a day or so, we hope -- to give this letter time
to reach you first.

Best regards,

Jim

PS Marcus Levitt's Russian Porn fest was a great thing (May 22-24),
unbuttoned but on the highest professional level (for such filth).  I'll
send you a copy of the program.  Kasinec was in great form, also the Kansas
historian John Alexander (on Catherine as sex queen).  There were two
excellent young folklorists from the Inst of World Lit, Moscow -- Andrei
Toporkov (editor of the R. EROT. FOL'klor anthology in which "my" Kirsha
bawdy song appeared unexpurgated as "No 1", and Vladimir Kliaus, who gave a
preview of a planned erotic motif index of Russian folk songs.  He showed a
great video of a village wedding near the Mongolian border.  These guys are
not just Levi Straussian parlor ethnographers. As I was getting a van to the
airport, Kliaus gave me a copy of his 1997 book, a motif- and
motif-situation index (400+ pp) of East and South Slavic zagovory --
inscribed (as I read on the plane to San Francisco) "s ogromnym uvazheniem".
It's nice to have some respect somewhere. You'd never know it to look at my
paycheck.

Did I see your name on a list for the Dostoevsky symposium at Columbia late
July to August 2nd?  I'm now definitely going, staying w my dear sister in
Somers (Westchester).  She's just taken another new job as THE
computer-records chief of TIAA-CREF, there regarded as an Inspector General
whose enquiries into the jumbled data bases may result in execs being
transferred - saints preserve us -- to the Aspen office!  (= Siberia) I told
her my very modest account from years ago (Harvard '65) could stand to be
mightily enhanced by, say, moving a decimal point one place to the right.
Chuckling (her normal mode) she allowed it would be "child's play."  Of
course it is out of the question, but... food for thought.

Finally, about dogs, did you notice a wacky little paperback (Moskva
"Gnozis" 1996) by Sergei Zimovets, MOLCHANIE GERASIMA. PSIKHOANALITICHESKIE
I FILOSOFSKIE ESSE O RUSSKOI KUL'TURE -- ? -- such topics as
"sobakochelovek", "mumufikatsiia"
(< Mumu), Pavlov, Laika i pr.  I rushed it to Syrnyk's data base.


,At 09:41 PM 5/28/98 EDT, you wrote:
>PLEASE BRING THE FOLLOWING GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIP POSITION
>TO THE ATTENTION OF ANY QUALIFIED STUDENTS. Thanks.
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The Department of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
>State University has agreed to assign a GTA to
>+Slavic and East European Journal+, which will move to Virginia
>Tech for three years during the 1998-99 academic year.
>
>As of the moment, the Department does not have any students
>in their program with background in Russian language and literature.
>If anyone knows of an excellent student with this background who
>may still be considering an M.A. program in English and Comparative
>Literature beginning in the 1998-99 academic year and who
>might be interested in and qualified for this GTA,
>please ask him or her to contact the Director of Graduate Studies
>in the English Dept. as soon as possible:
>Prof. Peter Graham, Department of English, Virginia Tech,
>Blacksburg, VA 24061-0112. E-mail: pegraham at vt.edu
>The Department has two specialists in Slavic literatures and a number
>of other specialists in comparative literature and literary theory,
>in addition to specialists in all periods of English literature.
>
>The GTA is a twelve-month position and requires 20 hours of work on SEEJ
>per week. It will pay slightly more than $900 per month plus a tuition waiver
>during the academic year and a $2,400 stipend for the summer.
>For additional information on the Editorial Assistant position, please
>contact Prof. Stephen Baehr at the address below. For additional
>information on the English Dept., please contact Prof. Graham directly.
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Stephen L. Baehr (slbaehr at vtvm1.cc.vt.edu OR slbaehr at vt.edu>
>Professor of Russian
>Editor-Elect, +Slavic and East European Journal+
>Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
>Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
>Blacksburg, VA 24061-0225
>Telephone: (540)-231-8323; FAX (540) 231-4812
>
>