October 2007 archives
Archive
October 28, 2007 by Cyrus Patell
A-Rod Solo
I’m watching the fourth game of the World Series, which the Red Sox are leading 4-1 going into the bottom of the eighth. They already lead the Series 3-0, so a win tonight would win it all. I’d been telling my friends who cared that I thought that whichever team won the first game of [...]Archive
October 13, 2007 by Cyrus Patell
Sacvan Bercovitch and American Studies
Last night, in Philadelphia, I watched my mentor, Sacvan Bercovitch, receive the American Studies Association’s Carl Bode – Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for lifetime achievement. It was my pleasure and my honor to have nominated Saki for the award and to have gathered supporting letters from colleagues and students. In conferring the award, the prize [...]Archive
October 10, 2007 by Cyrus Patell
Mysteries of Pittsburgh
I’ve just finished reading Michael Chabon’s first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), which I started a couple of weeks ago because 1) I loved his breakthrough novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000) and enjoyed his latest, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (2007); and 2) I was visiting Pittsburgh for the first time, [...]Archive
October 9, 2007 by Cyrus Patell
Unsubsumed Virtuosos and Solo Operators
Bart Giamatti, the President of Yale who became the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, began his marvelous speech “Baseball and the American Character” with the observation that “baseball fits America so well because it embodies the interplay of individual and group that we love.” I’ve just finished watching the Cleveland Indians defeat the New York [...]Archive
October 1, 2007 by Cyrus Patell
