Wednesday, January 10, 2007

This is the e-mail I got this morning.

Dear Ed,

First, let me confess that late last term I entered your Eliot paper in the English Department’s writing competition for best paper submitted in a major-level course. Now, let me announce that you won. Congratulations on this larger recognition (beyond the grade I gave) of the quality of your work. I will give you a Barnes & Noble gift certificate, your prize, early next term, but I did not want to wait on the acclaim.

Again, congratulations.

Hugh Short


Hugh Short, incidentally, is the head of the English Department, and the Eliot paper is an analysis of the second-person in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which I entitled "Let Us Go Then, Who and I?". Yes, the best essay in the English Department this last semester was one I wrote entirely because the title was a pun on the opening line of the poem (Let us go then, you and I). I don't even like puns, but that one was irresistible.

Sometimes, I think that maybe I'm NOT the most brilliant man in the world. And then something like this pops up, and I realize how silly that is.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congratulations! My great pleasure in learning of your recognition by the English Department was slightly mitigated by the news that you do not like puns; however, knowing that you can't resist them makes it okay. Happiness is learning to love what you can't resist.

Dad

1/10/2007 7:40 AM  
Blogger Ed Turner said...

Yes, yes, duely corrected. Gimme a break, it was damn early when I wrote that.

1/10/2007 5:48 PM  

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