The advanced fragmentation of intellectual life in America means that personalities and issues that loom large in one field are often invisible in another. For the sociologist or the economist, the name Stanley Fish probably means little or nothing. For those in more literary domains, however, this scholar, university administrator, and critic has for decades been a familiar figure. To be sure, he has gained wider acclaim inasmuch as David Lodge apparently drew upon Fish for the character of Morris Zapp in his novels satirizing academic life. He also shows up regularly as an opinion writer for The New York Times. Fish’s importance resides mainly in that he is an exemplar of recent academic trends. He chiefly represents himself—he does that quite well—but he may also represent something of the postmodern academic life: its self-satisfaction, its self-promotion, its glibness. If the humanities are in trouble today, humanists like Fish are one of the reasons.

Unlike the jargon-filled writings of his colleagues, Fish’s work has a utilitarian and readable style. Many of his books are collected essays and reflect a relaxed public self. They are larded with “I think this,” “I hasten to add,” and “I am aware.” He does not shy away from distilling his arguments, and even presenting them in bullet points. He writes short declarative sentences. “By ‘there’s no such thing as free speech,’ I mean three things.” Compare the prose of Fish with that of a high priest of academic gibberish: the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language and the director of the Humanities Center at Harvard University. Homi K. Bhabha writes, in a typical passage, “The politics of difference lives on to rethink the minority not as an identity but as a process of affiliation ... that eschews sovereignty and sees its own selfhood and interests as partial and incipient in relation to the other’s presence.” This is not Fish.

Fish claims that his basic positions over forty years have not changed. He may be right. In the early 1990s, he wrote a widely circulated essay called “The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos.” He pondered why academics prefer ugly cars such as Volvos to handsome cars. The choice of Volvos, he explained, reflects the general orientation of academics, which is self-abasement. The coin of the academic realm is suffering and oppression—the more the better. Academics revel in unlovely cars, uncomfortable conferences, and crummy offices. Fish reduced his observations to an aphorism, which he formulated back in 1964: “Academics like to eat shit, and in a pinch, they don’t care whose shit they eat.”



Lily Padula

The piece is Fish at his best: punchy and subversive, or so he thinks. In fact the subversion smacks of nose-thumbing, perhaps cheerleading, and certainly not of revolution. Fish may have a point—or, more accurately, he once did. In newly fattened post–World War II universities, both the ideal and the reality of the impoverished professor were fading fast. In fact the new academic prosperity undergirds Fish’s argument. What bothers him is the split between the new wealth and professorial self-image. The “new dilemma facing many academics” is “how to enjoy the benefits of increasing affluence” while maintaining an attitude of disdain toward luxury goods. His complaint about substandard conference accommodations rests on the same footing. On one hand, the domain of travel and cavorting has opened up for the professorial class. On the other, this class opts for depressing hotels and cheap meals. “When I was a graduate student in the late fifties and early sixties,” Fish writes, conferencing did not exist. But now the “flourishing” conference circuit provides “new sources of extra income,” international travel, publicity, and “the commodities for which academics yearn: attention, applause, fame.” Fish wants the professors to embrace this world, not to denigrate it.

We have come a long way from Seneca and Cicero. Nothing here about wisdom, duty, or solitude. Fish swims at the surface. To the benighted shoppers of the corner store, Fish announces the coming of the galleria mall with two hundred boutiques and valet parking. Undoubtedly some of the old profs were confused; they continued to wear fraying sports coats and to drive ratty VW bugs. But undoubtedly Fish spoke for the future. The downtowns shriveled—or were reborn as cobblestoned quartiers lined with upscale restaurants. The professoriate got the message. They now sport tailored shirts, carry supple leather purses, and drive BMWs and Lexuses. The average salary for a professor at a leading research university is about $150,000—and more than $200,000 at the top ones like Columbia and Harvard. And that is an average. Do you think the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of English and American Literature and Language dresses down or drives an old Volvo?