The Question The Question

As a university professor, I teach, participate in professional associations, lecture on various campuses, give papers at scholarly conferences, and review books for national journals and local newspapers: in short, I get around. For many years I have lived in dread of having to answer The Question. Curiously, no one has asked it.

At first I wondered if I had an ego problem. Did I feel bruised to learn that I was not important enough to be asked? Were not more visible and professionally celebrated chaps with similar backgrounds having to face the music? Apparently not. So far as I know, none of the others, whose number is legion, has been asked either.

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