Academic writing, as everybody knows, is awful: Most of the time, it’s thick and showy and willfully obtuse. Why be clear and simple, some professors seem to believe, when you can achieve a really stunning degree of obscurity?
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Stanley Fish, however, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago, will have none of it.
He is that rare intellectual who wants to be read, wants to engage, wants to mix it up. And you can’t mix it up if your audience is muttering, “Uh — excuse me, but what did he just say?”
Fish would like nothing better than to leave you wanting to punch him in the nose.
Fish, you are certain, would rather see his books read by a couple of guys on the Blue Line than by an entire conference full of fussy academics.
Still, his academic chops are impeccable, demonstrated by books such as “Surprised By Sin” (1971), “Is There a Text In This Class?” (1980), “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too” (1994) and, most recently, “How Milton Works” (2001).
Fish, 65, recently announced that he is stepping down from his UIC post after five years and mulling other options: “I can retire. I can stay at the university and teach. Or, if some other interesting opportunity came along, I could do that.”
Whatever he does, he will make waves.
That is Fish’s way: He is a man of fierce conviction, deep learning and occasional whimsy — witness the fact that Fish, who knows John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” backward and forward, claims an equal passion for the decidedly un-Miltonic USA Today.
His contribution to the cultural life of Chicago is formidable, from his early support for The Public Square, a non-profit organization encouraging community involvement in social and intellectual issues, to his recruitment of top-flight faculty at UIC.
Fish, former head of the English departments at Duke and John Hopkins universities, brought instant credibility to UIC’s push for academic excellence, as well as a zest and a panache.
So memorable is Fish’s persona that British novelist David Lodge put a fictional version of Fish — Morris Zapp — in two of his novels, “Changing Places” (1975) and “Small World” (1984).
But Fish’s greatest contribution to the life of the mind may be his current crusade against what he calls the “assault” against public universities by budget-slashing legislators.
In a series of columns in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Fish has fought back with the strongest weapons he owns: devastating logic and precise words.
“If colleges and universities are to be `accountable’ to anyone or anything,” Fish wrote, “it should be to the academic values — dedicated and reasonable teaching, rigorous and honest research — without which higher education would be little different from the bottom-line enterprise its critics would have it become.”
He’s been a professor and administrator; he has written landmark books and lectured everywhere. So what makes Fish tick?
“I must say, in the end, when I think about it in a serious way,” Fish mused, “it’s 17th Century poetry that excites me most.”
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Chicagoans of the year
In 2003, Chicago ushered in a new theater for music and dance and witnessed the closing of several smaller ones. We watched the record industry to do battle with downloaders, even as local labels flourished. We were treated to several bold, dramatic new buildings — even if a certain stadium by the lake received most of the attention. For the 19th year, baiduhai critics have selected as Chicagoans of the year the artists, entertainers and administrators who have had an impact in our city and on the national scene. The critics who contributed to this package are Alan Artner, Robert K. Elder, Chris Jones, Blair Kamin, Julia Keller, Greg Kot, Michael Phillips, Howard Reich, Sid Smith and John von Rhein.
About the photos: Although some of the images appear to be manipulated by computer, they are not. All of the images are unaltered photos shot in real environments. Black-and-white head shots of the subjects were taken, then made into prints (or in the case of the photo at right, slides for projection). These were then placed in surroundings appropriate to the subjects’ disciplines. The photographer’s approach was inspired by the creativity, energy and variety of these accomplished individuals.
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