Amazon has finally sent me James M. Lang’s Life on the Tenure Track. Although his experience in his first year teaching literature at a Catholic liberal arts college differs in many important ways from life as a first year teacher in a law school, there are some universals with which he wrestles: academic politics; teaching that first class; balancing teaching and publishing; etc. Lang is an engaging writer, of The Chronicle fame, and I highly recommend this fun book.
Posted by Ethan Leib on May 4, 2005 at 11:50 AM
Comments
Well, I’ve made it through 3/4 of it. I see where you are coming from; I had recommended it on the basis of the Chronicle columns, which I quite enjoyed–and which did not contain quite so much tiring life-affirming stuff. Still, I think there is much worthwhile in the book and much that a new professor will recognize and appreciate in Lang’s experience (even if we all don’t have Chrohn’s disease).
Posted by: Ethan Leib | May 5, 2005 9:52:30 AM
I will be curious to see what you think of the Lang book, once you’ve finished it. (Or have you already?) I confess I was a little disappointed. I think this has something to do with his frequent references to (and I may be paraphrasing here) “nonfiction creative writing.” The urge to feel as if he’s engaging in a suitable illustration of the genre, I sometimes think, leads him to feel he must earnestly reach conclusions and draw life lessons, and these strike me as a little hackneyed. I hope it’s not bad blogiquette to disagree with one’s host in this way; I was also excited by the book and grabbed and digested it very quickly, and there is a lot of fine material in it, especially about academic politics and the difficulty of so-so students. But I did feel he was too eager to draw a helpful, life-affirming moral from every story. I still say that the best advice on teaching is available from Russo’s Straight Man and Chabon’s Wonder Boys, although I would not recommend following the teachings of either sacred text precisely.
Posted by: Paul Horwitz | May 4, 2005 7:35:06 PM