My winter obsessions: the color gray, what people are saying about universities, and (as ever) the carbohydrate

In Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas, the entry under "Students" reads, "All wear red berets and tight trousers, smoke pipes in the street--and never study." I half wish I could say that all of Cambridge matches this description, and in a way it does, given that the students here do wear tight trousers and many of them smoke, but there aren't too many red berets and everyone leaves the pipes to the professors. There's also a lot more studying than would suit Flaubert. That said, the fashion here is Sartorialist-worthy. If I felt more comfortable approaching strangers and asking to photograph them, I would have examples for you, but alas, I don't. Brown boots, usually knee high, but sometimes ankle high, are a staple, plus lots of gray and blue layers, slim trousers or jeans, sweaters, scarves, good coats (often with balloon sleeves or cape styling), and the odd bit of plaid or pattern, or a Rugby-style fitted blazer, make up the basic sartorial vocabulary. Add to this a vintage bicycle with a wicker basket in front, and you've got a combination that's hard to beat.

So now that I'm over my jetlag -- it's so nice to be able to think again, and not to feel like a record being played at slow speed -- I've been going to lectures and starting to chase down the various professors I want to speak with while I'm here. I'm trying to strike a balance between going to classes that will be good for me because they will teach me things I don't know or could always learn more about, and classes that cover subjects I know well but want to learn how to teach. At present, the lineup includes a C18 novel class, a romanticism class, a course on the influence of German philosophy on literary criticism, and lectures on Hegel, Marx, and Shakespeare. This morning I heard a masterful reading of Gertrude's speech in 4.7 when she announces to Laertes that Ophelia's drowned. Gertrude calls the branch that broke under Ophelia's feet an "envious sliver": the lecturer suggested that this was the first of a series of anthropomorphisms that make it seem as if objects have killed Ophelia -- the weak branch, her heavy clothes, and so on -- thus dispelling responsibility for the action, and and distancing both Ophelia and Gertrude from it.

Also on the topic of things academic, I was nonplussed to read Stanley Fish's piece, "The Last Professor," in the Times. Maybe it's his retirement present to himself, but he is so uncritical about what he deems the turn away from the humanities (evidenced primarily by the popularity of Phoenix University and his statistics about the ever-growing use of adjuncts) that it's hard to detect much passion, or even much resignation, in his account. It seems entirely possible that we need to come up with new and more adaptable ways of teaching literature and practicing criticism, but does this mean the death of the university as we know it? Hardly. Higher education is not purely an exercise of "determined inutility," and if some aspects of academic study do not have obvious or functional utility (if they don't make you a sandwich or distribute sandwiches to starving children), this doesn't mean they're useless. It does mean that they should be careful about claiming to distribute sandwiches to starving children if this is in fact beyond their abilities -- but it doesn't mean that they're categorically pointless if they don't. But then there's Flaubert again: "Art: shortest path to the poorhouse. What use is it if machinery can make things better and quicker?" (If the issue of commitment and social change in academic work interests you, you might want to look at Martha Nussbaum's [unfair] article about Judith Butler, "The Professor of Parody.")

Also, if you'll permit me a short coda in praise of the carbohydrate, I have to sing the praises of the chocolate banana crepe I ate yesterday after walking through Hampstead Heath with Tom and his friend Melissa. We went in the late afternoon and slogged through the mud alongside all of the dog walkers and wellie wearers (we were joking that there should be a stand at the entrance to the Heath where you could rent a pair of Wellies and a dog to walk). At the top of the Heath, there were lots of people flying kites, one in the shape of a shark, another a dragon with wings, another an arched parachute. We walked down Parliament Hill in twilight, and when we turned to look back, the light was casting the people and trees atop the hill into perfect silhouette. Then we went to a creperie and ate the best -- really, the best -- crepes made by very grumpy French ladies. This made me very happy. (Tom's been taking very good care of me.) Chocolate and banana are a match for the ages.