Thursday, February 15, 2007

"Getting Known...Getting Known..."

So utters Beckett's titular character from his play Krapp's last tape, as he tabulates the mere handful of purchases of his "magnum opus."

Yesterday, I learned of another citation of one of my articles (Thanks Nels!), and got in contact with the author whose work is fascinating, and very much in line with some things I've been thinking about.

On the same day, a journal I've published in (indeed, the highest profile journal) emailed me to ask whether I'd review a manuscript for them in an area I am just establishing my credentials in.

On the one hand, these pieces confirm a growing sense that my work is actually entering the conversation, and that I'm developing some ethos in my field. On the other hand, I've got a growing sense that I need a more substantive contribution to my field circulating in that conversation: my book.

Because of our article-oriented tenure requirements, I've been focusing recently on shorter arguments, but the time is ripe for the book (three collections published recently on related topics, but no monographs that represent a sustained argument and analysis of the subject). I'm hoping that by this summer, enough other work will be in the mill that I can sit down and really work the book manuscript to get it circulating among publishers in 2007. That's the goal.

3 comments:

Nels P. Highberg said...

You're welcome! I can send you a PDF of that, too. And I forgot to mention that I sat in on one of the author's classes when I was teaching there. She's great.

Sisyphus said...

Ooh, people know you! And you can make a substantial contribution to a new field (sub-field? sub-sub field?). How cool is that? You didn't have a case of hating your diss. once you finished? Or does that go away if you don't look at it for a year or two?

Horace said...

Well, whether people know me or have read my name on the top of a page or two are different things, but I'll take that latter as a sign of progress toward the former, and use it (I hope) as a way of making a contribution to this new, well, nexus between two existing fields, I guess.

As for diss. hating, I never really hated my diss., partially because I only really discovered what it was actually about in the final 8 months of the process, and my defense gave me even more ideas about what to do with it. That said, it's been over three years since I really touched it, and those ideas have been percolating around in my brain for a while, so while a year ago, I wouldn't have been (and wasn't) chomping at the bit to work on it, now I actually am...