Tomorrow, I'll post some of the responses I received to this morning's comments on graduate school attrition. They are many, varied, and good; I'm hoping to receive still more. Meantime, I bring you installments four and five of Pictures from an Institution, the anonymous portrait of academic life whose MLA cycle I've been serially publishing.

So far, the finest comment on anon's production comes from the also anon Big Arm Woman at Tightly Wound, who sees it as "sorta Trollopian, but with more pr0n."

****

Friday, December 28th: William P. Wetmore enters the dusty red velvet gloom of the Fairmount Hotel and heads for the elevators. This is the third hotel he has been to in the past hour. He cannot find Chairman Stan's suite.

William P. Wetmore has the number of the suite written down on a piece of paper. He knows he is looking for suite 1848. The problem is that he has not written down the hotel where the suite is located. There are over fifteen hotels in the immediate area.

William P. Wetmore's wakeup call did not come that morning. He woke with a start twenty minutes before he was supposed to arrive at Chairman Stan's suite. He has not showered, or shaved, or successfully tamed his bedhair. He has not had any coffee, nor has he looked at the dossiers of the candidates to be interviewed. He had been planning to do that over coffee.

It does not occur to William P. Wetmore to use the phone to find out which hotel Chairman Stan is staying in, nor does it occur to him simply to skip the interviews. The problem of finding the suite is not, for William P. Wetmore, a practical problem to be solved by practical means. The problem of finding the suite is, rather, one of substantial spiritual significance. William P. Wetmore's fragile pride is at stake. He does not want anyone to know that he cannot find Chairman Stan's suite. He especially does not want Chairman Stan to know that he cannot find his suite. And so he races on flat feet from one hotel to the next, sweating in the humid bayou air. Change jingles in his pockets, yesterday's tie flaps over his shoulder, and catcalls follow him the length of Canal Street.

Stepping into a dim Fairmount elevator and pressing a button, William P. Wetmore closes his eyes and gulps air, hoping against hope that the third hotel will be the charm. It is some time before he realizes that the elevator has stopped moving. Sweat runs down William P. Wetmore's temples. Steam fogs his glasses. Standing in a bayou of his own making, the Starbucks Professor of Romantic Literature reflects that this is quite possibly going to be the longest morning of his life.

****

Friday, December 28. L'Aticia L'Amotte strides across the foyer of the Sheraton New Orleans, splendid in a suit of lavender suede. Her braids shimmer with light from the gold thread strung through them, and her hips sway with a broad, measured rhythm Erwin R. Sackville likes to think of as "sass." His eyes follow her approvingly as she moves, taking in the high yellow skin, the chiselled cheekbones, the strong curve of the thighs, the impossible shoes: tall lavender pumps perched on the clearest of clear plastic heels. To Erwin R. Sackville's cultivated eye she looks like a new-age ballerina on point, a funky postmodern dancer whose special grace is to seem to walk heavily on air. She is, he thinks, with uncharacteristic descent into cliche, a sight for sore eyes.

Erwin R. Sackville has just returned to his overstuffed station in the lobby of the Sheraton after a tortuous afternoon in Chairman Stan's suite. Though invited personally by Chairman Stan to attend this year's interviews, Erwin R. Sackville had had no intention of doing so. That morning, he had taken great pleasure in watching the sea of hapless jobseekers course through the foyer toward their uniform fates. In their dark vulnerable mass, they had made a sort of soft, brown impression on his mind, like melted chocolate, or spring mud. But that had been enough: he did not want to disturb the blurry bitter sweetness of their composite stress by bringing any one of them into focus. But he had been waylaid by Michiko Fry in the men's room, and had not had a choice.

"Erwin!" Michiko had cried, bursting out of a stall as water whooshed behind him. "I thought I smelled your cologne. How are you man!" He held out an unwashed hand, which Erwin R. Sackville took gingerly in his own newly rinsed one.

"I'm well, Michiko, and yourself?"

"Very well, thank you, very well indeed." He chattered as he lit a cigarette, ignoring the No Smoking sign. "I've just come from three panels at once: Transatlantic Crossings, Digital Diaspora, and Queer Marxisms, where I saw our lovely colleague L'Aticia L'Amotte." He exhaled and narrowed his eyes conspiratorially. "Should have been at the panel on preparing grad students for teaching--professional duties and all that--but it was in the Marriott so what the hell. I tell you, this is the only way to do the MLA, Erwin. Otherwise you just spend the whole panel wondering what's happening in the panel next door and you don't hear a word. Coming to interview?" he asked, putting out his cigarette in the marble sink. "We're just in time for the afternoon session."

He held the door open for his elder colleague and steered him toward the elevator bank, a hand on Erwin R. Sackville's shoulder, guiding him as a rudder guides a ship.

to be continued