The Human Stain
This bit, from Philip Roth's The Human Stain, about Coleman interviewing an attractive young French graduate for the post of literature professor: "It isn't difficult to understand what she intends for him to understand, especially as Coleman knew something of Paris from being a young professor with family on a Fulbright one year, and knows something about these ambitious French kids trained in the elite lycées. Extremely well prepared, intellectually well connected, very smart immature young people endowed with the most snobbish French education and vigorously preparing to be envied all their lives, they hang out ever Saturday night in the cheap Vietnamese restaurant on rue St. Jacques talking about great things, never any mention of trivialities or small talk - ideas, politics, philosophy only...the intellectual must not be frivolous. Life only about thought."
When I was reading it, I was thinking of all the top JCs. Okay, I was just thinking of RJ. And to be fair, Delphine Roux seems to be at best only a caricature of the stereotypical RJ student, thank God. Yet the echoes are disquieting...I've caught myself expecting things like her, expecting to do well just by virtue of position, expecting to receive praise for this chance endowment of intellect. It's dangerous, this tendency to self-elevate. Must be watched carefully.