Interview Meme, Take 1
So this marks my entrance into the interview meme. The way it works is this: beyond this cut is a transcript of a five-question interview posed to me by queen_of_wands with my responses interleaved. Anyone else who wants to interview me can post his or her five-question interview in the comments section of this post. If you would like to be interviewed, let me know and I’ll interview you.
This interview is for Super Smart Classicists Weekly, so don't blow it and give goofball answers. Someone who might consider hiring you some day may be reading.
1. Dude, why do they call it "lost wax"? I mean, the craftsmen don't actually *lose* the wax, do they? You'd think they'd be more clever than that.
It occurs to me that there are readers of this journal, both SSCWeekly and my own, who are not familiar with the “lost wax” method of production. The so-called “lost wax” method is a rather clever way of casting metal that was used extensively throughout the ancient world. In this process the artisan carefully creates a figure in wax, which is a material that is easy to carve, but also holds its shape quite well. This wax figure is then coated in clay - it is first painted with a thin layer of clay to pick up the fine details of the sculpted wax, and then this fine coating is augmented by a more substantial amount of clay. All of this is done in such a way that vents are left which leave small channels through the clay to the wax underneath. When the clay is fired, the wax melts and travels out of the vents leaving a hollow ceramic mold. Molten metals are then poured into the vents, and when the metals have hardened, the clay is broken away to reveal a more-or-less exact duplicate of the original wax image cast in, say, bronze.
Your problem with the name “lost wax” seems to stem from the notion that it is perhaps possible to gather the wax after the fact and use it in some other project - thus the wax is not lost. I can’t rightly say that I know what happens to wax when you subject it to the sorts of temperatures used to bake clay: it’s possible that the wax is left in a useable state, but it is also possible that the wax would ignite or denature in some way under these conditions. In either case, the real success of the term - and this is likely an unintentional success - is that it describes not the loss of the actual wax, but the loss of the original wax figure. Since so much of the original sculpting was done in the wax, the new-found longevity of the sculpture cast in bronze is achieved at the expense of the locus of artistic production. It is almost as if, in order to preserve the image of a painting, we needed to subject the canvass to a process that would destroy it: now more durable images of that painting can appear in students’ textbooks, but the object that actually received the attention of the artist is irrevocably lost. Obviously this analogy is deeply flawed and more than a little whimsical, but infusing the term with a melodramatic emotional weight is the only way that I can think of to redeem it.
2. You're stranded on a desert island with a spade, a grapefruit, and someone whose book you've read but whom you've never met in person. Which person do you choose?
When confronted with questions like this I am always tempted to select someone that I don’t like, especially now that you’ve given me a weapon and something unpleasant to rub in the wound. Ignoring that impulse, however, I would probably choose Julius Caesar. I don’t typically read books written by practically minded people, but if anyone can get two people off of a desert island armed only a spade and a grapefruit, it’s J.C., the MacGuyver of the ancient world. I think that this would more than make up for his more unsavory personality traits.
[Note: Agrippa suggested that I should choose Jhumpa Lahiri. She probably wouldn’t be able to get us off of the island, but Agrippa suggested that judging by her author photo, that might not be such a bad thing.]
3. Pretend I am your undergraduate student in a large required class and respond to me when I say this: "Professor Wageslave, I'm having trouble with my term paper because there's nothing to write about. Who cares about the Greeks anyway? They're just old dead white guys. I just need to pass this class."
The question “why do we study this?” is one that plagues the humanities in general. This question usually elicits vague and unprovable pronouncements about the intrinsic value of art and knowledge, and people who ask this question are not usually swayed by these sorts of generalities, which are only persuasive if you already believe them to be true. I’m not sure why everything needs a pragmatic justification these days - we certainly don’t live our lives that way (I myself played nearly 10 hours of computer games last week), yet hypocritical assaults against the pursuits of others which don’t yield something that you can eat or wear abound.
I guess the only way to satisfactorily answer this kind of question is to avoid the practical altogether and instead try to inspire them with your infectious enthusiasm (and hope that your enthusiasm is actually infectious). To this end, I suppose that I would try to impress upon the student the dangerous and exciting relationship between the familiar and the foreign that delights most people whom I know who study ancient culture and history (I’m assuming by the way that you posed this question that this is a civ rather than a lit course). When reading ancient texts it is possible to construct a version of the ancient world which has an emotional and social landscape that is very similar to our own. This is not surprising: much of the basic groundwork of “human nature” (if you’ll allow me this intellectual shortcut) is constant and it is difficult not to identify with the motivations of the people in these stories - at least to a certain extent. It is easy if you have the sort of personality that is inclined to this sort of identification to begin to fetishize this sense of familiarity and to begin to view the ancient world as one that is entirely similar to ours. This is the camp that produces people who argue that modern Classics has abandoned the example of the Greeks, and that Classics scholars have a moral obligation to behave more like the people that they study. In order to combat this overidentification it is important to stress difference. This too, however, can be taken to extremes - some people approach the ancient world as if it were not populated by human beings and try to identify ancient modes of thinking and of apprehension that are so focused on the construction of difference that they do not allow ancient peoples the intellectual flexibility and breadth of emotion that we take for granted will be given to us. It is a difficult thing to toe the line between the attraction of the familiar and the exoticization of the foreign. Perhaps the student in your question would be excited by this challenge.
4. When you are long retired and your name gets raised in other people's professional conversations, what will they be saying about you?
There was no way that this question was not going to activate the insecure part of my psyche. I can only imagine people saying things like, “Wageslave? I heard that he was eaten by sharks. It’s no great loss - he was kind of a jerk and dropped out of grad school to pursue a career in TV/VCR repair.” What would I like to people to say about me? I don’t expect people to be raving about my scholarship; while I feel that I’m capable of good and perhaps even useful work, I don’t harbor any illusions of becoming a pioneer in my field. I think that I’d most like people to be impressed with my abilities as an instructor. That’s one of the primary reasons that I got into this thing in the first place, and instruction at the university level is particularly appealing to me.
5. Will you have drinks with me sometime in the last week of June? (Yes, the tape recorder for SSCWeekly is still rolling.)
Of course, Queen. Bear in mind that Euterpe’s birthday falls on the final week of June, though, so we should plan ahead to avoid any conflicts. Also, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post this. I didn’t want to post an incomplete interview and I have spent all week thinking about questions 3 and 4.
This interview is for Super Smart Classicists Weekly, so don't blow it and give goofball answers. Someone who might consider hiring you some day may be reading.
1. Dude, why do they call it "lost wax"? I mean, the craftsmen don't actually *lose* the wax, do they? You'd think they'd be more clever than that.
It occurs to me that there are readers of this journal, both SSCWeekly and my own, who are not familiar with the “lost wax” method of production. The so-called “lost wax” method is a rather clever way of casting metal that was used extensively throughout the ancient world. In this process the artisan carefully creates a figure in wax, which is a material that is easy to carve, but also holds its shape quite well. This wax figure is then coated in clay - it is first painted with a thin layer of clay to pick up the fine details of the sculpted wax, and then this fine coating is augmented by a more substantial amount of clay. All of this is done in such a way that vents are left which leave small channels through the clay to the wax underneath. When the clay is fired, the wax melts and travels out of the vents leaving a hollow ceramic mold. Molten metals are then poured into the vents, and when the metals have hardened, the clay is broken away to reveal a more-or-less exact duplicate of the original wax image cast in, say, bronze.
Your problem with the name “lost wax” seems to stem from the notion that it is perhaps possible to gather the wax after the fact and use it in some other project - thus the wax is not lost. I can’t rightly say that I know what happens to wax when you subject it to the sorts of temperatures used to bake clay: it’s possible that the wax is left in a useable state, but it is also possible that the wax would ignite or denature in some way under these conditions. In either case, the real success of the term - and this is likely an unintentional success - is that it describes not the loss of the actual wax, but the loss of the original wax figure. Since so much of the original sculpting was done in the wax, the new-found longevity of the sculpture cast in bronze is achieved at the expense of the locus of artistic production. It is almost as if, in order to preserve the image of a painting, we needed to subject the canvass to a process that would destroy it: now more durable images of that painting can appear in students’ textbooks, but the object that actually received the attention of the artist is irrevocably lost. Obviously this analogy is deeply flawed and more than a little whimsical, but infusing the term with a melodramatic emotional weight is the only way that I can think of to redeem it.
2. You're stranded on a desert island with a spade, a grapefruit, and someone whose book you've read but whom you've never met in person. Which person do you choose?
When confronted with questions like this I am always tempted to select someone that I don’t like, especially now that you’ve given me a weapon and something unpleasant to rub in the wound. Ignoring that impulse, however, I would probably choose Julius Caesar. I don’t typically read books written by practically minded people, but if anyone can get two people off of a desert island armed only a spade and a grapefruit, it’s J.C., the MacGuyver of the ancient world. I think that this would more than make up for his more unsavory personality traits.
[Note: Agrippa suggested that I should choose Jhumpa Lahiri. She probably wouldn’t be able to get us off of the island, but Agrippa suggested that judging by her author photo, that might not be such a bad thing.]
3. Pretend I am your undergraduate student in a large required class and respond to me when I say this: "Professor Wageslave, I'm having trouble with my term paper because there's nothing to write about. Who cares about the Greeks anyway? They're just old dead white guys. I just need to pass this class."
The question “why do we study this?” is one that plagues the humanities in general. This question usually elicits vague and unprovable pronouncements about the intrinsic value of art and knowledge, and people who ask this question are not usually swayed by these sorts of generalities, which are only persuasive if you already believe them to be true. I’m not sure why everything needs a pragmatic justification these days - we certainly don’t live our lives that way (I myself played nearly 10 hours of computer games last week), yet hypocritical assaults against the pursuits of others which don’t yield something that you can eat or wear abound.
I guess the only way to satisfactorily answer this kind of question is to avoid the practical altogether and instead try to inspire them with your infectious enthusiasm (and hope that your enthusiasm is actually infectious). To this end, I suppose that I would try to impress upon the student the dangerous and exciting relationship between the familiar and the foreign that delights most people whom I know who study ancient culture and history (I’m assuming by the way that you posed this question that this is a civ rather than a lit course). When reading ancient texts it is possible to construct a version of the ancient world which has an emotional and social landscape that is very similar to our own. This is not surprising: much of the basic groundwork of “human nature” (if you’ll allow me this intellectual shortcut) is constant and it is difficult not to identify with the motivations of the people in these stories - at least to a certain extent. It is easy if you have the sort of personality that is inclined to this sort of identification to begin to fetishize this sense of familiarity and to begin to view the ancient world as one that is entirely similar to ours. This is the camp that produces people who argue that modern Classics has abandoned the example of the Greeks, and that Classics scholars have a moral obligation to behave more like the people that they study. In order to combat this overidentification it is important to stress difference. This too, however, can be taken to extremes - some people approach the ancient world as if it were not populated by human beings and try to identify ancient modes of thinking and of apprehension that are so focused on the construction of difference that they do not allow ancient peoples the intellectual flexibility and breadth of emotion that we take for granted will be given to us. It is a difficult thing to toe the line between the attraction of the familiar and the exoticization of the foreign. Perhaps the student in your question would be excited by this challenge.
4. When you are long retired and your name gets raised in other people's professional conversations, what will they be saying about you?
There was no way that this question was not going to activate the insecure part of my psyche. I can only imagine people saying things like, “Wageslave? I heard that he was eaten by sharks. It’s no great loss - he was kind of a jerk and dropped out of grad school to pursue a career in TV/VCR repair.” What would I like to people to say about me? I don’t expect people to be raving about my scholarship; while I feel that I’m capable of good and perhaps even useful work, I don’t harbor any illusions of becoming a pioneer in my field. I think that I’d most like people to be impressed with my abilities as an instructor. That’s one of the primary reasons that I got into this thing in the first place, and instruction at the university level is particularly appealing to me.
5. Will you have drinks with me sometime in the last week of June? (Yes, the tape recorder for SSCWeekly is still rolling.)
Of course, Queen. Bear in mind that Euterpe’s birthday falls on the final week of June, though, so we should plan ahead to avoid any conflicts. Also, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to post this. I didn’t want to post an incomplete interview and I have spent all week thinking about questions 3 and 4.