postmodern ASECS

Postmodern ASECS, Final Day of Eighteenth-Century California by cobrunstrom I missed the final two sessions.  I had to fly back home to give a Brecht lecture on monday morning, and the only flight that could make that viable for me involved two whole conference sessions being lost to me.  I will never get them back.  Never ever ever. The day began with a panel on the Scriblerus panel which dramatised a nicely simmering controversy regarding whether or not "Scriblerus" or the club that bore his name was any kind of coherent entity.  There was a discussion.  And  I think there was a winner.  The extent to which later entrants like Fielding (self-styled Martinus Secundus) and even Laurence Sterne, can shelter under a Scriblerus aegis was also treated. The perfect start to a day.  And it just got better and better.  The next panel was another Richardson panel, a panel on Richardson and Materialism.  John Toland's name was invoked - and that's always a good sign.  Everyone in the world interested in the clash between Idealism and Materialism, Religion and Secularism, should read (ideally re-read) John Toland's Letters to Serena.  Suffice to say that at the end of the panel, I realised how I should have concluded the paper I gave on Thursday.  But I do now know how to conclude a possibly publishable version of the paper.  The panel concluded with a philosophical rhapsody from the very special Profession Margaret Doody, who as the respondent managed to kick everything up a notch and made everyone in the room excited about the meaning of life, the universe and just about everything. Then we had our second plenary, an address by Ann Bermingham.  The talk, on the "Coffee House Characters" of G.M. Woodward was a tour de force which explained the difference between Hogarthian "characters" and "caricatures", illustrating how Woodward helped invent both the comic strip and the comic book.  A whole new economy of expression was being invented around the beginning of the nineteenth century, one that we live with today. Then, for me, sadly, was just a series of too long goodbyes.  As usual, whenever I say a proper and heartfelt goodbye to someone I see them immediately around the next corner. Checking in dutifully at LAX the proper three hours in advance, I found that beyond the security checks and around the gate are there was nothing.  No bookshops, no giftshops - no nothing.  Three hours of almost complete sensory deprivation served only to heighten the sensory overload I'd enjoyed over the past few days. Now I'd been tired and sleep deprived for the duration of the conference.  The aching feeling under my eyes never abated.  But I began to ponder the idea that perhaps the real joy of a conference is the rapid transition of moods you experience from suddenly feeling extraordinarily clever to feeling breathtakingly stupid.  One instant, you feel that there's a great deal that you know, and the next, you feel like Newton, that the ocean of truth still lies before you.   You flatter yourself and prostrate yourself with each passing moment. And that is perhaps the most specific reasons why academic conferences are sublime.