Liking SAA

Like most people, it seems, I liked SAA this year, especially after the relative misery of RSA. I liked the hummingbirds, I liked the food, I liked the people I hung out with, and I managed to avoid the very few people I didn’t want to see. For a variety of reasons I went to lots of seminars but not very many paper sessions –- though the pedagogy one was a lot of fun. However, I made an effort to get to the plenary, which had papers by three people whose work I admire a lot, and I thought it was great. This is perhaps because if I was forced to categorise what I do it would be as a kind of ‘historical formalism’ (albeit -– hopefully -– one that resists the ‘easy yoking together of those things called “form” and “history”’ that Julian Yates complains about on the Literature Compass Blog), but it was also because each paper was tightly written and engagingly delivered. And any plenary that features pictures of famous trees that probably never existed is fine by me…

Overheard:

• One eminent scholar saying to another, in hushed and anxious tones, ‘I don’t know if he remembers me…’

• By a friend, two Rotary Club ladies discussing the SAA:
  
  

FIRST ROTARY CLUB LADY: You’ll never guess who all these people are!
SECOND ROTARY CLUB LADY: Who are they?
FIRST ROTARY CLUB LADY: They’re all academics! And they’re here for a conference ---- about ---- SHAKESPEARE!!!
FIRST AND SECOND ROTARY CLUB LADIES: Ha, ha, ha!