About Me
I'm a reader, writer, and professor. I profess at Central Connecticut State University as the English Department's specialist in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature.
I grew up watchful but baffled in a commuter suburb of New York City, where I read The Sound and the Fury forty times. Not much else seemed to happen. Studying literature at Oberlin College widened the scope of my reading. Armed with a humanities BA and peculiar confidence, I stormed the Manhattan job market, accepting a position with a Jewish organization. There, I impressed everyone with my ability to answer the phone, "Good morning, Special Projects." When a co-worker clasped my hand and intoned, "Don't worry, Dear; you'll be married by next year!", I sensed it was time to leave and fled toward academia. I earned a doctorate in English and American Literature at New York University. There I met luminaries like Adrienne Rich and began an enduring pattern: expressing admiration for learned people, only to have them leave in the middle of my panegyric.
My book, Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique, was a Barnes and Noble selected Non-Fiction title and a Publishers Weekly Dial-a-Book selection. Among other publications, Time Out New York, The New York Daily News, The Boston Phoenix, and The Women's Review of Books featured it as did the The Michael Medved Show. During my interview with Mr. Medved a caller accused me of Nazi tendencies. The National Public Radio host who interviewed me stated that he had not read any part of my book. I received appreciative notes from people throughout the country, which vied with ample hate mail.
My recent monograph, Moving Past Marriage: Why We Should Ditch Marital Privilege, End Relationship-Status Discrimination, and Embrace Nonmarital History, may alienate a new readership. It seems unlikely to generate warm feelings among wedded couples who hoard benefits that have no inherent connection to amorous relationships; educated, employable alimony recipients; and insurance agents who give straight and gay spouses special rates. Academia's current social justice warriors appear too busy dictating standards to notice Moving Past Marriage, which details inequities they typically ignore: university health insurance reserved for marrieds, biased spousal hiring, and special Social Security arrangements for marital families, to name a few. Equity apostles who do read something out of sync with their pieties will likely disdain it. I can live with such disapproval if Moving Past Marriage awakens nonmarital people to an extraordinary history and sparks nonmarital consciousness. If this sounds interesting to you, here is a reading of Moving Past Marriage recorded at my university's bookstore.
Probably, I'm the only person you will encounter who has read entirely Samuel Butler's poem Hudibras (1663, 1664, and 1668); unfinished mock-heroics about verbose Puritans who inveigh against bear-baiting have declined in popularity. (This may be especially true of those satires spanning 11,438 lines.) The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, to which I belong, includes other Hudibras enthusiasts. I'm also a member of Heterodox Academy and the International Institute for Singlehood Studies. My book chapters and articles deal with early-modern satire, Butler, Samuel Johnson, and overlap between the literary genres. Jane Austen's oeuvre is my current obsession and research subject.
I wish I could gift every author a white kitchen with a pine table, strong coffee, and an hour per day to stare out the window: great aids to writing in my experience. Recently I surprised myself: first by becoming a yoga pracitioner and second by entering the current century with the creation of a website. I live in Central Connecticut and New York City with my family and friends.
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