The Canadas

Fall 1996

News

Updated August 7, 2002
© Canadas 2002

The Job Hunt Begins

With my graduation set for May 1997, I began looking for a position as an English professor. My job hunt took us to Savannah, Georgia, where the South Atlantic Modern Language Association had its annual conference, and Washington, D.C., site of the Modern Language Association’s convention. By year’s end, I had made a few connections—and had a lot of fun with Lisa in these two great cities. On the Savannah trip, in fact, we brought along Lisa’s parents, who had come down to Chapel Hill for a visit. We took one other trip, as well, driving up to Ashland, Virginia, to celebrate our seventh anniversary.

Ashland, Virginia

September 27-29, 1996: To celebrate our seventh anniversary, we drove a few hours up to eastern Virginia and spent one day being adults and one day being kids.

On the first day, we visited Ashland, Virginia, a small railroad town a few minutes north of Richmond. First called Adams Shanty after the shanty of a railroad man, the town became known as Slash Cottage around 1845, when the Richmond, Fredericksburg, & Potomac Railroad build a resort for Richmond residents amid the slash pines in the area. The current name of Ashland comes from the name of the Kentucky home of Senator Henry Clay, who was born in this area.

Our first stop was the visitors' center, located in the tiny train depot near the middle of town. There we picked up a map of the historic district and heard a freight train roar by us. After a fine barbecue lunch at the Smokey Pig, we set out on a walking tour of Ashland. Following the pair of train tracks that run through the center of town, we saw several charming old houses dating back to the nineteenth century. Later on the tour, we visited the beautiful campus of Randolph-Macon College, a liberal-arts school of about 1,100 students. Finally, we drove a few miles outside of town and saw Scotchtown, where colonial patriot Patrick Henry lived when he served as a Virginia delegate in the First Continental Congress in 1774 and when he gave his famous "give me liberty or give me death" speech at St. John's Chuch in Richmond in 1775.

On the next day, we forgot about history and other adult matters and went to Kings Dominion amusement park. After a brief shower in the morning, the weather cooperated beautifully. Caressed by cool breezes, we went up into the one-third-scale Eifel Tower, ate junk food, and took in the fasinating array of people, including a middle-aged man covered in patches from two dozen amusement parks and a little girl delicately dabbing the corner of her lip while a sugary river of melted ice cream streamed down her other arm. Our favorite sight, however, was that of a father and son--surrounded by the temptations of six-foot furry animals, cotton candy, and a half-dozen roller coasters, concentrating on a miniature chess game. Feeling a little less cerebral, we spent the bulk of the afternoon bouncing, spinning, and speeding up, around, and over hills of track and pockets of air. It was a fabulous day of fun, relaxation, and one milestone: Lisa's first "no-hands" ride on the Rebel Yell roller coaster.

Charleston, South Carolina

November 8-9, 1996: It sometimes seems that every vacation we plan in a city comes during the city's biggest weekend of the year. We have traveled through the Blue Ridge Mountains during the peak of the fall colors, visited the North Carolina coast on one of the last weekends of summer,and seen nearly every one of our visits to a college town coincide witha homecoming or parents' weekend. This weekend, thousands of relatives converged on Charleston for the Citadel's homecoming, but we squeezed into our favorite inn, the Elliott House, thanks to Lisa's last-minute negotiations before we left Chapel Hill.

Every bit as elegant as we left them six months ago during our last passthrough Charleston, the rooms at the Elliott House once again delighted Lisa, who this time took great joy in sharing them with her mother. I saved my enthusiasm for the outdoor jacuzzi, which we used as a sleeping-aid before settling down to rest from another busy day.

The next morning, another magical day began. On a previous visit to Charleston, Lisa and I had attended a service at the Huguenot Church, where the only independent congregation of its kind in America comes to worship every Sunday. Knowing of her dad's interest in history and culture, we took Lisa's parents to the church for the morning service. Arriving 45minutes early, we wandered around the building, and I read about the establishmentof its congregation in 1681, four years before France's King Louis XIV nullified the Treaty of Nantes, which had given French Protestants the right to worship in the Catholic country. With the resulting persecution of these Protestants, also called the Huguenots, thousands left the country. Many came to Charleston and joined the congregation here. In 1845, the Huguenots in this city built the present church building. On its walls, we saw plaques donated in thenames of Americans with Huguenot ancestry, including George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and the Georgia poet Sidney Lanier.

After the service, which resembles Catholic and other Christian services in many ways, we joined members of the congregation at the nearby Huguenot house for hors d'oeuvres. We chatted with these friendly people for a little while and were about to move on when one of the members, a woman about theage of Lisa's parents, asked me about the topic of my dissertation. I told her I was writing on Edgar Allan Poe, and she became excited. A few years ago, she had helped a German scholar who was writing a book on Poe. In fact, she had taken him out to Sullivan's Island, where Poe had served in the Army and where his famous story "The Gold-Bug" is set, to show the author the exact scene described in the short story. Always eager to relive history and literature in places where it occured, Lisa and I had isited Sullivan's Island years ago, but had not known where the key eventsof the story had taken place. "Are you free this afternoon?" the woman asked me now. "I could take you out there."

Minutes later, I was riding in the front seat of Arla Holroyd's car, and Lisa and her parents were right behind us. A former biology professor at Winthrop College in South Carolina, Arla talked about education, science, and Poe as we drove out of Charleston and over the river. I asked her how she knew so much about Poe, and she said she had always just loved knowledge. Before taking us out to the island, she stopped at her modest home and invited us inside. Soon forgetting that we had known this woman all of 20 minutes, we wandered from room to room, taking in her fascinating collection of paintings, sculpture, and stained glass by friends such as Anne Richardson and Elizabeth O'Neill Verner; her memorabilia from her Scandinavian ancestors; and her stories about her life in Charleston. As she pulled one book after another from her shelves, telling their stories as she went, she chuckled at the way she missed running a bed-and-breakfast inn and sharing her mementoes with guests.

Out on Sullivan's Island, she took us down Gold-Bug Lane and pulled up in front of a giant, knarled oak tree, whose branches sagged to the ground. After snapping several photographs of me and Lisa in front of it, she led me up to a house nearby. The former owner had died, and a middle-aged woman whom Arla didn't know was at home. "I have a Ph.D.candidate here who is writing on Edgar Allan Poe," Arla explained to the startled and confused stranger. She wanted to know if we could walk down behind the woman's house and take pictures of the marsh that Poe described in the story. Obviously uneasy, the woman granted her permission, then timidly offered to let us take a picture from her porch, which offered a spectacular view. On the way back to our cars, Arla thanked me for letting her take part in my work. I protested that I should be thanking her, but I also knew—from what she had done for us and how she had done it--that I had made someone's day by letting her make mine.

Returning to our schedule, the four of us drove to Boone Hall plantation to watch a re-enactment of a Civil War battle, the 1862 Battle of Secessionville. There were plenty of intrusions on our disbelief, of course. One Rebel exchanged casual conversation with a Union casualty; cheers erupted on the sidelines when two Rebels picked off an injured Yankee. Still, though it came not nearly close enough for many of those around me, this play was as close as I have come to the Civil War and indeed to war itself, and I think I will remember it.

We spent the last day of our brief vacation exploring the neighborhoods and historic buildings of Charleston. In the morning, I went for a jog along the battery, through a couple of parks, and down several streets. Later, the four of us went for a drive and then a walk together, gawking at the stately mansions, peeking into courtyards, and gazing through binoculars at Charleston Harbor and Fort Sumter. After lunch at the Griffon near Waterfront Park, Jerry and I visited the aircraft carrier Yorktown in Charleston Harbor, while Lisa and her mother found a bench downtown and sketched buildings. On our way back to Chapel Hill, we stopped at Charleston Southern University, which has advertised for a professor of English. After a look at the charming campus and a visit to the Student Building, I picked up some information from the school's welcome center, and we hit the road again, finally arriving back home in Chapel Hill later that evening.

Savannah, Georgia

November 8-10, 1996: We had planned this trip to Savannah for several months, ever since wedecided that the convention of the South Atlantic Modern Language Associationwould be a good opportunity for me to make some career connections. In fact,I deliberately mailed all of my job applications early in case any potentialemployers wanted to interview me at this convention, where representativesof college English departments all over the South meet once a year.

When we left Chapel Hill on Friday, I was a little disappointed. No onehad called to request an interview. Still, Lisa and I were happy to be onour way, especially because her parents--Jerry and Marge Henry--had comedown to North Carolina to visit us and were joining us on our trip. Aftersix hours driving through rainstorms, at least one of them strong enoughto block her vision and force her to pull over, Lisa took us into Savannah,where we checked into the gorgeous River Street Inn. While she and her parentsrelaxed in two finely furnished rooms overlooking the Savannah River, Iheaded off to the SAMLA convention a few blocks away in the Marriott. Ihad no way of knowing it, but my Cinderella evening was under way.

After checking in and browsing through the text books at the publishers'booths, I entered the large room where the keynote address was scheduledand found a seat near the front. I had made a special point of attendingthis portion of the program because the speaker was Richard Wilbur, oneof America's greatest living poets and a literary scholar whose work onEdgar Allan Poe I had used in writing my dissertation, Poe in His RightMind. A polished reader of his work, Wilbur quickly captivated me andthe rest of his audience of English teachers. We--who collectively haveread at least a million poems by Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare, Donne, Wordsworth,Eliot, and their lessers--sat enrapt, sighed, and exploded in laughter asWilbur shared reflections on his parents, wife, daughter, nature, world,and alphabet. I usually find it difficult to appreciate poetry read aloud,but I left this reading moved, amused, and eager to buy his latest collection.

Outside in the cavernous Marriott lobby, where we celebrated the poet's75th birthday with cakes and drinks, I caught up with my friend and mentor,Dr. Joe Flora, simply to say hello. Within minutes, I was swirling in awhirlwind of important professors and talk about jobs. Dr. Flora, a formerdepartment chairman who apparently knows everyone in the profession, keptup a steady round of introductions, each one going something like this:"So-and-so, you must meet Mark Canada, one of our top students. He'sworking on a dissertation that is sure to become a book. Do you have anyopenings in American literature? You need to get to know Mark." Inside20 minutes I had met professors from the University of Tennessee, Duke University,and other schools, and I was chatting with a professor from the Universityof North Carolina at Pembroke about a vacancy her department needed to fillin spring 1997. If not exactly emotionally prepared, I certainly was physicallyprepared for the occasion and handed her my job materials, along with somebusiness cards Lisa and I had designed.

More than satisfied, I started to drift toward the exit. On the way, I bumpedinto another friend and mentor, Dr. Connie Eble, and began to chat withher about the wonderful reading we had just heard. I confessed that I hadwanted to ask Wilbur about his criticism of Poe, and Dr. Eble immediatelyinsisted that I approach him then and there. I hesitated, but I knew thatshe was right: I should seize these opportunities when they present themselves.I am 29 years old and owner of two fewer Pulitzer Prizes than Mr. Wilbur,but he and I share an interest in Poe, and on that particular subject Iknow a few things he doesn't. I approached, touched him on the elbow, andexplained that I had read his article on Poe and hypnagogia and was eagerto learn how he put the two together. At 6-3 or so, he is as large in sizeas in stature. Nevertheless, he didn't look down on me for an instant. Calmly,personably, even a little nervously, he explained that the idea had beganin a fox hole during World War II, when spent many dull hours with a volumeof Poe and a mind that continually drifted in and out of hypnagogia, theperiod between waking and sleep. After we discussed a few of Poe's stories,I explained that my interest in his idea came out of my own research intoPoe and the right brain. Observing his general interest, I let him knowthat I would send him a chapter of my work, and Richard Wilbur--Harvardprofessor, translator, world-renowned poet--said he would love to see it.

If you don't read much poetry, you probably have never heard of RichardWilbur. He might has well be Wilbur Richard. Imagine, however, that youhave spent five years in the minor leagues, and on this day, your firstbatting practice in the big leagues, Ted Williams has been in the stands."That's a pretty good swing," you hear someone say after you takea few cuts and head back to the dugout. "Lemme see how you hold yourhands."

An ounce of adrenalin away from sprinting and laughing out loud, I flewback to the hotel, toying with the way I would deliver all my news to Lisa."I'm on the inside track for one job," I announced when I enteredour hotel room, "I rubbed elbows with professors from several otheruniversities, and I discussed my dissertation with a Pulitzer Prize-winningpoet." Nearly as ecstatic as I was, she joined me in going down thehall to share the news with her parents. That evening, four happy peoplewent out to a celebratory dinner. That night, the one who has been anxiouslybeen waiting to begin his career lay down to a restless sleep, knowing thatnothing and everything had changed.

The next morning, I went on a sight-seeing jog, as I like to do when I'mon vacation. Heading up Bull Street in the heart of downtown Savannah, Itook in gorgeous homes and churches, elegant parks, monuments to Revolutionaryheroes such as Nathaniel Green, and a striking Gothic synagogue built inthe nineteenth century by a congregation formed early in the previous century.After my jog and a workout with free weights at the downtown athletic club,I returned to the hotel to have breakfast with Lisa and her parents. Later,the four of us drove around the city, I attended a few more sessions atthe convention, Lisa took her parents out to Tybee Island, and we all headedup to Charleston for the second half of our vacation.

Washington, D.C.

December 27-29, 1996: My search for my first job as an English professor brought us to Washington, where the Modern Language Association had its 1996 convention. We joined some 10,000 other literary scholars, many of them also looking for employment. Of the 85 or so schools where I applied, four invited me to interview here--actually a good number in light of the highly competitive job market for English professors. I think all of the interviews--which generally ran about 45 minutes to an hour--went well. Now I just have to wait to see whether any of the schools call in the next couple of weeks to invite me to on-campus interviews.

The MLA's choice of D.C. for the convention was a fortunate one for us. The drive was easy, of course, but we also enjoyed the opportunity to visit a couple of favorite Smithsonian spots, as well as one new one. First, we went to my favorite museum in Washington, the National Portrait Gallery, where we saw "Red, Hot & Blue: A Salute to American Musicals." An impressive collection of photographs, movie posters, window cards, manuscripts, musical scores, and footage from the great American musicals, this exhibit was great entertainment for us. Lisa, who has been at center stage a few times herself, especially enjoyed seeing Irving Berlin's piano and hearing some of her favorite tunes from Oklahoma! and West Side Story. I liked learning about the roots of the American musical theater in the 19th century and seeing again one of my favorite moments in all of cinema: Professor Hill's rendition of "Trouble in River City" in Music Man ("...trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for pool!"). Finally, we both loved seeing Stephen Sondheim's handwritten and revised manuscript for "Tonight" in West Side Story.

After an hour and a half or so at that exhibit, we moved over to the National Museum of American Art, where we saw several sculptures by Edmonia Lewis, a sculptor who began her career in the late 19th century. Having read an article about her in Smithsonian magazine, we were eager to see some of her work, particularly Cleopatra, which is striking in its unglorified view of the dying queen, so often glamorized in art. I also especially liked her sculpture of Hagar.

On the following day, we visited the Renwick Gallery for the first time. Lisa wanted to see the temporary exhibit of several quilts from the early 19th century. Several of them were stunning, both in beauty and in craftsmanship. Lisa especially liked the "beehive," or hexagon, quilts, which require an enormous amount of tedious labor. The quilter has to cut out a hexagon of fabric, iron and baste the fabric to heavy paper cut in the shape of a hexagon, join each hexagon with others to make a design, sew on a backing, and finally quilt the whole thing. One of these beehive quilts had more than 15,000 hexagons and took a decade to piece. We also saw a small quilt pieced by a young woman. The accompanying note said that girls, for whom sewing was an important skill in 19th-century America, often started quilting around age 8 by working on a quilt for a child's bed or a baby doll's bed. In the same museum we also saw a temporary exhibit of woodworking, including an amazing sculpture of a bat sucking nectar from a flower. To emphasize the necessary balance in nature, the woodworker had perfectly balanced the two figures so that neither could stand alone.

If we had had more time, we would have gone to the Museum of Natural History to see one of the Martian meteorites and to the Arts and Industries Building to see the exhibit on immigration, but my interviews took precedence. At any rate, we probably will return in May, when I am scheduled to chair a session on Thomas Wolfe at the American Literature Association in Baltimore. By then, we hope, I will have landed a permanent position, and we will have settled down somewhere between California and Maine.