At long last my book “Rousseau and the Social Contract”:http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415201993/junius-20 is now available from Amazon in North America. (Readers in the UK “can order it”:http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415201993/junius-21 from amazon.co.uk.)
Would this be possible in anywhere else than Britain? On last night’s Frank Skinner show former Labour Secretary of State for Northern Ireland “Mo Mowlam”:http://www.sfb.co.uk/cgi-bin/profile.cgi?s=50 gave an interview in which she attacked Tony Blair for poor judgement. At the end of the show Mowlam (dressed as Cher) performed “I Got You Babe” in duet with veteran porn star “Ron Jeremy”:http://www.ronjeremy-themovie.com/meetron.htm (dressed as Sonny).
Hmm, Henry’s post about genre fiction greats has sparked an interesting aside which I think deserves a thread of its own. Laura says (scroll right down to the end of the comments) that romance novels account for more popular literature sales than just about anything else. They certainly deserve our attention. I think romance, or its sub-genre – chick lit – can show some interesting things about just what it means to ‘transcend the genre’.
Kieran’s post immediately below focuses on the different pressures on men and women in academia. That difference is certainly there, but the extraordinary thing is that changes in academia over the past thirty years have exacerbated the pressures at the same time as universities have become more verbally supportive of gender equality, have implemented “family friendly” and “work–life balance” policies, and so on.
Why? It isn’t hard simply to do some sums. Here’s a typical career path in philosophy in the UK, circa 1960: