THE STANDARD READER
Jacobs, David Sedaris and Alan
The Standard Reader Books in Brief Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris (Little, Brown, 123 pp., $14.95). Here are some instructions for reading Holidays on Ice: Rip out pages 45 through 123 and use...
...Well, he's a full professor now, and the scandal is that he's not yet known as one of America's best essayists...
...Asked once for an author's description to go with an essay he'd written, Alan Jacobs suggested: "Jacobs is an associate professor of English at Wheaton College, and isn't it a scandal he's not a full professor yet...
...Unfortunately, it doesn't address the most important perplexities posed by the idea of a "modern university...
...Lewis to Bob Dylan to the evangelical practice of seeking advice by letting the Bible fall open at random verses...
...He's got the whole package of skills: quick comedy, high seriousness, wide learning, and an easy, rapid prose...
...Problems such as grade inflation and political correctness receive fewer than a handful of pages...
...Steve Lenzner...
...SantaLand Diaries" deals in closely observed incidents, simply related—not sentimental reflections, obvious mockeries, or creaky profundities...
...A first-rate collection...
...After that he decided to simply nod his head and chuckle...
...And don't tell me, "I don't wear underpants, I'm a dancer...
...the best of them is "Dinah, the Christmas Whore," an apparently true memoir of his sister's most successful holiday idea: bringing home a prostitute to be interviewed by the weird Sedaris family...
...This made him self-conscious, so he started placing a hand on the child's knee until he came to a child with no legs...
...This is a fascinating and engaging account of the rise of Harvard since 1933...
...His topics range from C.S...
...If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here...
...He's also got religion, which may explain why he isn't better known, for mainstream American publishing grants little room to old-fashioned Christian sensibility...
...You're not a dancer...
...The afflicted came to visit Santa," Sedaris observes, and Santa "made it a point to grab each child's hand and ask what they wanted for Christmas...
...He did this until he came to a child who had no hands...
...But "SantaLand Diaries," a memoir of working as an elf to Santa in Macy's department store, is what's kept Holidays on Ice in print since 1997...
...Actually, the other five pieces in David Sedaris's collection are mildly amusing...
...You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf.'" Sedaris describes office politics among costumed midgets, elf hierarchy in the competitive extraction of coins from wishing wells, and the assembly-line similarity of adults' witticisms to Santa...
...That's a shame, for the essays collected in A Visit to Vanity Fair show just what Jacobs can do with that sensibility...
...Michael Long A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age, by Alan Jacobs (Brazos, 173 pp., $18.99...
...While Morton and Phyllis Keller have much to say about, for example, Harvard's astonishing financial success, they have little to say about the quality of education that one receives today at the school...
...Worth particular notice are "Blinded by the Light," Jacobs's cover story for THE Weekly Standard about the spirituality books that dominate the bestseller list, and "A Bible Fit for Children," a simultaneously comic and profound account of children's Bibles that is one of the best essays anyone's produced in the last decade...
...Of course, the question of the purpose of our universities isn't much raised by anyone these days—even at Harvard...
...It's the funniest Christmas writing ever done: "The woman in charge of costuming assigned us our outfits and gave us a lecture on keeping things clean...
...Real wit is rare, especially about Christmas...
...Here are some instructions for reading Holidays on Ice: Rip out pages 45 through 123 and use them as coasters while you read the remaining essay...
...Here it is...
...Most important, Making Harvard Modern does not raise in a serious manner the question of the true educational purpose of a university...
...Richard Datchery Making Harvard Modern:The Rise of America's University, by Morton Keller and Phyllis Keller (Oxford University Press, 640 pp., $35...
Vol. 7 • December 2001 • No. 15
