[lit-ideas] How to Get Yourself a Genius Grant
- From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 14:04:22 -0400
[extract of The MacArthur Geniuses: How to become one of them.
By David Plotz]
Rule No. 1: Live in New York or San Francisco. New Yorkers and San
Franciscans act like they're the most interesting people in the
world. MacArthur agrees with them. Fully one-sixth of all MacArthurs
live in Manhattan, and nearly as many live in the Bay Area. (Six of
this year's 25 MacArthurs are Manhattanites, and three are from
Berkeley.)
No matter what, don't live in the South. Southerners rarely qualify
as geniuses unless they're sensitive writers or colorful advocates
for the poor. (This year's only Southern winner is typical: Auburn
Professor Samuel Mockbee builds houses for poor Alabamans out of old
tires and hay bales.) The Great Plains and Rockies are equally
inhospitable to genius: You're unlikely to win unless you've started
a bank or college on an Indian reservation. Stick to the Northeast
and the West Coast.
Rule No. 2: Be a professor. Specifically, be a professor at Harvard
or Stanford, where they hand out MacArthurs like candy. If you're a
humanities professor, choose Harvard (which has 35 MacArthurs) or
University of California, Berkeley (which has 23). Hard scientists
should land a job at Stanford (24) or Princeton (20). Physicists at
one of those two universities seem to win MacArthurs more easily
than tenure. In a pinch, University of Chicago, University of
Michigan, Columbia, and New York University are acceptable backups,
but avoid Yale! It's got only six geniuses. You'd be better off with
Bard College, whose tiny faculty has won four MacArthurs. (As
Harvard grads have always suspected, Yale is approximately one-sixth
as good as Harvard.)
But it's not enough to be a professor. You also must choose the
right specialty. Ancient civilizations win MacArthurs. Revisionist
scholars of classical Greece do well, and MacArthur has identified
not one, but two geniuses who decipher ancient Mayan glyphs and a
third who deciphers ancient Andean knotted mnemonic devices
(whatever they may be). Literature, philosophy, and history all win
plenty of MacArthurs. Economics is unpromising, unless you study
something odd. 2000 winner Matthew Rabin, for example, analyzes the
economic implications of procrastination. Physics, math, and
computer science are beloved of MacArthur. Chemistry is a lost
cause. Environmentalism is a sure winner. Biologists should study
evolution, dinosaurs, or primates, and little else.
Rule No. 3: If you don't want to teach college, make art. Preferably
in New York: One in 10 MacArthurs is a writer, choreographer,
artist, musician, or director in New York City. Again, pick the
right specialty. Be a poet or a choreographer. Novelists, painters,
and film directors seem underrepresented. Among musicians, jazz is
good, and free jazz is even better. Needless to say, no matter what
kind of artist you are, be avant-garde.
Rule No. 4: Do not, under any circumstances, work for the government
or the private sector. This cannot be stressed enough. Many
MacArthur geniuses advocate government activism, but all fellows
assiduously avoid public service. I found only two MacArthur winners
from the public sector, small-town Mayor Unita Blackwell and
then-Congressional Budget Office Director Alice Rivlin. Similarly,
geniuses should not soil themselves with earning a profit. It's fine
to run a nonprofit that helps disadvantaged people start their own
businesses, but almost no MacArthurs run or work for profit-seeking
corporations.
Rule No. 5: Upset conventional wisdom. You don't have to be right,
but you must be provocative. It's not enough to study quantum
physics. You must, like 1999 winner Eva Silverstein, "question the
fundamentals of quantum physics." MacArthur honored the classicist
who reinterpreted the Parthenon friezes as a human sacrifice and the
paleontologist who says that Tyrannosaurus Rex ate carrion rather
than hunted. If you're a mathematician, set yourself one of math's
great insoluble problems: MacArthur knighted Andrew Wiles for
cracking Fermat's Theorem and Michael Freedman for proving the
four-dimensional case of Poincare's Conjecture.
The best kind of provocation is a doomsday theory. MacArthur adores
folks who foresee the end of the world, especially if that end is
caused by Western avarice or stupidity. MacArthur has blessed Paul
"Population Explosion" Ehrlich; Richard Turco, who popularized the
idea of nuclear winter; and several scientists who have sounded
warnings about global warming. (Prediction: MacArthur will soon
reward someone who studies how water shortage is plunging Africa and
the Middle East into war.)
Rule No. 6: Be left wing. MacArthur generally finds genius on the
left. Only a handful of the 588 genies could be considered
conservative. (Black community developer Robert Woodson is the most
notable.) On the other hand, four Dissent editorial board members
have won the MacArthur, according to the American Spectator. The
foundation likes artists who campaign for racial minorities and the
needy. Alfredo Jaar, a 2000 winner, creates art that "focuses on
injustices around the world—poverty, exploitation, genocide." 1997
winner Kara Walker constructs silhouettes about racial and sexual
exploitation. 2000 fellow David Isay produces brilliant radio
documentaries about the lives of poor Americans. The foundation
favors activists who fight for low-income housing, disability
rights, and racial justice. Libertarians, religious conservatives,
and free marketeers are never geniuses. MacArthur routinely
consecrates the causes célèbres of the left, from sex discrimination
to right-wing human rights abuses in Central America (see: Mark
Danner, Tina Rosenberg, and Alma Guillermoprieto).
The MacArthur's reliable support of left-wing causes makes it fun to
guess future winners. My bets: 1) Jerry Berman from the Center for
Democracy and Technology for lobbying to protect Internet privacy;
2) an agriculture activist for showing the dire health risks of
genetically modified food; and 3) Edward Hopper, author of The
River: A Journey to the Source of HIV and AIDS, for theorizing that
vaccination experiments in Southern Africa caused the HIV virus to
cross from monkeys to humans.
Rule No. 7: Be slightly, but not dangerously, quirky. MacArthur
favors the eccentric choice over the ordinary. Economist Rabin wears
tie-dyes, listens to Abba, and has Johnny Depp posters all over his
office wall. David Stuart won when he was an 18-year-old prodigy.
Recluse Thomas Pynchon took a MacArthur; social butterfly John
Updike has not. And it surely helped Seattle "sound sculptor"
Trimpin that he goes by only one name.
All the rules suggest that the perfect MacArthur genius is still out
there: a one-named Berkeley professor who choreographs
interpretative jazz dances about how genetically modified food will
destroy humanity.
http://slate.msn.com/id/85794/
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