Shots In The Dark: Love Is In the Air

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Love Is In the Air

The Crimson reports that Larry Summers and his girlfriend, English professor Elisa New, are getting married. We wish them much happiness.

Blushing fiancee Lisa New

Unlike, it would seem, Professor Stephen Greenblatt, who says this of the union:

<<“All of her work is very, very acutely sensitive to aesthetic issues,” Shakespeare scholar Stephen J. Greenblatt, the Cogan University professor at Harvard, said yesterday. “She’s a marvelous close reader of poetry. There are many qualities one would associate Larry Summers with, but an acute aesthetic sensitivity is not the first one that would come to mind.”

(Blogger's note: It occurs to me that both Larry Summers and Lisa New could take that as an insult.)

“In terms of the happy conjunction of personalities that represent different interests and engagements, it’s a very nice one,” Greenblatt said of the marriage.>>

Remind me not to let Professor Greenblatt make a toast at my wedding....

¶ 8:03 AM

Comments:

Indeed, that quote is the intellectual equivalent of passing gas intentionally and then leaving the room. You have to let it sink in before it occurs to you that you've been insulted. I happen to love it--it's nothing to do with my opinion of Summers, but you just have to appreciate the ability to manipulate the King's English with such prowess and panache. I saw Greenblatt on one of the final (if not the final) installments of Booknotes with Brian Lamb. He was a pleasure to watch for the full two hours. I wish he was in the Crimson more often.

# posted by Anonymous : 9:02 PM

I love that: the intellectual equivalent of passing gas intentionally and then leaving the room. Not a pleasant image, but an accurate one.

I suspect that after that quote, Greenblatt will be in the Crimson more often—or at least, they'll be calling him more often.

# posted by richard : 9:52 AM

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