Recent Reading Roundup.

First, I finally finished James Ellroy's ``L.A. Quartet:'' The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz. Astonishing. (Although I admit that White Jazz required some patience on my part; I'm still used to sentences having verbs.) Ellroy has claimed himself to be the best crime fiction author alive, and it's hard to argue with him. His intricate but perfectly synchronized plots, together with ultra-hard-boiled prose, place his work apart from anything else I've read.
[Warning: These books are not for the timid, and it's possible that no one under the age, say, of 40 should read them.]

Second, I most recently finished Walter Mosley's, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. It is possible that I've read a better book in my life, but I can't think of one. A story of redemption, one small step at a time, through the eyes of a man newly freed from prison after serving 27 years for a brutal double murder. A beautiful book. A perfect book.

Public Intellectuals.

Having seen my own Ph.D. students struggle to find academic employment, I sympathize with the following proposal that the US government should provide jobs for new Ph.D.'s not able to find work in the academic marketplace. But universities have been producing more Ph.D.'s than can be employed in academia for some time now, and -- just as with the US auto companies -- a permanent solution to this problem will have to involve a substantial restructuring of the ``industry'' itself.

The Inauguration.

The provost of my university sent out an e-mail that we should feel free to cancel classes Tuesday, January 20, so that students may watch the inauguration. So I can honestly say that I have already received a concrete benefit from the new administration. Thank you.

More seriously, I can only hope -- along with most of the rest of the US and the world -- that the future will indeed be brighter.