Pirates You Don't Know, and Other Adventures in the Examined Life : Collected Essays

For nearly ten years John Griswold has been publishing his essays in Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and Adjunct Advocate, many under the pen name Oronte Churm. Churm’s topics have ranged widely, exploring themes such as the writing life and the utility of creative-writing classes, race issues in a university town, and the beautiful, protective crocodiles that lie patiently waiting in the minds of fathers. Though Griswold recently entered the tenure stream, much of his experience, at a Big Ten university, has been as an adjunct lecturer—that tenuous and uncertain position so many now occupy in higher education. In Pirates You Don’t Know, Griswold writes poignantly and hilariously about the contingent nature of this life, tying it to his birth in the last American enclave in Saigon during the Vietnam War, his upbringing in a coal town in southern Illinois, and his experience as an army deep-sea diver and frogman. He investigates class in America through four generations of his family and portrays the continuing joys and challenges of fatherhood while making a living, becoming literate, and staying open to the world. But Griswold’s central concerns apply to everyone: What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to think, feel, create, and be whole? What is the point of this particular journey? Pirates You Don’t Know is Griswold’s vital attempt at making sense of his life as a writer and now professor. The answers for him are both comic and profound: "Picture Long John Silver at the end of the movie, his dory filled with stolen gold, rowing and sinking; rowing, sinking, and gloating." “In this beautiful book about striving and surviving, every essay displays a well-stocked brain grappling with life’s thorny problems.”—Debra Monroe, author of On the Outskirts of Normal For nearly ten years John Griswold has been publishing his essays in Inside Higher Ed , McSweeney’s Internet Tendency , Brevity , Ninth Letter , and Adjunct Advocate , many under the pen name Oronte Churm. Churm’s topics have ranged widely, exploring themes such as the writing life and the utility of creative-writing classes, race issues in a university town, and the beautiful, protective crocodiles that lie patiently waiting in the minds of fathers. Though Griswold recently entered the tenure stream, much of his experience, at a Big Ten university, has been as an adjunct lecturer—that tenuous and uncertain position so many now occupy in higher education. In Pirates You Don’t Know , Griswold writes poignantly and hilariously about the contingent nature of this life, tying it to his birth in the last American enclave in Saigon during the Vietnam War, his upbringing in a coal town in southern Illinois, and his experience as an army deep-sea diver and frogman. He investigates class in America through four generations of his family and portrays the continuing joys and challenges of fatherhood while making a living, becoming literate, and staying open to the world. “In examining his life as teacher, father, husband, son, Griswold causes us to consider our own lives and how we spend them. These essays are wise, hilarious, and necessary.”—John Warner, author of The Writer’s Practice "Starting in 2005, John Griswold began publishing his nonfiction essays in Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and Adjunct Advocate under the pen name Oronte Churm. This collection contains heavily revised previously published essays but much more new material covering a wide range of topics riffing on the writing life-from the utility of creative writing to babies, and from race issues in a university town to crocodiles. Griswold's tongue-in-cheek tone allows him to discuss this breadth of subject matter in an inviting and entertaining way while still addressing prevalent and important issues. Much of this book has to do with the tenuous and uncertain place of university adjuncts and other contingent instructors in the larger higher education ecosphere. Griswold writes, "After more than a dozen years teaching creative writing, literature, and rhetoric at two universities, I fell into what they call the tenure stream at another school. The worries and stresses have changed, but my interests remain: What does it mean to be educated? To think, feel, write? To be whole? The writing in this book was my own attempt to see if I knew anything at all. And of course that's a lifelong journey, its rewards always temporary and therefore comic. Picture Long John Silver at the end of the movie, his dory filled with stolen gold, rowing and sinking; rowing, sinking, and gloating.""-- Provided by publisher Starting in 2005, John Griswold began publishing his nonfiction essays in Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and Adjunct Advocate under the pen name Oronte Churm. This collection contains heavily revised previously published essays, and new material covering a wide range of topics riffing on the writing life-from the utility of creative writing to babies, and from race issues in a university town to crocodiles