professional sacrilege

I just received a message informing me that Mr S is giving the Monday Seminar in my department this week.

The Monday Seminar, (colloquially known around in the Department as 'the MonSem' and colloquially known around the rest of the anthropology world as 'the snake pit'), is an institution wherein scholars present their work for approximately 50 minutes and are subsequentially bombarded with questions for another 30 minutes. Those who survive troop down to the mezzanine afterwards to apply the balm of wine & cheese to their wounds.

Marshall Sahlins is an eminent member of the faculty. (That's 'academic staff' to the non-Americans in the audience.) In addition to having a wikipedia page dedicated to him -- so much for the obscurity of the ivory tower! -- Sahlins is also the author of a 1976 publication entitled Culture and Practical Reason.

In 1939, T. S. Eliot published a set of poems entitled Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. (You may recognize Eliot's work as the basis for the musical Cats, which, hopefully, won't necessarily dampen your opinion of Eliot.)

In any regard, the two publications are like chocolate and peanut butter in my mind, and I am dying -- dying, I tell you! -- for a synthesis, namely:

Old Possum's Book of Practical Reason