Middlemarch All the Way Down: Arnab and Pierre’s Paired Professor Profile

Welcome to the next installment in our Paired Professor Profile series! The two professors who had the great misfortune to receive email requests from us were Arnab Chakladar and Pierre Hecker. This winter, Arnab is teaching Contemporary Indian Fiction and Food Writing, and you can catch Pierre’s Art of Drama before he runs off to London next term. (If you’re interested in joining him, visit the OCS website). As they were gracious — or foolish? — enough to acquiesce, we’re delighted to be sharing this latest PPP with you!

Remembering Tim and Connie’s displeasure with a difficult opener, we assured our latest professor duo that we would give them until the end of the interview to ponder our first query. If you could have all the students on campus read one book, we asked, which book would it be? We were just congratulating ourselves on adjusting our interview style when Arnab and Pierre answered the question. So much for pondering.  

Pierre, in a move that surprised Arnab, sidestepped the bard and went straight for Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, immediately starting a fight. “That’s what I was going to say! You stole that from me!” cried Arnab. “You’ve heard me say that many, many times.” We thought it was nice that their vote was unanimous, but apparently Arnab and Pierre, being two fine literary scholars, wouldn’t be caught dead agreeing with each other, so Arnab voted for George Eliot’s Middlemarch instead. 

It is at this point, readers — and we recognize that we’re only one question in — that things took a slight detour. Upon hearing Arnab’s choice of novel, Pierre said a truly remarkable sentence. “I once illegally snuck onto an airplane in London with Middlemarch in my underwear,” were his exact words. 

After saying that ridiculous and intriguing thing, Pierre had the audacity to try to back out of elaborating. “That might be a tale for another time,” he said. We disagreed. He argued. We argued back. You’ll find his story below.

“This was years ago, when there were all the various terrorism scares, and there had been a bombing in London,” Pierre explained. “So the airport rules got super, super tight for a time, which happened to include the day I was flying out of Heathrow. And the rule was that no passenger could bring anything onto the plane, and they meant anything.… and there were horrible delays …the thought of being stuck on the tarmac for 8 hours was just horrifying to me. I couldn’t imagine doing it without something to read.” So far, so reasonable. “I happened to be reading Middlemarch, and was halfway through,” he said. Right. “So I tore it in half and shoved it in my pants.” …. right. 

“That’s a big book to tear in half!” exclaimed Arnab at this point, and he’s not wrong: the most recent Oxford edition is a cool 864 pages. But Pierre, in a moment of true need, developed “the strength of ten,” as he put it, and ripped right through the spine.  “It was survival mode.” The moral of the story is: sometimes you just have to rip your Oxford World’s Classic edition of Middlemarch in half with your bare hands, smuggle it onto a plane, and hope George Eliot would understand why the vandalism was necessary. Life advice with the Miscellany!

Circling back to our original question, but yielding Márquez’s work to Arnab, despite the fact that Arnab had already left behind One Hundred Years in favor of Middlemarch, Pierre suggested Hamlet and Don Quixote, “even though that’s not written in English.” Upon remembering that One Hundred Years was also written in Spanish, Arnab had this to say: “Become a Spanish major. It’s not too late.” To summarize, in response to being asked which single book they would like everyone on campus to read, Pierre and Arnab collectively suggested three novels and one play. Perfect.

When we asked our professors to name the book they taught that they most disliked, Arnab was a bit hesitant. “I don’t want to name a book that I’m about to teach,” he said, “then students, if they see this…their experience will be contaminated.” That’s a kind thought, but we wanted gossip, so we pushed on. “A book I used to like a lot, but which I get less and less pleasure from, is Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things. I wouldn’t say it’s a book I don’t like,” he hedged. “But it’s a big book, and there isn’t enough new stuff in it each time I read it.” 

Luckily, Pierre didn’t share Arnab’s qualms about infecting students with his opinions. “Macbeth,” he said immediately. “I wish I liked the play more than I do, but I usually try to find a reason not to include it in my Shakespeare syllabus.” And then, unprompted, he gave us not a book he dislikes, but an entire author: Agatha Christie. Would that be the same Christie who has been sneaking up on Shakespeare’s world record for the most books ever sold? Oh it would? What an interesting coincidence. 

Keeping on our theme of dislike, we asked which famous literary figure they would bring back to life specifically so they could fight them. “Fight them physically?” asked Arnab. We suggested it could be a verbal takedown, but that only distressed him more. “There are a whole lot of people I wouldn’t be able to take on verbally,” Arnab lamented. We reassured him that he could also use good old-fashioned force if he preferred, and he settled on V.S. Naipaul. “Way smarter than I am, way funnier than I am, can talk circles around anyone, but he’s someone whose politics I so loathe that I would love to have the opportunity to argue with him.” Arnab also, being a generous person, added J.D. Salinger to his list, hoping to save future students from reading the man’s work, and operating under the assumption that he “could take him out with one punch.” Sorry not sorry, J.D.

“No violence for me,” declared Pierre. As previous evidence should have told him, we at the Miscellany refuse to accept pacifism. “I don’t know, T.S. Eliot?” he finally offered. “Am I allowed to not like him, or will Tim get mad?” Tim, if you’re reading this — well, you know where Pierre’s office is. Anyway, it turns out Pierre only needed a little bit of time to warm to the idea of violence, because he then added Thomas Kyd to his to-duel list. His reasoning? “He narked out Christopher Marlowe, which I’m still pissed about.” We admire Pierre’s ability to make it sound like he was present for a betrayal that happened some 420 odd years ago. 

Speaking of physical violence, we wanted to know who in the department would be their partner in a zombie apocalypse, and Mike was Arnab’s top choice. Given that he teaches environmental science, Arnab figures that Mike could “live off the land,” and Pierre agreed, putting forth Peter Balaam as another good woodsman-y type. Then, presumably remembering his earlier T.S. Eliot libel, Pierre remembered Tim and his air rifle. “Tim also has a cabin,” he mused, and as our readers will know, makes excellent cocktails, “so we could hole up with him and drink well.” There you have it: if you want to survive the zombies, go for Mike or Peter; if you want to toast the end of the world in style, Tim’s your gentleman.

Again, we wanted to know which other department the English department would have the best chance of beating, and who our secret weapon would be.  “I endorse violence for that,” said the previously blood-shy Pierre. Ah, how our interviews change people. “With the white-hot rage of our envy and resentment about enrollment, we should take on both Biology and CS at the same time, and massacre them,” said Arnab. Not that we’re jealous at all. Pierre added Math and Statistics, and then Arnab put Econ on the list, too, boldly claiming “no economist has ever done anything for anyone.” (Editor’s note: the views expressed by our guests are never to be conflated with our own, except in this case, because Arnab is factually correct). Considering our secret weapon, Arnab theorized that it would come down to motivation. “If you told Jessica Leiman that someone in CS was taking faculty-meeting cookies away from her, I think you could work her up into a terrible rage.” Pierre added Beth to the list: “she gets up every morning and chooses violence,” he said, with no further explanation or comment. “Tim could do a fair deal of damage,” suggested Arnab, “he’s got that Kingsman thing — gentleman, bespoke suits, but his umbrella probably has a sword hidden in it.” We all agreed that seemed plausible. “And George would go medieval on them,” Pierre said cheerfully. “I would threaten to read them the early novels of Thomas Hardy!” exclaimed Arnab, nominating himself. Most of the English department, then, are secret weapons — it would be alarming if they weren’t all on our side. 

Then it was time for a round of Marry, Date, or Kill, which is definitely the real name of this game, Pierre. Arnab’s options were Zadie Smith, Jamaica Kincaid, and Joseph Conrad; Pierre’s were William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and a wildcard Timothée Chalamet. We made this far too easy for Arnab, unfortunately, and his answer was immediate: “Marry Zadie, date Jamaica, and kill Conrad.” In fact, Arnab was so happy to kill Conrad that he wanted to change his answer to a previous question, declaring “The God of Small Things has nothing on Heart of Darkness.” Almost as quickly, Pierre voted to murder Timothée, date Shakespeare, and marry Marlowe. “And you wouldn’t be married long,” pointed out an optimistic Arnab. “Marlowe would get stabbed in the eye,” agreed Pierre, “and then I’d be a free agent.” He then accused us of starting a baseless rumor that he was a giant Timothée Chalamet fan, which, as we’re sure you’ll agree, would be a very odd thing to make up out of nowhere.

Arnab and Pierre, as it turns out, have perfectly complementary hidden talents: Arnab is an excellent cook, and Pierre is a super taster. We marveled at their synchronicity, and then threw them a curveball, asking: what’s the most unusual place they’ve fallen asleep? “I’ve fallen asleep at lectures,” volunteered Arnab (at other people’s, he clarified, not his own. To his knowledge.) “I don’t know if this is unusual,” said Pierre, “but I’ve fallen asleep on a glacier.” Once again, Pierre demonstrates a remarkable lack of reference for normalcy. The Glacier de Paneirosse has the dubious honor of being so boring that Pierre fell asleep there, so everyone can go ahead and cross Switzerland off their vacation lists. I mean, he claims he was on a multi-day hike, and thus sleeping was required, but probably that’s code for it was boring.

We finished up the interview with a simple question about personal preference. When they pick up a book, do they feel obligated to finish it, or is life too short? “Life is too short! I am ruthless. If the first paragraph doesn’t do it for me, I stop right there,” declared Arnab. “I aspire to that,” sighed Pierre, “I usually go deeper and regret it.” Arnab is so cutthroat, actually, that he’s been known to avoid books if their titles don’t meet his standards. Now, we would never be so crass as to name-drop the novels Arnab has discounted essentially on sight, but we will say this to close out this PPP: our sincerest apologies to Ocean Vuong.