Has anybody ever seen this before???
Ernest J. Gaines Award.
Don't the people in Baton Rouge have ANY original ideas, ANYTHING to be proud of outside of sports, politics and gambling (wait, I think I just said the same thing three times... )
It's time for me to trot out the old story for the young 'uns.
When Erny won Louisiana's first-ever Humanist of the Year award, a bus load of UL faculty and administrators went over to the event.
Afterward, Dr. Gaines was standing in the middle of a group of UL folks, and the Chair for LSBR English came up to him, and right in front of our people said, "I don't know what they're paying you, but we'll double it."
Erny is always classy. He looked at the guy and said politely, "Where were you when I needed you?"
Finally, maybe this will explain why we get the scholars:
"From 1935 to 1942, Louisiana State University sponsored an internationally admired literary magazine, the Southern Review, with which were associated such famed figures as Cleanth Brooks, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren. In the dark days of World War II, the financially pressed university had to choose between the Southern Review and an adequate supply of fresh meat for the tiger that the school kept as the football team’s mascot. No contest.
"The tiger won."
Guttman, Allen. 1988. A Whole New Ball Game, University of North Carolina Press. (Quoted in The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 18, 1988, p. B2.)