On November 11, Charles Berger sent a message to the English department listserv: “Let's start a campaign for this new spelling, this neologism. PlagAIrism.”
For colleagues who’ve been here fewer than fifteen years, it was just a passing joke. But for us, the old-timers, it was yet another contribution to a decades-long string of witty remarks Charles has delivered on the department listserv.
The youngsters, with their lil phones and their social media feeds, may prefer TikToks and reels. Serious artists, though, prefer canvas. Some favor textured paper. Others work magic on illustration boards. But Charles, look, Charles does some of his finest work in short emails.
Over two decades, he has shown us that a pun is always lurking around the corner of the latest student incident. And that unexplained new decision from the administration? Well, as Charles’s brief email would make clear, it surely has a literary precedent, perhaps from an obscure novel that Charles and maybe a few others have read.
His emails are brief and punchy. Clever and poetic. Always artistic. Remember that line from A Christmas Story where the narrator describes his father’s fluency with choice words? “My father worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay.”
Rumor has it that line was actually written about Charles. He worked that way with email too.
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1 comment:
No one is quicker with the clever riposte than Charles, in email or in person--(usually on the second floor of Peck, specifically in the stretch of hallway in front of the old Copy Center or sometime at the top of the stairs.) I always feel like I need to be a little more clever and a little more tuned in when I'm engaging with Charles...and I also am confident that I'll still be two steps behind.
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