As part of a new series, the 'Prince' will feature interviews with prominent people on campus. Anthropology professor Lawrence Rosen is today's feature and the fourth interview of the series.
Prince: What is your favorite food?
Rosen: The folks in "food technology" have a couple of great phrases. They speak of "mouth feel" and "go away." I figure they must know what they're talking about, so I like anything that feels good and doesn't stick in my teeth.
P: What one book do you think everyone would benefit from reading?
R: Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." Forget the footnotes and don't sweat whether the history is exactly right — it tells us more about ourselves and how to think about history and society than any book I know.
P: What one piece of music do you think everyone would benefit from listening to?
R: Anything by Mr. Sidney Bichet. Or "Some Other Spring" sung in a really bluesy way.
P: What is your favorite way to relax?
R: Sleeping. Sleep is really relaxing. Even when it isn't relaxing, you're unconscious so you don't know you're not relaxed. My students do it a lot — sometimes even when they aren't in my class.
P: What word or phrase are you most guilty of overusing?
R: Phatootzed (or is it fatootzed? Or fatootsed?).
P: What is your favorite slang word or phrase?
R: (expletive deleted).
P: What is your favorite bookstore?
R: New York Nautical — fantastic charts from all the seas of the world and books with salty phrases so your mother won't know if you are cursing or being literary.
P: What is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
R: After I finished the defense of my Ph.D. my advisor gave me one piece of advice: "Never give a student a C+," he said, "they will just come banging on your door trying to get it raised to a B-." (Have they thought about this for the rules on grade inflation?)
P: If there were a ballot for sainthood, which person, living or dead, would you nominate?
R: My rabbi — it would drive him nuts.
P: What did you think you'd most likely major in when you entered college, and what did you ultimately major in?
R: I went to college to become a naval architect. Funny thing was, they didn't teach that. So I settled for people-watching.
P: What sorts of occupations other than the one you have now do you think you'd be best suited for?
R: Teaching little kids how to sail.
P: Did you consider yourself a reckless teen?
R: No. However, it did take a bit of work convincing the juvenile traffic court judge of that. My first legal victory!
P: What is your clearest memory?
R: At five, when my big sister taught me how to cross a street with the light. Followed, at seventeen, by my big sister teaching me how to cross against the light in Harvard Square.
P: If you could be transported back to any decade in the 20th century, which would it be?
R: The late 1950s. Preferably to a '57 Chevy convertible. Preferably to the back seat.
P: What is a childhood dream that you have gotten to live out?
R: I actually did drive the rabbi nuts. He said there were things women shouldn't do ritually. Not become a rabbi? I suggested. "No, unclean, unclean" he cried. But Rabbi, I said, even Moses was circumcised by his wife, Zipporah (from which I figure we got the word 'zipper'). He got all fatootsed and the next day they took him off in a strait jacket. (This is really true, honest; ask my sister, the jaywalker!)
P: What is a childhood dream that you haven't?
R: Running a locomotive. I even had a college counselor who had actually done it. I have envied her ever since.
P: What question would you like to ask every person that you meet?
R: How would you like to buy this really nice bridge I have for sale? (All I need is one, right?)
P: When did you last write a letter by hand?
R: A couple of days ago — to a former student. I have a drawer full of letters from old students. They don't go away like emails and phone messages. I love it.
P: What is something surprising about yourself that the world doesn't know, but should?
R: That I really did drive the rabbi nuts.
P: Do you curse frequently/when do you curse?
R: Oh, shit no! Never!
P: Do you have any unusual eating habits/generally quirky habits?
R: Yeah, I like things with good 'mouth feel' and great 'go away'.
P: What topic could you discuss for the longest period of time?
R: Anyone but me.
P: What causes you to get visibly emotional?
R: The idiots in [Washington] D.C. who don't know a thing about the people of the Middle East and are making a dreadful mess of it.
P: What is your deepest held conviction?
R: Human beings create the categories of their own experience.
P: Who do you consider to have been your most significant mentor?
R: The guys in my Dad's automobile joint, the ones I worked with as a kid. Jim, and Randy, and Douthet — brilliant mechanics — and Andy, the illiterate Black car washer, who taught me that ordinary folks have intellectual lives and that you can't live without humor and humility.
P: What's the first thing you notice about a person of the opposite sex walking by?
R: That they are walking by.
P: What is happiness?
R: Charles Lamb got it just right: Happiness, he said, is doing a good deed by stealth, and having it found out by accident.
P: What is your biggest fear?
R: People walking on by.
P: What is the coolest thing you know (that everyone else should know, too)?
R: That we are the creators of our own world. So we better get it right.
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