The night had been almost as warm as the day, and my little room really only had the one little window–I could’ve propped open the balcony door, but who knows what kind of insect would take up residence. I still had visions of bizarre, incredibly poisonous, Discovery Channel mostrosities. Botflies, maybe. Oh wait, those are South America, right?
I had stayed up late with my beer and my paper, practicing and looking for stuff to cut. The conference planners had put me right after another guy presenting on the same author, Iain M. Banks, and I’d met the other guy, Michael Kulbicki, the day before and confirmed that he was doing more of a general overview of Banks’ Culture novels, so I knew I could cut several big chunks out of my paper since they’d be redundant. So that combined with the heat kept me from getting much sleep.
The keynote speaker this morning was Terry Eagleton, Marxist culture theorist and rockstar academic. His address was erudite, funny, very entertaining, and it was only later that I realized it was pretty much just an ad for his soon-to-be-published book on the New Testament.
A lot of the people at the conference were Marxist theorists, which is natural considering the theme. Marx may have condemned utopianism, but Marxism is essentially utopian nonetheless–as its repeated failure attests. That doesn’t mean the theorists are always actual Marxists–one can study the theory in order to criticize it, after all. That’s kind of where I am. I sure do wish we could create a perfect world where everyone is truly equal and the cruelty of capitalism is reigned in, but barring the development of Star Trek replicator technology or Ken MacLeod’s cornucopia machines, I don’t see it happening. Still it’s a good dream to have. Granted, taken to extremes you get Nazi Germany or North Korea or the Khmer Rouge or Wahhabist terrorism, but the USA was arguably an attempt at creating a practical utopia, and that may be why so many fictional utopias come from America.
Anyway, our block of presentations was ably moderated by Angela–she kept us each to the 20-minute limit, largely through having let slip the day before that she had a rep for being really strict about time limits, so I think we all trimmed as much as we could.
The presentation styles were interesting. Michael, the first speaker, was a grad student doing his first conference presentation, and he spoke in a low monotone, never looking up from his paper. I was a debate-club kid in high school, and here in Japan I sometimes teach public speaking courses, and I am into acting, so I spoke clearly, projected, made as much eye contact as I could, varied pitch and tone, all that. I hadn’t practiced enough and could’ve done better, though. Dougal McNeill, the third guy, who was speaking on another Scottish author, James Kelman, turned it up to 11, however. He’s this incredibly earnest, intense public speaker–a couple of times, I thought he was going to leap across the table and grab a random audience member by the lapels. His face flushed crimson, and he kept shifting in his chair, often kneeling on it to raise himself up. The quotations from the book were in a Glaswegian dialect as well, full of expletives. He definitely kept the audience awake.
We only had about 10 people in the audience, but I got a question from Lyman Tower Sargent, another of the eminent keynote speakers, so that was nice.
The rest of the day was much like the day before, packed with presentations. Of note was Alec Charles on utopias and dystopias in current TV shows; he focused on the new Dr. Who and Torchwood, but touched on many others, especially Battlestar Galactica. Alec is a media-studies prof who used to live in this part of Japan, and we talked about mutual acquaintances between blocks. And in the early-evening block, Angela presented on early-20th-century utopian schemes in Japan.
That evening, Angela, Alec, and a couple from the University of Tokyo, Canadian Chris Yorke and Korean Hyijin Lee, allowed me to lead them back to the train station, where we spent a pleasant evening in an Indian-run pizza restaurant. Damn fine pizza, and much better beer–most of us drank Boags. On the way back, in the now-cool, fly-free dark, Angela and Hyijin fell behind for some girl talk (we suspect largely about Chris and the future), while I listened to Chris and Alec trading gossip about the keynote speakers. Alec had actually been a student of Eagleton’s, and boy did he have some juicy stuff. The "rockstar academic" thing is well-earned, it seems.
Oh, almost forgot to mention what happened pre-night-out. I had gone back to my room to change out of coat-and-tie, intending to meet the others in the lobby. I had a few minutes, so I decided to go out on my balcony and take some pics of the lovely courtyard. I swear, I made certain that the balcony door was unlocked! But when it closed behind me, apparently it latched all by itself, and I was unable to get back in. After 10 minutes of rattling the handle and looking over the edge, wondering if I could climb down 3 floors without shattering my bones, I decided that I’m no Spiderman. Swallowing my pride, I shouted for help. Finally, a German guy on the first floor came out to see what all the shouting was about, and he went to the office and got someone to come unlock my room door and let me back in. Very embarrassing, but dammit, they need to fix that door!
Which, by the way, I did not even open again for the rest of my stay.
