I had declared myself a Wesleyan Methodist. Earlier, when he was teaching in Egypt, the university registrar had called him in and objected to his answer, on a personnel form, to the question “Religion”: The controversy made the front page of the Singapore newspaper, and became known as “The Enright Affair,” but it was by no means the only such run-in that Enright had had. You will be packing your bags and seeking green pastures elsewhere if your gratuitous advice on these matters should land us in a mess. We have no time for asinine sneers by passing aliens about the futility of “sarong culture complete with pantun competitions” particularly when it comes from beatnik professors…. You have arrogated to yourself functions and duties which are reserved only for citizens of this country and not visitors, including mendicant professors…. Your duties were to supervise the teaching of English at the University…. Enright, during his inaugural university lecture on Robert Graves, had called for freedom of cultural expression, and criticized confected displays of governmentally acceptable “culture.” The ministerial document reads in part: Memoirs of a Mendicant Professor * is his witty and often appalling account of that life, its title derived from the official reproof he received in 1960 from the minis-ter for labor in Singapore. Dennis Joseph Enright, a British poet born in 1920 and still writing, spent his active life as a professor of English literature, mostly abroad.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |