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The rest of us loved the lab report the chemistry professor said was just mechanical, uninspired. The rest of us loved the case study of the underground economy of a Mexican village that the sociologist said was mostly cliché and suffering from the worst excesses of ethnography. (15–16) Such moments of disciplinary slapstick don’t ironize the notion of juried writing for Bartholomae; rather, they cause him, in true Modernist fashion, to dig in his heels, insisting on the need for more discussion “on the fundamental problems of professional writing, writing that negotiates the disciplines, their limits and possibilities” (16), in the presumed belief that with enough dialogue we can give awards to papers we do believe in.

According to a master plan” (14). Seeming, then, to dismiss “official” composition—which would only ask of a student’s revision that it “make [the writing] even more perfectly what it already is” (14), and presenting himself as a teacher who would allow a student to fracture open the text, What is Composition . . After Duchamp 37 making it “less finished and less professional” (14)—Bartholomae nonetheless manages ultimately to champion a preferred version of official composition, one whose patina is more transgressive, more outlaw, but still charged with academic cachet.

Have become insatiable collectors of authentic American artifacts. Childan’s gallery is one of the most elite on the West Coast; it sells “no contemporary American art; only the past could be represented here” (9). His customers’ passion for the historicity contained in ‘original’ artifacts has become obsessive, as seen in an exchange between Childan and a Japanese couple visiting his gallery. Childan breathlessly informs them of some choice items he expects to receive. “I am getting in a New England table, maple, all wood-pegged, no nails.