Beachcombing: A Professorial Mixtape
The "summer jam" is certainly a cliché -- the type of hymn or tune that can only come out of your tattered Jeep Wrangler or FJ Cruiser (for the modern, upper-middle class bohemian). But the "summer jam" -- "summer song", "sound of the summer," whatever incarnation you please -- is one of those weighty clichés that actually means something. At least in the case of the noteworthy professors so many of us students neglect throughout the year due to schedule and (more likely) due to fear, one's choice of summer jam gives some gritty emotional information that normally takes serious office hours to uncover.We asked some of Princeton's most revered intellectuals for their summer jams. Though it took almost an entire summer to compile -- you weren't the only ones doing nothing -- they are finally listed below. Think of this almost-mixtape as an ode to the last hurrah that is Princeton's awkwardly pushed back start date.
Robert Hollander, HUM - Translated Dante’s Inferno and Divine Comedy; founding member of the Department of Comparative Literature
Summer was traditionally my time for hard work, now that the easy and pleasant part of the year, the teaching part, was done for nearly four months. Since being emeritus has made the WHOLE year ‘summer,’ I no longer have a summer song, but if I did it would probably be one performed by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven, maybe Potato Head Blues. Why? Because it rocks.
Jeff Nunokawa, ENG - Has written extensively on nineteenth century English literature; posted notoriously on Facebook, challenging medium, social media and the Champions League
Okay: press play: Gloria Estefan--"I Just Wanna Be Happy". And here's why: the best summer of my life took this song as its soundtrack. It was Amsterdam, and it was the summer of 1998, and I fell in love big time, for the last time, and this was the major song at every club and party and beach I went. And the song just spells all the outdoor hope and warmth of summer love to me.Press Stop
Harvey Rosen, ECO - Did a stint on President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors; former Master of Whitman College
My favorite summer song is "Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore." When I was in high school and went to the beach, kids were always playing it on their transistor radios.
Peter Singer, CHV - Author of Animal Liberation; Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne
As an Australian, summer means the beach, so I'll go for a Beach Boys number, maybe "Surfin' USA."
Philip Johnson-Laird, PSY - Pushed the limits of our understanding of human understanding; fellow of the National Academy of Sciences
My favorite summer song is Michel Legrand's "Once upon a summertime". There are many great performances, but one that captures it best for me is Miles Davis in Gil Evans's arrangement (on the album Quiet Nights).
The best musical depiction of the unrelenting heat of summer is, not a song, but Ravel's Prélude à la nuit at the start of his Rapsodie Espagnole.
Christopher Eisgruber, WWS/CHV, Provost - Graduated magna cum laude in Physics from Princeton; clerked for the Supreme Court; wrote books about the Constitution; named Provost of the University in 2004
Here are two, that I fear nobody will ever have heard (but they should be better known; they’re great!):'Perfect,' written by Ian Broudie and performed by his band, the Lightening Seeds: I heard it more than 15 years ago on a summer trip to England, and its bittersweet lyrics evoke both the promise and the passing of summer (and it seems to be passing too quickly right now!)
'Beachcombing,' by Mark Knopfler and Emmy Lou Harris. My wife and son and I were returning from a Vermont summer vacation a few years back. We stopped in Middlebury to pick up some tunes for the long drive back (this is the sort of thing that people did back in the days before iTunes!). We bought the new Knopfler/Harris album, and the salesman declared, “That’s definitely the sound of the summer” (in Middlebury, I guess—but it’s a brilliant album). “Beachcombing” is the first track on the album, and the refrain is “head on home,” which was, of course, exactly what we were doing. I can’t hear it without remembering that trip and thinking “sound of the summer.
(no YouTube, so listen here)Shamik Dasgupta, PHI - Recipient of NYU's Dean's Outstanding Dissertation Award in the Humanities, describing "Symmetry as a Guide to Reality"
Personal summer song? Not this summer, but many years ago ('95, to be precise) this defined the summer I graduated high school.
Gideon Rosen, PHI - Expert in moral philosophy; was asked to take NYU Law School’s first-year curriculum under a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship in 2002 (he accepted)
"Rockaway Beach" by the Ramones, for the obvious reasons. I'm not a beach person, but I like the idea of the beach. Songs about beaches get me as close as I need to be.
Also "Dancing in the Street" by Martha and the Vandellas. I don't like dancing either, but songs about dancing are fine by me.
Paul Muldoon, CWR - Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; Poetry Editor at The New Yorker, critiqued Ke$ha’s “Tik-Tok” (this was not his “summer song”)
It's got to be "In the Summertime" by Mungo Jerry. Though the group took its name from T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, now a jug band had caught up with the "jug jug" of his great poem The Waste Land and our dirty 1970s ears were forever infected.