{"id":1290,"date":"2016-10-16T14:40:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-16T21:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2021-07-23T13:36:08","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T20:36:08","slug":"battle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2016\/10\/16\/battle\/","title":{"rendered":"Battle"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the New York Times obituary section recently I came upon one for Jacob Neusner<\/span><\/a>, a scholar (and polemicist) who published more than 900 books in his lifetime. I calculated – on the back of a napkin, as it were – that Professor Neusner wrote approximately 10,000 publishable words every gosh-darn day for 50 years – over and above all the other<\/i> words he wrote, including professional and personal correspondence, of which there must have been a ton. And he did this while mastering numerous complex disciplines (and languages) and raising a family. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Times obit quotes an admiring detractor:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

[Neusner] is perhaps most widely known for his irascible, sometimes quite nasty and often pugnacious personality, his famous excoriating reviews, sometimes book-length critiques, and his fallings-out with almost every institution he worked in, almost every teacher who taught him, many of his students \u2014 as well as the errors that scar his many translations and publications.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A friend notes: <\/span><\/p>\n

\n

It seems that it would be better to be known for writing only 450 books, without the nasty and pugnacious part.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I doubt that Professor Neusner would have taken that deal, for many reasons. Here is the main one, I think: A<\/span>long with study Neusner seemed to learn about topics via contention with others, which, happily for him, also fertilized his prose. (Churchill is said to have learned about a topic primarily<\/em> by writing about it.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014<\/p>\n

Decades ago I had the pleasure of working with the formidable philosopher Sidney Hook<\/a>. Up until his death at 86 he was still picking fights with both luminaries and unknowns. I have thought a lot about why he took aim at the latter, when there was little clear imperative, and even less interest among his readers, for Hook to do so. I believe he wanted to stay sharp rhetorically, and, as important, he wanted to make sure he had not missed anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the New York Times obituary section recently I came upon one for Jacob Neusner, a scholar (and polemicist) who published more than 900 books in his lifetime. I calculated – on the back of a napkin, as it were – … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[9,24,116],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-academic-writing","tag-conflict","tag-obituary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2181,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions\/2181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}