The MLA as Muse
“Seven Stances before the Badge”
In 1959 MLA member David I. Grossvogel sent the association seven cartoons inspired by the annual convention of 1958. Grossvogel insisted that “[n]o one but the author is implicated in this empirical evidence. Also, the various faces are all coincidences (I am of course not responsible for the morbid conclusions of those who always insist on recognizing themselves).”
Murder at the MLA
In 1993 D. J. H. Jones published the mystery novel Murder at the MLA. The inside jacket introduces the harrowing tale, saying:
“As a Chicago homicide detective, Boaz Dixon has just about seen it all—or so he thinks until corpses begin accumulating at the Hotel Fairfax during the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association.”
Publishers Weekly reviewed the book, warning, “English instructors and other academics, tenured and not, will howl at the pseudonymous Jones’s skewering of the politics of college teaching in this procedural set at the annual Christmastime meeting of the Modern Language Association.”
MLA Poetry
In 1997 Ross Talarico, the 1995 winner of the MLA’s Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize, wrote a poem titled “MLA” and sent it to Richard Brod, then the director of special projects.
The Sidewalks of New York
In 1999 the MLA was featured in a double page spread in Bill Harris’s book, sponsored by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, The Sidewalks of New York: A Celebration of New York History. As described on its cover, “Sidewalks of New York takes a fond look at the ways the city has changed since the days of Peter Stuyvesant and it introduces some of the amazing people whose ideas have made a difference over the last three centuries.”
Sidewalks of New York includes charming details about the MLA, including the history of its previous headquarters. Former executive director John H. Fisher (1963–71) describes the MLA’s first office at 100 Washington Square East, noting that it could be reached “either by the slowest elevator in New York or across a perilous catwalk from the English office in the East Building.”