WHEN UPTOWN COMES DOWNTOWN

The New York Dolls got me into grad school.

One of the pieces of supporting documentation that I sent with my application was an essay on Frankenstein I had written for a Romantic lit course. The piece took in Shelley’s book, Whale’s movie, and the Dolls’ song, with a few words spared for the Edgar Winter Group.

It was, um, lightly researched, but I suppose it had a certain brio/moxie.

Little did I know that the director of the program was an old-school New York punk fan, and had spent many formative hours at CBGB and Max’s in the company of the Dolls, Patti Smith, Ramones, Television, et al. We had an enthusiastic discussion about it at this pre-semester meet-and-greet cocktail-party type thing.

He seemed to think that I might add a bit of topspin to an entering class heavy with Lacanians, Foucaultites, and Derridaistes.

It is one of the few measurable regrets in my life that I instead spent my time quietly harvesting A minuses...