{"id":783,"date":"2017-12-21T08:01:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T07:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/?p=783"},"modified":"2018-10-11T19:46:48","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T17:46:48","slug":"interview-with-benjamin-pickford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/2017\/12\/interview-with-benjamin-pickford\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Benjamin Pickford, a \u2018not very British-British\u2019 Englishman in Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benjamin Pickford joined Unil\u2019s English Department this semester as a ma\u00eetre assistant. He is originally from Guildford, though has lived in London, and taught in Nottingham and Edinburgh before coming to Lausanne. He specialises in American literature, used to want to be Bob Dylan, and knows how to bake sourdough bread. If you\u2019re interested in getting to know this newest member of staff, keep on reading below.<\/em><\/p>\n

Describe yourself in 10 seconds or less, GO!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ehhmm oh god that\u2019s really hard, sorry, I\u2019m so unspontaneous I have to plan things like that. I really can\u2019t do those because I find it so difficult, I have to just think about which part I have to describe. I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m an Englishman in Switzerland.<\/p>\n

Could you talk a little bit about your academic interests, the academic path you took, what you teach now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course. I did my PhD on Ralph Waldo Emerson, and I\u2019ve worked on American literature since I started my studies, but I did my master\u2019s thesis on French philosophy. So I\u2019m interested in philosophy and literature, and the kind of intersection between them, especially in the 19th<\/sup> century. But here at Unil, I teach American literature of the 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries and I\u2019m particularly interested in literature\u2019s relation to capitalism. I\u2019ll be teaching more on that from next year onward. I guess that\u2019s the main thing I work on, literature and capitalism and Marx, those kinds of approaches.<\/p>\n

What made you decide on literature?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a long story. I left school when I was 16 and I got my worst mark in English literature. All I wanted to do was get involved in music, which is what I did. But it was while I got involved with music that I realised that all this music I was really interested in, which is kind of American music of the 60s and 70s, was all deeply related to American literature of the 20s and 50s, and so that sent me back through that, and once you go down that rabbit hole, you just keep on going down through the tiers of literary history that potentially interest you. So I did that, and then I went back as a mature student to do American literature at a university in London that did an undergraduate degree in English and<\/em> American literature. If I had to pin it down to one book, it was probably \u2018On the Road\u2019 by Jack Kerouac: the sort of book between music, and thinking \u2018ah there\u2019s a whole literary tradition behind this.\u2019 That was the book that opened the door to all of that stuff.<\/p>\n

As a child, who did you think you\u2019d grow up to be, and how does that compare to who you did grow up to be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a weird thing, I don\u2019t distinctly remember my childhood as being sort of childhood, it was just different stages. I think until I was about 12, I thought I would be the sort of person that my grandfather was, who was a mechanical engineer. And that was what I sort of persuaded myself and my teachers I was going to do, until a few years after that. But then about the age of 12 onwards, I thought I was going to be a musician. I was going to be Bob Dylan for whatever generation that was going to be, but that didn\u2019t pan out either. So, I don\u2019t know, that doesn\u2019t mean that I had any genuine faith that was the case, but then I don\u2019t think I had a very reasonable, or very reasoned, sense of expectation or plan for the future, because I didn\u2019t really know. I used to love playing music, and that was that.<\/p>\n

What brought you to Lausanne?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been looking for something outside the UK for a long time, since before even my PhD. I\u2019ve been applying for all of those things and this is the one that came through, basically. I applied to go to Berlin, to Aarhus in Denmark, the US. Some universities in the UK are good, but it\u2019s kind of an oppressive place. And also, I\u2019m not a very British-British person; I don\u2019t like the cold weather \u2013 actually no-one likes the cold weather \u2013 I don\u2019t like the food very much, I like the sense of humour, but other than that, there are not many things about the UK that I like. So I\u2019ve been keen to get out and see a bit more of the world, and this is the first step. I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019ll be long-term of short-term, but I\u2019m enjoying it so far. I\u2019m just looking for something different, really. I came here not really knowing what to expect. Two things I did know about Lausanne were that T. S. Eliot wrote the first draft of \u2018The Wasteland\u2019 around here, and that the art brut collection is here, because I\u2019ve always been interested in Jean Dubuffet and outsider art. I\u2019d long-intended to come here, and to be honest that was probably the first thing that persuaded me that Lausanne would be a good place to come. If they\u2019ve got a museum about outsider art then it\u2019s definitely worth a shot.<\/p>\n

What were your first impressions of Lausanne when you came?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That it\u2019s beautiful, obviously. I think that\u2019s probably everybody thinks. I liked the fact that it\u2019s really studenty because that normally means that a place is interesting. The first couple of months I spent here, I just walked through from near Pont Bessi\u00e8res down to the old town, to Ouchy and kind of did a loop around and walked all the way back. It\u2019s beautiful, but it\u2019s also got a fairly young population, which is nice. And it\u2019s small; I like small cities. I lived in Edinburgh most recently, and it reminded me \u2013 not in terms of the climate or the architecture of Edinburgh \u2013 but it did remind me of the sense of the city that feels like a city but only just on the side of feeling like a city. It\u2019s still small enough to feel like you\u2019re not oppressed by the sheer number of people that live there, or the fact that there\u2019s nothing that you can see beyond the city. You can see the mountains, you can see the hills, it\u2019s really nice. I like it.<\/p>\n

In that vein, how do you find the English department?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I really like it: really friendly and a real sense of community in the department, which has not been the case in every department I\u2019ve ever worked in. It\u2019s big enough to be diverse, but small enough to be very friendly and welcoming. And the particularly interesting thing for me, and this is apparently a common thing, but the way the PhD students are fully integrated into the members of the faculty, essentially, for the duration of their studies, is amazing. And the student population is interesting, there\u2019s a lot going on, everyone is friendly; it\u2019s very collegiate, I like it a lot. And it\u2019s in this wonderful building.<\/p>\n

What was the strangest teaching experience you\u2019ve ever had?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I guess it\u2019s not that strange, I\u2019ve never had the sort of cow-come-through-the-classroom or have a fire alarm or anything like that. One of the most strange educational experience all-round, was when I had an evening course at a night school in London to get into university. We went to see a performance of \u2018Waiting for Godot\u2019 because we were working on that play. The key thing about \u2018Waiting for Godot\u2019 is that they\u2019re not waiting for anything: Godot never shows up, and the second act is the same as the first one. Anyway, half-way through the second act of this performance, the guy playing Vladimir dropped dead of a heart attack on stage. Like, he died. And I hadn\u2019t finished reading \u2018Waiting for Godot\u2019 at this point, and so it was 30 seconds or more before I realised that this wasn\u2019t part of the play, so I had this flash of an experience of \u2018Waiting for Godot.\u2019 Anyway, I taught \u2018Waiting for Godot\u2019 when I was in Edinburgh last year, and it was actually much more productive to think about it in terms of staging: what happens if you could see one of the actors dying half-way through in the performance of this play? And so it is not a particularly peculiar teaching experience – it amounted to more of a peculiar experience of that particular play – but I suppose it\u2019s one of the things that teaches that it can be interesting to take a counter-factual approach to the text that you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

What are you currently working on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve got 2 books: one is the extension of my PhD, and the other one is the extension of my post-doc. One is a biography of Emerson\u2019s literary persona rather than Emerson himself, and looks at how he created this literary persona which takes on literally a life of its own after his death. The whole thing is deeply related to the way that he wrote, and it thinks about this kind of literary persona in American literary history afterwards. Which is either going to be really niche, or really general, and I\u2019m not quite sure which direction I was going to go in yet, I\u2019ll have to see. And the other one is called \u2018Capital in American Poetics\u2019 and it looks at American poetics and American literary theory in the latter half of the 19th<\/sup> century. So that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing at the moment, which is not very similar to most of the Americanists in this department. But those are the two books I\u2019m hoping to have published in the 4-year contract I\u2019ve got here at the moment.<\/p>\n

Which fictional character best represents you and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s really<\/em> hard. It\u2019s the sort of thing that you\u2019d imagine someone who works on literature would just be able to come out with one, and that\u2019s actually really challenging. I guess if there\u2019s any time when I\u2019ve identified with literary characters, it\u2019s the kind of weird, repressed narrators of Kafka\u2019s novels. There\u2019s just something in the thought process of those characters that makes a lot of sense to me, but then I guess the reason that it makes sense to one is that Kafka is trying to represent those thought processes as being completely logical and reasonable under these peculiar conditions. And so I guess because there is a kind of life experience that feels more necessary. Because the character has to get through this particular situation that they\u2019re in, I mean the character never does get through, he always ends up being crushed to death or suffocated or whatever, there\u2019s just something like that when you\u2019re in a particularly strange environment and just think \u2018ok what\u2019s next, what\u2019s next, what\u2019s next\u2019.<\/p>\n

Do you have any secret or not-so-secret talents?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I play the guitar. I\u2019m a very, very committed cyclist, I cycle a lot and that\u2019s kind of what takes up an awful lot of time. I can bake sourdough bread but I don\u2019t have to here, because the boulangeries sell stuff that is not absolute, complete and utter crap, unlike in the UK. British bread is diabolical. So yes, I can bake pretty good bread, but I don\u2019t do it because it takes hours and I only did it out of necessity before.<\/p>\n

What would your Walden look like?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a really interesting question. I\u2019ve been to Concord a few times because I work on Emerson, so you necessarily work on Thoreau. Always had a lot of problems with Thoreau \u2013 I think he\u2019s fascinating, I love his writing, but when you come to it critically, there\u2019s just too many problems to leave it with a considered opinion. One of those problems is that Walden itself, if you walk to Walden from Emerson\u2019s house, which is where Thoreau used to go get pies, it\u2019s about a mile, it\u2019s not very far. So it\u2019s a kind of miniature escape, and Thoreau could only squat on this land because his friend [Emerson] owned it. And he squatted there by virtue of the fact that his friends helped him build this hut, and he could still go back to Concord to get food. But when you walk to Walden now, and you leave Concord and you go down the road \u2013 that is the old Turnpike road that leaves town from Emerson\u2019s house \u2013 you think \u2018oh, this is just how it would have been, I mean there\u2019s a few more cars, it\u2019s the tarmac, but still it\u2019s beautiful\u2019. And then you get almost there, and there\u2019s a six-lane highway, literally next to Walden pond, that you have to cross in order to get there. And I think all of those things slightly taint my idea of a sort of escape, or what Walden represented for Thoreau. I think the same thing in a way would be amazing, a remote hut, a lake view, an opportunity just to do all that thinking. But then the fact that there\u2019s now this six-lane Turnpike, right next to it, flags up the fact that that\u2019s impossible. You can\u2019t have that Walden, least of all in the 21st<\/sup> century. And I suppose that the 20th<\/sup> century equivalent in European philosophy, Heidegger, who used to go sitting under trees and sitting at his hut and writing his books and ignoring the fact that Europe was tearing itself to pieces around him. So I guess if I did have a Walden, it would have to be close enough to civilisation for me to accept the fact that this was really a kind of Bourgeois delusion that I was indulging it.<\/p>\n

Those are all of our questions for now, thank you very much for the interview!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benjamin Pickford joined Unil\u2019s English Department this semester as a ma\u00eetre assistant. He is originally from Guildford, though has lived in London, and taught in Nottingham and Edinburgh before coming to Lausanne. He specialises in American literature, used to want to be Bob Dylan, and knows how to bake sourdough bread. If you\u2019re interested in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001260,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[39],"class_list":{"0":"post-783","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-winter17","7":"tag-interviews"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001260"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.unil.ch\/musemagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}