The Mnookin Letter

[Editor's note: Seth Mnookin, Fifteen Minutes's on-again, off-again cultural critic, has not been seen within the idyllic confines of The Harvard Crimson for some time now. Rumors as to Seth's mysterious whereabouts abounded: some were terrifying, like the one that had Seth vacationing with Kurt Cobain in Europe. Some were just plain ugly. Imagine the things we heard! Why, one speculator guessed that Seth was pimping under an assumed name in Morocco. In any case, FM had just about given up on ever hearing from Seth again when we received this memo, brought in late last night by a strange, hairy man who had fear in his eyes and the stench of death on his skin.]

MEMO

TO: JC and NHL

FROM: S/M

RE: This week's Harvard Under Glass

Well, it looks like the chickens have come home to roost, so to speak. Twelve days left until my thesis is due, and I still haven't given any written work to my advisor. True, we talk a lot, but what was it that J. Edgar Hoover used to say..."The time for talk has passed." Or something like that.

And until Saturday, I'd pretty much given up hope. I can graduate whether I get this shitbag in or not...the question is what it'll feel like when I have to explain why I graduated from General Studies and not History and Science. And General Studies was beginning to sound sweeter and sweeter in my ear. Still, there were definite drawbacks to not finishing my thesis; as the senior tutor told me last week, "The psychic wounds could be devastating." (Right before he said, "but on the other hand, you're pretty fucked.")

Indeed. It was too late...or so I thought. My advisor was getting edgier and edgier every time I saw him, and I had began to fear that he was going to throttle me the next time I met him with the words "nothing yet."

But this was all before I brought in the hired guns. Saturday I got myself a full-time, 24-hours a day trainer to whip my ass into shape. Believe me, this should be the end of my problem: this man's a professional.

The things is, he won't let me leave my room. When he hears me stir from my desk, he's at the door before I can ever turn around. "Come on, chef, cook me up something good. I got a lot riding on you." (Just what exactly, this means, I do not know, but I learned in this business it's best not to ask questions.) In fact, he won't let me take calls: when my parents called the other day, he told them, "sorry, Seth can't talk right now. Or anytime soon...and all calls go through me from now on." He tells me I'll have plenty of time to talk...after the 18th.

So to get to the point: I couldn't come in to get this week's HUG questions. And even if I had, I would never have been allowed to go and find the answers... I feel horrible about all this, I really do, but there's nothing I can do. My trainer has his people watching me all the time, and he says every time I'm caught not working he's going to add 10 pages to the total required length.

Hope all is going well down there at the Crime. Tell anyone who calls that I'm away on very important business...I'm sure they'll understand. I call you when this thing is done...

xoxo

seth

[None: as of press time, Seth was rumoured to have gotten in ten pages to his advisor; still, all but his staunchest supporters have given up. Those few who have seen Seth have reported that his skin appears to be strangely greyish, and his eyes are bloodshot from the combined effects of Akva and sleep deprivation. Given recent studies on the result of this kind of extreme situation on the human psyche, we do not expect Seth to be in adequate mental shape to return to work here at FM anytime soon.]