This was not his scene. Tony had always purposefully eschewed the label “academic.” He wrote books. Teaching was something he did in between to pay the bills. He was Mr. Lang (if not just Tony), not Dr. He left the theory and the ten-dollar titles to the PhDs. His job was to get young men and women to churn out writing they wouldn’t be embarrassed about while introducing them to books that were better and more influential than his own. That’s what he did at community colleges and at small liberal arts schools and that’s what he would continue to do in a permanent position at a good-sized university.

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