KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — On Tuesday, the new list of MacArthur “genius award” winners will be announced. If you’re on it, here’s what to expect: Most likely, you didn’t know you were being considered. Winners are often plucked from obscurity, and nominations are secret.
You’ve been told to wait for a phone call from an acquaintance, but it’s a setup. When you answer, a serious-sounding stranger will ask whether you’re alone and whether you’ve heard of the MacArthur Foundation and its famous fellowship.
The foundation disavows the term, but everyone else knows the MacArthur as the “genius award.” Winning it means never having to prove yourself again — plus $500,000, no strings attached.
Later comes the public announcement and the congratulatory e-mails, the phone calls from reporters.
And what then, in the year before the next class is announced? If you’re fortunate, some things — the right things — will change in your life.
And if you’re really, really lucky, like Jay Rubenstein, perhaps one year after you win your MacArthur genius award you will be able to look back and say this: It wasn’t even the best thing that happened that week.
Story begins 900 years ago
Rubenstein — medieval historian, sardonic wit, amateur country-western musician, aficionado of science fiction and barbecue — sits in a Knoxville pub and recounts how he first got excited about the monks who made him a genius.
The story starts in 11th-century France. A Benedictine named Guibert of Nogent was struggling to make his way in the world and build a career in the church. In his own time, he never hit it big.
But he was a deep thinker, a prickly observer and, courtesy of his mother, possessor of an Oedipus complex.
All of this made for a fantastic autobiography. Or so it seemed to Rubenstein, 900 years later, reading it as an undergraduate at Carleton College in Minnesota.
Monks were not a predictable intellectual passion, but there was something surprisingly human about them. They were not nearly as pious and deferential as their caricature would suggest.
Rubenstein’s studies took him to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and then to the University of California-Berkeley for a Ph.D. With monklike discipline, he finished his degree in six years.
But the road got rougher. He shuffled around in one-year teaching appointments.
“He was discouraged but determined,” said Gary Barth, a close friend. “It was frustrating for all of us to watch from the sidelines.”
At one point, Rubenstein went to a career-placement testing company and filled out pages and pages of questions, hoping the computer would suggest a rewarding but attainable career. It spat out the career he was best-suited for: historian.
Finally, a tenure-track post
And after his years in the academic wilderness, Rubenstein finally got a tenure-track job at the University of New Mexico.
If not the most prestigious history department, it was a chance to settle down and enjoy his beloved Southwestern cuisine and a decent music scene.
He expanded his dissertation into a 2002 book, “Guibert of Nogent: Portrait of a Medieval Mind.” There were no best-seller lists, but the book boosted his profile. Young scholars typically play it safe, but Rubenstein took on big topics and drew bold conclusions. And unlike an ever-increasing proportion of academics, he wrote beautifully.
Gradually, papers and fellowships accumulated, and his star rose.
In 2006, the University of Tennessee recruited him with a generous offer: It would pay him to go to Europe for two years, to research the Crusades, before returning to Knoxville.
“It was finally like, I don’t have to feel ashamed,” he said. “The job search seemed like such a hazing ritual. I think it was, ‘Now I can settle down and disappear into obscurity. A year in Rome, a year in Paris, then I can settle down in Knoxville and teach.’ ”
The MacArthur award came when he was 40 and settled as a professional historian and living in Paris.
But to him and to the friends who had watched him struggle, it was deeply satisfying.
A modern-day monastery
Picturing Rubenstein in his early 30s, one can’t help imagining him in a monk’s frock himself — scribbling away over books in the modern-day monastery that is the university, scrapping for cash, never married.
“When we were first going out, he was like, ‘I’ve been living alone for 15 years; I don’t know if I can have a girlfriend,’ ” Meredith McGroarty says.
She e-mailed him two days after the MacArthur announcement, but she didn’t know about it.
“Hi Professor Rubenstein — you probably don’t remember me, but I was in one of your medieval history classes at Dickinson about 10 years ago,” she wrote. She told him she still read medieval history during her subway commute and had noticed his book when it popped up as a suggestion on her account.
“I can’t tell you my intentions were entirely platonic,” she said. “I had a crush on him.”
In his response, he refrained from deploying the all-time great pickup line at his disposal — he made no mention of the genius award.
Months later, when he came to New York for a conference, they met up for pizza. Later, she visited him in Paris. They hit the predictable spots for a pair of infatuated medievalists — the Museum of the Middle Ages and Notre Dame cathedral.
Life is good in Tennessee
Rubenstein keeps talking about buying a Fender Stratocaster guitar but hasn’t yet. On his blog, he holds out the possibility of using the money to become a “country-western hillbilly crooner.” But really he plans to use it to write more books. His next one is on the Crusades.
Rubenstein could land work at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country. These days, top private universities are raiding faculty from public ones, which can’t compete financially.
But he’s happy here. Meredith likes Knoxville. She visited for a couple weeks in August and hopes to return soon. Tennessee showed faith in him before he was a certified genius. He sees no reason to leave.
“I have good colleagues, barbecue, country music, and a babe to boot,” he says. “What else does a guy need?”
