By William C. Heffernan
Thank you so much for your kind introduction.
And thanks to the Bergen Society for inviting me back. By my calculation,
fifteen years have passed since I gave my first talk at Bergen. It’s an
understatement to say that I appreciate your invitations. Whenever you ask me
to give a talk, you provide me with an opportunity to arrange ideas in a way I
never can when in a classroom or when writing for publication. Both are
somewhat narrow experiences. I can sense my students’ impatience if I digress
to comment on larger issues than the ones they bargained for in signing up for
a course. I don’t even dare risk readers’ impatience in my publications; at
most, I include oblique references that suggest a wider frame of reference.
It’s in these talks, then, that I have a chance to think a bit more expansively
than I can elsewhere—to go beyond the confines of disciplinary specialization.
I can’t vouch for the success of my efforts. Perhaps, though, we can agree to
define success modestly and say that in this instance it consists of sorting
out, rather than solving, perplexing issues. Assuming agreement on this modest
aim, I hope you’ll be satisfied with the results of the talk.
