Michael Berube is the Paterno Family Professor in Literature at Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of "Marginal Forces/Cultural Centers: Tolson, Pynchon, and the Politics of the Canon" (1992); "Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics" (1994); "Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child" (1996); and "The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies" (1998).