Annapolis is, for me, the most beautiful and elegant of all the American state capitals. (But then, I'm from Maryland, so I *would* say that.) Yet eveAnnapolis is, for me, the most beautiful and elegant of all the American state capitals. (But then, I'm from Maryland, so I *would* say that.) Yet even if you prefer the capital of your own state (a sentiment that I would certainly understand), we can agree that Annapolis is the only state capital that is also home to a major service academy for the United States military. Against Annapolis' placid colonial façade, its perfect location at the point where the Severn River meets Chesapeake Bay, the future officers of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps learn about past wars, and prepare for future ones.
Bruce Fleming, a professor of English at the United States Naval Academy, is acutely conscious of the paradoxes inherent in his position as a liberal-arts educator at a military college; he describes “A Day in the Life of a Civilian Professor” at U.S.N.A. by pointing out that “We neither salute nor are saluted, cannot use the PX (Post Exchange) on the other side of the [Severn] River (only recently have we had access to the bookstore on a regular basis), are not covered by military insurance or retirement, and have our own pay system” (p. 103).
His book Annapolis Autumn is rich in reflections on the paradoxes he regularly faces, as in a chapter that is appropriately titled "Athens vs. Sparta." Annapolis is, after all, the kind of school where a second-year summer trip is not a quick culture-gathering jaunt to England or France, but rather a cruise on an active, serving armed vessel of the United States Navy. Fleming participates in this ritual one time, with a two-day cruise on a U.S. Navy submarine. He looks back on his two days in the Silent Service by stating that “I discover, not for the first time, that the idea of being the servant of a great machine is strange to me” (p. 201).
Fleming also takes on issues like "don't ask, don't tell" that were areas of much discussion within military culture at the time of the book's publication in 2005. That policy, like other modern changes at Annapolis, did not receive universal acceptance at the tradition-minded Naval Academy; the Academy did not begin admitting women students until 1979, and Fleming shares the testimony of a male student who told Fleming, “Sir…I don’t tell this to everybody. But I don’t think women should be at the Naval Academy. It’s a male thing. It’s the brotherhood. I’d die for the guys in my company. We share everything” (p. 151). Fleming sees this midshipman’s words as an example of the “overwhelming infatuation with Maleness” (p. 150) that is an integral part of Naval Academy culture.
Considering that the book's subtitle is Life, Death, and Literature at the U.S. Naval Academy, it should be no surprise that some of the book's most moving passages include Fleming's reflections on how the students he teaches -- in so many ways, college kids like those one might encounter on campus at Johns Hopkins or the University of Maryland -- may someday go into battle and give their lives for the United States of America. Returning to this book now, years after its original 2005 publication, I found myself wondering: how many of the students that Fleming taught ended up in Iraq or Afghanistan, suffered wounds there, died there?
Yet his book is not all weighty discussion of battleship-heavy issues. Fleming provides engaging descriptions of the lighter rituals that are part of Annapolis life: for example, the "Herndon climb," when first-year students, or "plebes," assemble to climb a greased monument and remove the "plebe" cap or “dixie cup” atop the monument, a cap that emphasizes the "plebe's" lowly status at the Academy. Once an upperclassman's cap takes the place of the "plebe" cap, the "plebes" are full-fledged midshipmen, free from the constant run of harassment and petty humiliation that "plebes" face throughout their first year at Annapolis.
Fleming has fun describing this well-known Naval Academy ritual, wherein the plebes “bunch around the monument’s base and and, for the next several hours, surge, pile, and make futile efforts to reach the top. During this time they step on each other’s faces and shoulders in their efforts to pile high enough that one person…can reach up and remove the dixie cup before replacing it with an upperclassman’s cap” (pp. 50-51).
Annapolitans will also enjoy the description of another beloved Naval Academy ritual – the annual croquet match against nearby Saint John’s College, another Annapolis institution that is one of the best liberal-arts colleges in the U.S.A. The gentry of Anne Arundel County, with aristocratic credentials that go all the way back to the founding of the Maryland colony in 1634, turn out in their finest haute couture to look on as the spit-and-polish midshipmen of the Naval Academy play croquet against the decidedly non-military students of Saint John’s. In case you were wondering, Saint John’s usually wins.
One senses, throughout Annapolis Autumn, a tension between Fleming’s liberal-arts outlook – one centered around the individual's development of an independent critical-thinking sensibility – and the Naval Academy’s focus on tradition, ritual, and following orders. This conflict comes to the fore when Fleming concludes that a senior-level student who has been repeatedly coming to Fleming for “E.I.” (Extra Instruction) may have Asperger’s syndrome or some other autism-spectrum disorder. Fleming goes to his department chair, “who calls admissions. They assure her stiffly that we do not admit people with learning disabilities. Therefore, this young man cannot have such disabilities” (p. 252). This Kafka-esque scenario embodies much of what Fleming seems to find frustrating about working with the Naval Academy bureaucracy.
That frustration may have been, on some level, mutual – as Fleming eventually became involved in protracted litigation with the Naval Academy. Readers interested in the story of those proceedings can seek out the coverage of that dispute in Annapolis’ newspaper of record, The Capital – or in the Baltimore Sun or the Washington Post or the Navy Times. For my part, I will restrict myself to appreciating the manner in which Fleming’s ambivalent attitude toward the Naval Academy where he has taught for decades makes Annapolis Autumn a most interesting literary voyage....more
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