Bloomington Days: Town and Gown in Middle America

by Blaise Cronin

Frat boys who think Mario Lanza is an Italian sports car; journalists who consider "Man arrested for blowing mucus from nose at an officer" a news story . . . Welcome to a world of grey cells and limestone, catfish and cheerleaders, binge drinking and bigots, Ockham's razor and buzz cuts. This is the tiny college town where Alfred Kinsey catalogued gall wasps before stinging a nation into belated sexual awareness. If you're gay or Greek, love opera or hoops, Bloomington is heaven on earth; we have as many same-sex couples as sorority sisters, as many divas as athletes. Welcome to my home, a quixotic mix of small-town life and larger than life campus, squirreled away in the flatlands of Middle America, where torpor is sometimes mistaken for nirvanic serenity, irony for insult and "ethnographic dazzle" for deep differences.

124 pages, Paperback

First published June 2, 2006

Reviews

[Nathaniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably few people not associated with Indiana University School of Library and Information Science or maybe IU Bloomington generally have even heard of Blaise Cronin, but for those who don't, he's a career academic from the UK with three graduate degrees and a ridiculously long list of publications, who is mainly notable for being the editor of the Journal of Information Science & Technology (one of the most prestigious journals in the LIS field). He also used to be dean of IU SLIS. Cronin plays the pompous, witty British intellectual to a hilt in real life, and so you'd think that a book about his experiences in Indiana would be either an interesting comedy of errors or a series of out of touch musings about how his life ended up. It's actually about 1/4 of the former and 3/4s of the latter, and though there are some entertaining anecdotes, they're always weighed down by a sense of intellectual insecurity, such as when Cronin talks of being educated in a very elitist, cosmopolitan tradition and now living in a town that's too small to appear on a globe or to have a proper airport. I find Cronin's "Lord Fauntleroy" routine highly entertaining and always have, but most of his observations here lack substance. Ultimately, the only memorable part of this book for me was his wry dismissal of IU's campus police department as a "toy police force", which anyone who has actually been on an IU campus during a disturbance will understand to be entirely accurate.

As someone who attended IU SLIS on their Indianapolis campus, reading Cronin's writing also explains a lot to me about his totally disdainful and hands-off leadership style where our campus was concerned (he dismisses Indianapolis early on as being a totally bland and unremarkable city unworthy of his time). Unless you were a SLIS student wanting similar insights,you're affiliated with IU Bloomington in some way and like reading what other pompous intellectuals think of the environment around them, or you just want to experience Cronin's personality for fun and aren't expecting a revelation, there's not a lot to recommend here.

[Becka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cronin attempts to dissect Bloomington life, but unsurprisingly fails miserably. His pompous, self-published work bristles with his usual pretension and disdain for anyone who is not like him and anything that is different from what he knows or thinks. But since it's a quick read, it's interesting to peruse if you've lived in Bloomington (IN) or attended SLIS there. I do miss that town.

[Tiffany King · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed Dr. Blaise Cronin's mix of wit and humor. This book was a delightful read; so much so in fact that I am currently reading Bloomington Daze and Gaze!