As Christy Moore once said, I dreamt a dream the other night -- I couldn't sleep a wink. I'd probably been working too hard. Or maybe I'd just been drinking too fast. Like much of U.S. culture, American beer is tasteless and bad for you. Having spent the week sitting by the phone hoping someone from the CCC would ask me to Houseparties as an act of forgiveness, I hit the bars to drown my disappointment.

In my dream, I was on a train to Boston. Everyone else on the train had convinced themselves that they were going to Chicago. I wondered how best to tell everyone that they were wrong and I was right. We were on a train, so a full page advertisement in the local newspaper was out of the question. Perhaps I could use the P.A. system. Then I was seized with worry: what if everyone said "That's so intolerant. Boston is a terrible place. I've decided that I want to go to Chicago, so that's where I'm going." I took out my Amtrak timetable and prayed to it for a while. (This is a good thing to do on any train journey in this country, by the way.) A great feeling of peace came over me and I realised that it didn't matter whether the train went to Boston or Chicago, because either way I was getting away from Princeton.

When I woke up, I was reminded of something that happened to me last year while I was on a train from Boston to New York. Somewhere in Connecticut the heating on our train failed. Another train came along beside us, which we boarded. Two women sat down in front of me, telling each other to fly next time. One was from the University of Hawaii, out investigating Graduate Schools. The other, as it turned out, was from Princeton -- a sophomore, I think. You know who you are. The first woman asked what the Grad Program at Princeton was like. I listened with interest. "I don't really know many Grad Students. Sometimes at the weekends they come down to my residential college to eat -- they're weird people -- scruffy -- don't wash very often -- played intramural soccer against them once -- one of them had his underwear on outside his shorts." After a little more of this analysis, I stuck my head around the seat and told her that Princeton Grad Students tended to show up in unexpected places. To my intense satisfaction, the horrified sophomore stared at me and said, "Oh my God, you were in my Soc precept!" It was around this time I decided that, if I ever got the chance, I'd write for the Prince.

Since I've started haranguing people in public this semester, I've found that there's a solid contingent of Undergrads who agree that Princeton is bad for your brain in a whole variety of ways. Hearing this from the source is good for my ego, but I feel that these people are already saved. They are bound for Boston (or perhaps Chicago). They have seen the Great Kitty and played with the cat-toy of redemption.

The negative stuff has been much more fun. For example, in my last column I suggested that Cottage Club's defence of its Lectures was evidence of an unhealthy state of mind that Princeton tends to encourage. I was delighted at the range of badly reasoned, overheated, self-important responses I received. A senior wrote to me and asked why any Undergrad should care where the Grad College was, when "by your example it is full of judgmental elitists with no understanding of the true character of Princeton or its Undergraduates." I wasn't sure how he had arrived at the idea that the G.C. is more exclusive than Cottage, but I felt a strange kind of pride: someone from Princeton had called me an elitist!

The same person -- and several others -- told me I was an outsider and had no right to complain at all, which only reinforced my views about the University's insularity. Another published a letter suggesting that because the University pays my wages I should shut up, if I knew what was good for me. (In much the same way, in 1946, A.A. Zhdanov excoriated Mikhail Zoshchenko for writing a story about a monkey who preferred to stay in the Zoo rather than live in Leningrad.) One student said that he had been personally offended at being called a clone (in an earlier column). Presumably, all his friends felt the same way. Best of all, a sophomore member of Cottage melodramatically asked, "why do you hate us so much?" "Might I suggest that if you are so unhappy," he continued, "then you should leave." This inability to tell the difference between a critique of the dominant culture on campus and a personal vendetta is typical of much of the criticism I get. So is the assumption that I'm an unhappy, twisted monster. It seems that some Undergrads find it unthinkable that some loser Grad Student might sometimes find them ridiculous -- although, as my friend on the train showed, the reverse is perfectly reasonable.

I'm afraid that "Love it or Leave it" is not a strategy I admire. My department is just too damn good to abandon. Enjoy your Summer, and thanks for all the email. About half the people who've written to me seem to get the point. As for the rest -- try to relax over the holidays, won't you? See you on registration day outside Dillon. I'll be the one selling "Princeton 2001" flags.