University of Portland

The University of Portland was Dominick Corvaisis’s academic workplace and the place where he met Parker Faine. Its uncertain tenure prospects pushed Dom to seek a new position, while its English department brought him into contact with Parker, who was living in Oregon and lecturing there. The university thus stands at once for a friendship’s beginning and for the sheltered career Dom eventually chose to leave.

Setting and Association

Parker moved to Oregon for eighteen months to find subjects for a series of landscapes in his distinctive style, which joined suprarealism with a surreal imagination. He agreed to give one lecture each month at the University of Portland, where Dom held a position in the Department of English. They met there six years before the later conversation in which Dom recounted his nocturnal episodes and reconsidered the course of his life.

Tenure and Uncertainty

When Dom came up for tenure, he believed the University would not grant it. His preference for keeping a low profile had left him too far outside the notice of influential people on campus; the tenure board began to question whether he had shown enough commitment to the institution to merit lifetime employment. Dom also saw a practical risk beyond the decision itself: if Portland denied him tenure, other universities might ask why, making it harder to find another academic post.

Departure and Career Change

Trying to leave before the tenure decision could close off his options, Dom applied for positions at institutions in several Western states. He emphasized his published stories, the strongest part of his application. Mountainview College in Utah, with a student body of four thousand, invited him to interview after being impressed by the magazines that had published his work. He made an unusual effort to appear outgoing and received an offer to teach English and creative writing with tenure guaranteed; he accepted with relief.

Dom left Portland late in June, towing a small U-Haul trailer filled mostly with books and clothes. He remembered the move not as a defeat but as a fresh start, and said he had looked forward to life at Mountainview. His departure marks the contrast between an academic setting where he feared he had become too inconspicuous to secure a future and a new post that offered protection from that uncertainty.