A thank you note
by Regis Martin
To the esteemed editors of the University Concourse:
How utterly flabbergasted I was to discover, upon reading through all those bracing and beguiling pages of your final blockbuster edition, that I’d been selected to receive the first annual Concourse Grand Prize!!! It quite unhinged me. Oh, what delicious shock waves it sent straight through to my head! And, yes, descending below to a few less sublime appetites as well. (Man may not live by bread alone, but, clearly, he cannot live without it.) But, oh, how droolingly delightful the prospect of dinner for two in Pittsburgh! Really, I cannot thank you enough.
And not just for the honor of being chosen, mind you—which honor I treasure more than I quite know how to say. (Although, it perhaps raises some doubt about the soundness of your judgment. Were there really no specimens more congruent with the aims of your exacting journal than my miserable couple hundred words?) Because the real distinction here is not so much the one you confer, however pleased I am to receive it, but the enterprise itself which you publish, whose standard of excellence and enjoyment genuinely endears it to so many of us intent on serious and civil conversation about things that matter.
Again, thank you all so much for the prize, which Roseanne and I so look forward to sharing (you may be sure that we’ll be toasting your wonderful generosity between courses of the most copious and sumptuous grub at the Grand Concourse Restaurant). But, above all, thanks for the Concourse itself, which has helped to elevate the level of discourse in Steubenville. God bless you all.
Regis Martin, Associate Professor of Theology
editors note:
The editors were happy to have imparted such distinct pleasure to our deserving Grand Prize recipient, though they were sorry to hear they had been party to the unhinging of so great a mind as Dr. Martin’s! Still, the lucidity and cogency of his thank-you note happily persuade us that the unfortunate phenomenon was a temporary one. We therefore hope no one will be dissuaded from competing with him for this year’s prize.
