April 19, 1938

Stanley Fish (April 19, 1938) probably should not need an introduction, but I found this Britannica article helpful and so might my readers:

'Stanley Fish, [was]...born ...[in], Providence, R.I.,...[This] American literary critic [is] particularly associated with reader-response criticism, according to which the meaning of a text is created, rather than discovered, by the reader; with neopragmatism, where critical practice is advanced over theory; and with the interpretive relationships between literature and law.

'Fish was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (BA., 1959) and Yale University (M.A., 1960; Ph.D., 1962). He taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Florida International University in Miami.

'In Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost” (1967), Fish suggested that the subject of John Milton’s masterpiece is in fact the reader, who is forced to undergo spiritual self-examination when led by Milton down the path taken by Adam, Eve, and Satan. In Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980), Fish further developed his reader-as-subject theory. The essays in Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (1989) discuss a number of aspects of literary theory. Fish’s subsequent works include There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too (1994), Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change (1995), The Trouble with Principle (1999), and How Milton Works.'

Stanley Fish is himself, one surmises, a text created partly by his wife, and this is relevant to our cat incident. As related in the authorized biography Stanley Fish, America's Enfant Terrible: The Authorized Biography (Gary A. Olson, 2016).

The Fishes flew from North Carolina to Riverside California in 1995 to embark on a visiting professorship at UC Riverside. There he was to conduct a seminar for the faculty on literary interpretation. Their dog flew on the same plane, but their cat was shipped to arrive the day following. A series of misadventures meant that Stanley and Jane Fish were unable to get to the airport to collect the cat, and this job was taken by their host, Bernd Magnus, another noted scholar.

Jane Fish, after all the confusion and adventure,  said there would be no more visiting professorships.