Introducing on the, on the tape that today is Tuesday, January 23rd of
2007. And we're doing an interview for the Living History video project of
the Arizona State University Retirees Association. Um I'm Pam Stevenson
doing the interview. Manny Garcia is our videographer and I'd like for you
to introduce yourself. Yes, I'm Marvin Fisher. I came to a U in 1958 to
join the English Department with half time responsibilities also in the
humanities program. Uh Well, let's go back and start earlier. Um Let's get
you here. I'll start at the beginning. Tell me when you were born and
where you were born, when I was born. Well, I was born in the, that's the
last month of 1927 in Detroit Hospital. Uh
The Nuns at Providence Hospital probably recorded my accurate birthday as
November 20 my mother went in, she knew on the 19 th and it wasn't until I
was able to read a birth certificate that I realized that
uh she thought I arrived one day before
the actual delivery.
I had to when I reached the age of, I think my first driver's license
probably said that November 19, but I had to change everything to November
20th
for Social Security and other purposes. This was in Detroit, Michigan. I
went through the Detroit public schools
entered the University of Michigan
in
1945.
Ok. Finished one very heavy full time engine engineering curriculum
semester that is with many classes
a year's class compressed into one semester class because of the, the war
effort and uh the need for manpower. It was a heavy curriculum. I was
lucky to pass everything and I was not disappointed at having been drafted
at the completion of that first semester. Uh into what was the tail end of
World War Two. Let's go back and talk about growing up. You say you grew
up in Detroit, Michigan? But what did your family do for a living there?
Uh
My father had worked in several automobile factories. Uh during the
depression days, they opened, my mother and father opened a small
laundry and cleaning establishment and in the days of economic strife, he
returned to factory labor while my mother ran the store. I give you an
idea of what the uh economy was like in those days. I, I just had a little
encounter talk with
Ray Bowles, the barber who had cut my hair for the well over 40 years in
Tempe Center. And uh we both wish he was still on the job. But uh the
price of a haircut when he was growing up in Arkansas and the price of a
haircut. When I was growing up in Detroit, there was a barber shop right
next to our laundry and cleaning establishment was 25 cents. And if you
wanted to shave as well, that was 10 cents more. It was exactly the same.
Uh, I can remember when my father who was working at Ford Motor Company at
the Rouge plant, uh, came home exultant at the wage had been raised to $5
a day.
Um
I also,
now when I, when I was just discharged from the army a couple of months
earlier than, uh, ok, I expected to serve in order to return to college.
I wasn't sure that I wanted to continue in engineering, but I didn't know
what else to list as a major
engineering had served me well, while I was in the army,
I know that I was after basic training and after having been assigned
first to the fifth Infantry division, which was one of the first to have
gone overseas, landing in Ireland and, and then with additional training
in England and, uh in the forefront of the Normandy and I, I invasion
well, I probably still 18 or maybe,
well, but, but they're 19,
was thrust into this band of battle hardened veterans. Uh It wasn't by any
means bad and, and, uh I don't think there was any harassment because of
my youth. Uh I always regret that my mother didn't after I went off to
Minnesota for a phd eight years later that she didn't think all the
trapper I left behind first from the fifth division unit citations. And
then when the fifth was demobilized, I was assigned to the third infantry
division
of battle hardened veterans who had were at Anzio make making a, you know
, a second landing.
So that as luck would have it, I
I was twice assigned to divisions that had come, just come back from
overseas. But when it was my turn to go abroad,
I was packed up not to go to Europe, which the war was over in Europe by
this time. But to go to
the Aleutian Islands in Alaska where
I expected to serve at least 10 months to 12 months, testing winter
equipment and rain wear through all those arctic storms called willow.
In fact, that's what the operation was called. Operation. Willa Wa uh
we were, I was all packed up to go, let's say on a Friday night, we were
leaving Saturday morning. I just gotten into bed when my name came over
the battalion loudspeaker report to battalion headquarters. Uh I I did
quickly got dressed and they had gotten an urgent call for a topographical
draftsman to lay out
flame thrower and close combat courses, turning
Kentucky Tennessee orchard and farmland into uh you know, courses to be
used in training men to avoid injury in battle conditions.
Uh And uh why did I get that call because I taken, I, I had a, a good
grade in drafts in drafting and uh it was temporary duty. It did not
possess any possibility of promotion, but it was much easier. A group of
perhaps a dozen similarly assigned. Not all I was the only draftsman but,
and uh frequent
three day passes which could be combined
with a weekend to give five days away.
This was at what was then Camp Campbell on the Kentucky Tennessee border.
It's now Fort Campbell and uh headquarters of the
forgotten now, whether it's now the 82nd airborne or I think it's 101st.
But at any rate, uh they are in Iraq now. And so it was the third Infantry
Infantry Division which to which I was at this point assigned. Uh
I did that until my discharge uh before I was 20 to return to college,
my discharge came in May.
Yeah. And didn't enable me to start Af Freshh and I debated whether to
return to the University of Michigan. But since I knew that engineering
was not what I really wanted to do, the army gave me a chance to consider
the future. Uh
And with my father's help, I went to work for Hudson Motor working from,
for, from
May until
probably September or early October. But long enough to establish
uh did you had to get off probation to establish the uh the uh U Union
version of tenure? So that as soon as I had six months in, I could get
leave
for educational purposes. And I could also count my time in the army as
seniority.
So that when I decided to return and go to what was then the City
University in Detroit called Wayne University, it subsequently became a
state university.
Uh Let's back up a little bit. Um A couple of things, I want to go back
and talk about growing up in Detroit. But you mentioned in the army that
you were assigned to these units that we were on Normandy and, and, but
you didn't actually, no, no, no, they, they just returned from there. So
were you actually overseas when you joined them or no, my overseas
experience as you can see from my resume uh all occurred during my years
at A SU and I am very grateful to a su for those opportunities
to see the world who broaden my cultural experience uh to contribute to
universities. In one case, one that was really an emerging university, in
other cases, universities that had considerable centuries of history as an
army. Were you? Yes, you never did go overseas. No, I didn't.
But I have during the years of a su
spent four years at three different European universities. Talk about that
a little later. Why don't we talk again about you growing up? You, you
grew up in Detroit, you talk about during the depression years.
You said your mother ran a laundry and dry cleaning shop. Did she have
other Children? You? No, I was an only child. Um, so did you help out
there? Did you, did you work as a boy growing up? No, I delivered
newspapers. Which boys don't do anymore? Oh, it, it, it was work. And, uh
, well, II, I also remember, uh,
having completed my Sunday morning deliveries
and
probably what was it? December
7, 1941.
And then
an extra
was published because of Pearl Harbor of radio communication existed but
television didn't. And the
I spent about three times as long both delivering and selling extras on
the Japanese detailing a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Uh That must
have been an exciting day. What, what were you thinking during that time
when you were doing that? No one's been talking to you about it?
Well, I don't know, how could I tell what I, what I, I don't think I
thought all that much about. Uh uh the,
I may have made a week's income on that day.
I have a, a friend who, who, who uh designs and sells T shirts,
particularly at major sporting events and has
copyrighted in some of the slogans and logos. So that actually,
I don't think he, he couldn't break into the A U
monopoly, but Phoenix Suns and the Diamondbacks and what he does outside
Marley's when there's a basketball game is the same kind of thing that I
did. Um selling the extras on Pearl Harbor day. Uh, except
my income was probably in, uh,
dollars that never exceeded
probably less than $10. And, uh, uh, I think he can make 2000 on a, on a
good night. Well, tell me about that day. Did you get, how did you hear
about that? That they were gonna do an extra, that the bombing had
happened? Uh, actually by, by telephone from the, uh, what, what, what,
what do you be called? The uh uh uh uh the manager who uh ran the, the
neighborhood delivery station? Come on back. We've got work to do.
I'm not sure that I heard a radio report. Uh But I read every p every line
of that extra that came out.
Uh
You know, that reminds me of something, something more and maybe you don't
want to jump ahead to this. But
when we came to Arizona in 1958
we spent a year living in what was Victory Village. Uh
Not the concert huts that dotted so many campuses housing junior faculty
and graduate students, but in this case, frame buildings um resembling
apartments, perhaps, only one story but not with it with one or two
bedrooms perhaps and one bath and, and so on. Uh It was a while before I
learned that these buildings had been moved to the A SU campus from a
location uh on the Hilo River, probably down near Sako to where they had
been used for Japanese internment.
So that my first year at ASU, I didn't think of it at the time uh was
connected with my 1941
experience of disseminating the news of Japanese internment. It was the
penance I served for the American policy that sent American citizens into
concentration camps. Uh I don't know if you remember a film that was made.
Uh Dennis Quaid was in it called Remember the Paradise. And it, it had to
do with a uh an, a, an Anglo uh
member of the army who was in love and married a Japanese American woman
who had to move with her parents into one of these internment camps
and her first child was born. But those interior signs,
I don't remember what theater we saw, my wife and I saw this in but it was
in Tempe. Uh that was,
we remember it all too well. Mhm Yeah. Um Well, going back to when you
were growing up, um you know, it was the depression years. Do you remember
going to school? Did you go to a, a big school, a small school?
Uh I went to a neighborhood elementary school
then to a what was called in the educational terminology at times, an
intermediate school. The the, the, the elementary I went to and uh
one,
one through eight I believe,
then I spent one year at an intermediate school as it was called, which
had ninth grade and then to a high school that had 1011, 12. Uh,
the high school, it was one of the oldest in Detroit,
at least three stories high. I don't remember there being an elevator
and by contemporary standards, it would be an archaic building. It doesn't
stand anymore as I think, I said it was one of the earliest eastern high
school it was called. Uh,
I suppose we might compare it although it is much older than any of the
Phoenix High schools like Central and North that still stand. But both of
those have been uh north was virtually rebuilt. Uh Well, the Eastern High
no longer stands. Uh It has been supplanted though I have not seen the
school myself by Martin Luther King High School when you were going to
school was the school segregated then. No. Uh
but
in my graduating class and we I I don't recall
segregate, their schools were not segregated in Detroit, except by
neighborhood at times
and at, at athletic
events, you had a sense of this. Uh
There were,
there were one or two high schools that were probably 98%
African American had. But
in my graduating class
and I don't know how many there were in, in, in total, but there
or at least 12 African American graduates
who skipped the graduation ceremony because there was a race riot going on
in Detroit and it was not safe.
Uh
The race riot was triggered by
a rumor, not an occurrence
that two white sailors had, throwing a black woman and it might the rumor
may even have been pregnant black woman off
into the Detroit River off the Belle Isle Bridge. Ok.
The entrance to that bridge was at the intersection of Jefferson and East
Grand Boulevard.
My high school was about
two miles north of there on East Grand Boulevard and on Cross Street
called Mac. So that was very close to the occurrence. And uh I don't know
whether we ever got a, a truly reliable record of the casualties in that
riot.
It was one of two that I remember from my
adolescent years
um
riots that were like out in the streets, burning cars. Yes. Yes. And uh ok.
And they, a second such instance,
uh
occurred
during the years I was associated with ASU
but at the conclusion
a year that my wife and I and our Children had been in Norway where I
taught at the University of Oslo. Uh
oh,
our three Children went back with my mother in law who would come for a
visit so that my wife and I uh could stop on the way back
to OK,
to visit places we had been to earlier and people we knew while we were
still in Europe
in Greece, Dubrovnik,
uh Utrecht in London. And it was while we were in Holland, one of the few
and not all European cities had Sunday newspapers
that I suddenly saw in a Sunday newspaper, front page race riot, you know
, race riot in Detroit. I could make, you know, make out what and I
recognize the scene of devastation we could not get through by telephone
to Detroit where
two of our Children remained with my parents and the oldest went with her
grandmother back to Minneapolis.
Uh We couldn't make contact by, by telephone
until a couple of days had passed. And uh when we did return to Detroit,
the street that I had seen in the newspaper looked like a war zone
buildings gutted, burned out, uh,
smashed, you've seen television. Uh, and that was in the sixties, that
would have been 67 but I didn't realize that they had race riots like that
in the forties also when you were in high school.
So that must have been pretty traumatic for you. I mean, where, where was
it safe where you were living? You know,
also in the,
the period that we were in Greece from 61 to 63
there were race riots in other cities
and uh
we returned in 63
in time to
witness
the assassination of John Kennedy and subsequently
Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King in quick succession.
Uh,
my wife was appearing in an as u dramatic production on the night that
Robert Kennedy
was shot. Or maybe it was, maybe,
do you remember what John Kennedy was killed in 93?
6363.
No, and that was in June, I believe
a bit. But I know that that night
production,
which was of the play Liz Arata about Greek women banding together and
denying conjugal rights to their husbands who are going off to fight a war
in Athens versus Sparta. And
the play is about withholding sex until men
cease to participate.
Organized murder. Uh
I
and
those were, the years from 61 to 63 were easy years to be abroad. American
prestige was high. The popularity of President Kennedy was great. Although
I remember when we moved into our first apartment, having a, I had studied
Greek on LP records before going. So I was able to have a conversation
with a man who we moved into a brand new apartment,
no closets. You know, we had to buy arm wars uh into his store clothes and
uh
uh but there was electrical work that needed to be completed or it was
even mortar, stopping up the drains in the bathroom, sinks and bathtub. So
I had to buy tools to chip the mortar out of the bathtub drain. Uh Well, I
had had this conversation with the electrician.
Oh, had high hopes for President Kennedy. But he asked me, what kind of
school does this or do his Children attend? Would they go to private or
public schools? I don't think I knew at the time. But you know that those
are the questions that they were asking in Europe early on. I don't think
they're old enough to go to school first, but they weren't old enough. No.
No, they weren't. They weren't. Well, let's go back a little bit and talk
about your grad. What year was it that you graduated from high school?
1945? And then what, you decided to go on to college? Um, had your, your
parents gone to college? No, I was the first. Well, the only one in my
immediate family. Why did you decide that you were going to go to college
?
I don't think it was ever a question. Uh
Immigrant families
often have this as a Sinqua non for their Children and whether it's
college or not, it is an educational level higher than their parents
detained.
Uh
For one year, I worked when I got out of the army, I, I worked, I
mentioned at Hudson Motor and uh it was in a department that my father
also worked in. Um my father was born in Poland,
deserted the Polish Army
went to Germany,
uh
had a quarrel
with the, oh, an officer
in a and
socialist party organization
that he worked for. And
yeah,
when he was not being paid for the work he did uh the altercation led the
blows and he, he left there after decking the, the guy who, who said, uh
uh you don't have any money coming to you. Uh When he went to France and
ultimately from France,
uh left for Canada. And then
um after working for a time in Canada crossed over the Detroit River. I
don't know about whether or not both tunnel and bridge existed by then.
And I can't be sure that
and there were no border guards. Uh
He may have been an illegal immigrant
when I told Harry Mitchell that at his victory celebration. So trying to
soften his view of uh
current immigration problems, his eyes grew wide. Uh
He became a citizen.
I have this paper. It's probably
in the early 19 twenties.
My mother who came to the United States in 1919, my parents
met though had they had come from different
cities in Poland, they met in Detroit. But what I was getting to is that
my father had one year of night school in English.
And I was amazed
before the start of the work day, people had the morning newspaper, uh
workers who were born, particularly in, in the uh
oh
West Virginia. And uh the Deep South
would come over and ask him what a word in the morning newspaper meant
because he always read and he always read. Well, uh and I remember that
looking forward to Sunday mornings because he would read to me for an hour
out of, you know, it was not a work day and we were in bed together and he
would read Jack London or some other kind of adventure story.
Uh
Maybe I think of Jack London because at one point in the 19 nineties, we
had a department chair in the English department who had never had a
course in English. She was a dance major as an undergraduate and took a
doctorate in linguistics.
But she thought that Jack was
a contemporary American author. I just happened to come up, you know, and
I could, you know, remember it, you know, at ages
four and five listening to the Call of The Wild and other stories.
So your father was somewhat literary even though he didn't have a formal
education. True. So you grew up with books and yes, yes. And uh
if anything, I'm flooded now with reading matter that comes into the house
daily and, and uh magazines that I can't even get to. I think the
president administration has uh
probably quintupled my membership in and contributions to
conservation and social action
activities, most of whom publish journals
that I sympathize with but cannot begin to read in their entirety. But the
,
the magazines that came into our house nowhere approach the kind of
reading matter that's available today. But you always did have reading
matter.
Uh
I just
recall an incident probably from the early days of, of the depression. We
lived at that time in a flat above a row of commercial stores and its role
also included a large Chinese restaurant, a few doors away. So that down
below, we were, as I say on the second floor, there was a, a back porch.
Uh,
in those days, I don't think we had a refrigerator but an ice box,
something that my wife and I got used to using the first year that we were
in Greece. We lived on the sixth floor and Iceman who also a half owner of
a little grocery store across the street was not permitted to use the
elevator. So he had to bring up his,
I, I don't know whether we got
10 kg blocks of ice. That's probably £25
up six flights of stairs, put it in the refrigerator,
but we had an ice box and in winter, we could store more food because we
put an orange crate on the window sill so that you, you, you raised the
window to take out the temperatures never, rarely fell
below 35 or 40. And of course, they were much colder at night. But I
remember standing on this balcony
and there were big trash containers down below concrete with metal doors,
a door for removing trash. Like the uh
it was hinged and you lifted it upward, deposit trash through a hinged
door at the top. And they were at the height of today, a child couldn't
open the top door. I remember looking down one morning and seeing
the most got
hollow eyed man, I could have envisioned
not only having lifted the top but in
extracting the edible trash, including the restaurant
discards,
there was a small Kroger store, not a supermarket but a Kroger store also
in this block. So, there were,
you know, unusable or at least unsalable vegetables and like in there. And
, uh, actually he, he, he was frightening. I called my mother because I, I
didn't, I was too young to fully understand what the depression meant. And
she came out, looked down and saw, I went back and closed up the loaf of
bread. She opened that morning and I still remember it was the brand that
the Lone Ranger on radio advertised and called him and dropped the bread.
Yeah,
a memory. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's iconic.
I also remember a neighbor who was quite a tinkerer,
persuading my father
who was one of the few people to, he had a 1928 Chevrolet. This man had
brewed up
I
and fuel made up of, you know, of
it wasn't ethanol, but it was a home made ethanol, some kind of
distillation of uh potato peelings and the like of of, of uh uh
vegetable discards. And uh
they put it into our car and tested it
and it was a long time before that car could be made to run. Normally it
just jerked. It resisted the full utilization of the fuel. It was the most
there were bumps on smooth roads. You understand what I mean? The car
acted as if there were, it just jerked. So, so it had its comedy as well
as its uh pathos.
So you sort of grew up through the depression and then the war years when
you were thinking about what you were gonna do when you grew up, what did
you think that you would do?
Well, I,
that I re entered college first as a psychology major.
And, uh, you know, I wanted to know more about how the human mind worked,
but the first psychology course, never got out of the inner ear. It was
much more physiological
approach. And,
you know, education is often shaped by the experiences
of your peers who are in different areas. And I found that in conversation
,
some of the people who were in English and reading British and American
and European novels had far more to talk about than I ever learned in my
psychology class. So I somewhere probably in the second year switched to
English, which was an undergraduate major.
And uh but I continued
through to graduation, spending the summers returning to the job in the
factory because I had tenure and
uh and the pay was good. It was better than I could make uh in any other.
OK.
I should also say that after I got out of the army, I worked for a short
time until I felt this. No, this was no longer, this was not what I wanted
to do. Uh One of the reasons I, I decided to go to college in Detroit is
coming out of the army. I wanted to have a car at the University of
Michigan. Freshmen could not have cars. Uh,
and women could not enter the Memorial Union through the front door, you
know, just a, a kind of, uh, old boy prohibition,
those kind of adolescent and, and, or maybe they're more than adolescent.
You know, it,
it's almost like fraternity hijinks. Uh,
and with a car I first got a job
collecting.
It wasn't a furniture company. It was a furniture outlet
that sold, I didn't know the word at the time and I wonder if you know it
now, Borax Furniture.
Do you know what Man Bora furniture is?
Yeah. Ok. Cheap and cheaply made furniture often sold in the poorer areas
for small weekly payments
as low as 50 cents a week
were a small and a down payment. But the furniture was so cheap that
the down payment in the first couple of months probably paid for the
furniture. Uh
90% of it probably was sold in the poor black neighbors.
And as soon as I learned what the economy behind this uh
industry and collection was,
I was deeply troubled by the
have by the welcome. I usually got in. Coming to the door rarely, you know
, was there.
Uh you know, any kind of
in hospitality.
I also
remember seeing some of my rounds
the Saturday morning,
uh
attendance of the origins of Black Muslim movement and was fascinated by
the uh the way the men and the women
dressed. It was
the first,
the first meeting place. I don't know whether it was probably called
Mosque of Elijah Muhammad.
Uh
I,
oh,
well, I, that was a AAA an experience. I don't know how many months I
worked at that, but I,
that was in an experience as important as the one I just described seeing
the starving man picking through trash to find something edible. Uh and
knowing how exploitative this industry was.
No, I didn't. I much preferred factory labor to uh
collecting in the valley. The Valley was also known as Paradise Valley. It
is,
it is ians away from the Paradise Valley. You know,
that was why you were in college that you were doing that.
No, it was before I returned to college. I never did it while I was in
college, while you were in college, you came back and worked at the
factory. Yes. Let me also say that
when I was first
took leave to return to college, uh
The Union Stewart,
the UAW Cio uh who, who was in some ways very effective in his job. But he
also uh
was taking advantage of the economy.
He wrote numbers in the, in the plant. You know, do you know what the
numbers?
It, it's a lot, a lottery. The uh uh you can take three digits and play it
or you could get the three digits and box it, which meant any three digits
in any form, uh, could be a winning combination. Uh, and, you know, it, it
, it, it, people become addicted to, uh, you know, as just as they come,
become addicted to, to our lottery. But that was, that was more in cents
than in dollars. And, uh, he offered me the concession at college.
I, I wasn't gonna do that, uh,
for many reasons among them the way
this is exploitation of those who can least afford it. So when you went
back to college and became an English major, what were you thinking you
were gonna do with your college degree? Uh I was interested in university
teaching, but by the time I
entered a master's degree program, I came to know many of the young phds
in the department who had come, who had not been, been able to come to
fight
permanent employment. They, they had a whole uh
I would say at least 30 people, maybe 40 who were hired with phds as
instructors with no guarantee of continuity. Some on one year, some on
three year contracts,
there were no teaching assistants at the time. I don't think that Wayne
had a phd program in English. It developed afterward just as didn't have a
phd program in English. When I came here in 1958 it was established later
in the sixties.
And
so that university teaching was not
and economically attractive. It was
maybe emotionally, intellectually attractive.
Uh
during the time that I worked
my masters. I also got what would now be called teaching assistantship.
But since there was no phd program, I was also an instructor, which is how
I came to know many of these who had phds. And when I saw how many of them
did not have a future that they could count on. I decided I would, while
teaching two classes and completing a master's degree, I would also take
it was 10 hours a semester and I could complete
what the college of education required for a high school credential. In
that time, I also did some
practice teaching in the high schools and some substitute teaching. My
experience in the high schools even in,
well, it would be the early fifties, 51 or 52
was enough to, to tell me that
this was not, uh
this was a life of personal sacrifice and that
the problems faced, particularly in
urban inner city schools
could quickly bring on burnout.
I won't go through any of those experiences with you. You want to extend
this beyond the, the time we have. And of course,
this was a period of far less violence than you now have in high school
situations. Drugs existed but not
and so conspicuous a form as they exist today.
Uh
When it opportunity
came to teach in a
uh an unusual form of higher education, I don't know whether you noticed
on my resume that there is a year spent at something called the General
Motors Institute. It was a technical school that offered bachelor's
degrees in engineering
and in business or sales.
Ok. It involved,
I think we call it Cooper education that is students would spend but say
two months in the classroom a month
in the factory or in the sales outlet, they would write what we called co
ordination reports that a
dealt with their real life experiences or problems or assignments that
they had in the,
in the various General Motors factories. And they were
far more active and prominent than they are today.
And you know, they, they included not only the automobile manufacturers
but uh Saginaw Gray Iron Dow Chemical,
the General Motors Institute in Flint. Michigan was bounded by streets
with names like
Chevrolet Dupont
Buick uh as a as a place to grow, to spend your time in
Flint was probably
the most complete company town I could have imagined. Uh I can see why
Michael Moore who lived his youth and early life in Flint focuses on the
subject he makes documentaries about.
So after you got out of uh just one year there. So let's talk about after
you got your, your masters and you were working at the, the Institute
there. Yeah, General Motors Institute. Um Did you have career plans at
that point of what you were going to do? Well, Flint was so gray and grim
a city and it also was one of the few
uh really deadly tornadoes
to hit a shelf.
Central Michigan devastated Flint, uh,
the streets
as short as two blocks away from where I lived where flattened by the kind
of tornado you associate with the, with Kansas and Nebraska. And, uh, it
made it even, even grimmer, uh,
from a colleague at General Motors Institute. I
who came to teach there
from an American studies program at the University of Minnesota. He hadn't
finished his phd and unfortunately, he never did. But from his discussion
of that program, I thought that was the kind of doctorate I wanted to take
, it was an interdisciplinary program combining uh literature, history,
philosophy,
our history, economics.
In other, in other words, a broad
cultural
exploration
of the past and present of the society we live in.
And I decided after a year to
attend University of Minnesota, which was one of the pioneer programs in
American studies. Uh
If you look at my resume, you will note how many publications
do not necessarily focus on purely literary subjects. Even my doctoral
dissertation
on this Detroit was probably a factor in this was and European reaction to
what were really the beginnings of American industrialization.
I focused particularly on the area and years between 1830 1860
which was in literary terms, a kind of golden age or did you use the title
of a famous book, The The Flowering of New England? Uh But at the same
time, the handwriting of the American future was already on the walls. And
Europeans noted it sometimes with admiration, sometimes with shock and
despair about what was happening, let's say to women in the Lowell textile
mills. Uh
And uh uh some of the most interesting courses I took were in our history
, in economic history. Uh
So did you leave your job to go then? Yes, I did. OK. To go up to the
University of Michigan, Minnesota. Minnesota. Ok.
And what year was that, that would have been uh 1953.
And I was at Minnesota for 53 to 58.
Came to a U in 58 met my wife at the University of Minnesota where uh she
had been a theater major
but had taken graduate work in English
uh from some of the
most eminent critics, particularly of American literature. Uh While you
were at the University of Minnesota working on your phd, what were you
doing to earn a living
again, a teaching assistant initially? And I think after the first two
years of the last three as instructor, which is uh uh and I somewhat
higher rate pay. But instructor in, in a there were what she went to at
least three choices for fulfilling the freshman English requirement.
They were on a quarter system. One was English ABC which really was,
which really focused on
uh literature
and,
and some as a in, in uh British among British writers, American writers,
uh international writers it carried three hours of credit,
but you met the class five times a week you've met every day. In other
words, you uh students
had to want to take literature. Let's say it's the most, it was the most
selective. Uh There were also grade or, or, or entry level requirements
like SATS or something.
A second choice
was Engineering English, which I did, I think for two years and after my
year, you know, at, at General Motors Institute, uh I knew more about
engineering English than the two men who wrote, ran the engineering
English program was Engineering English uh uh co col English taught in the
College of Engineering to engineering
students. In other words, technical writing.
And only in the last three years did I
yet to teach? What interested me most and, and
uh literature of aesthetic and historical significance?
Then the uh there was a third
and it was called communication.
Uh
it met three times a week for three hours credit. It included,
it's really what that as U would be the equivalent of rhetoric and
composition
little if any emphasis on the aesthetic qualities, uh
more on more formulaic forms of writing,
description, exposition, analysis.
Oh yeah,
it wasn't
as historically based as
some rhetoric programs
are and uh
it was less intellectually challenging.
There was something else and I don't know whether as U is developing that
also there was a general college which was a two year associate of arts
program. In other words, a community college, right on the main campus
that was in the 50 s and I guess there's something like that plan for
downtown. So, what made you decide to leave Minnesota then in 1958
58? Ok. That was, uh,
I guess my wife and I were 31 years old or approaching it. And, uh, it
spent the bulk of our lives in the Midwest.
I had an offer in the same year from the University of Wisconsin.
Uh I had an an oh another from Appleton. Uh I had an invitation to
interview at UCL A
in economic history based on
the dissertation I had written even before I published,
was published in the sixties as a book. We'll get to that I hope published
by Oxford University Press, which I was teaching in Norway at the time
that book appeared. And uh Homer Durham uh
uh wrote to me saying, uh you know, today we open the new College of
Business Building that's now the old College of Business building. And I
received a copy of your book.
I don't know which is the more important event, you know, Homer was trying
to build not the new American University but the Athens of the West.
So if you were interviewing at all these other places, how did you happen
to end up at a su
Yeah,
because we had never been to Arizona, uh because it seemed like uh you
know, a, a new experience, obviously, my mother in law had come here for,
uh, as a winter visitor several times.
Aye,
the salary was, you know, by contemporary standards, amazingly low, but by
the standards, well,
it was higher than the University of Wisconsin offered. And how much was
it? Do you mean? How much did I think I was going to get, or how much the
contract said?
58 $55,850
for an academic year. Uh I not only exceeded the requirements, I answered
an ad in a uh professional
journal or probably it, it came to the to the placement, they had a very
active placement office at the University of Minnesota uh that called for
it. Uh phd or a BD.
I had just completed my phd, I already had two publications, publications
were not required as they would be. Now, even for an entry level assistant
professorship and in my conversation,
I may have had two conversations, one with because of the,
the position involved half time in English and half time in humanities,
humanities was and directed by Dorothy Schilling. I don't think I met her
before I came here. So that my, my only conversation I think was with
Arnold Tilden who was Dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences and, and uh uh
and I was told by telephone that the salary was going to be 5850. When I
came here, the contract read 5450.
Uh, that's not, it's almost 10% but it's not, it, you know, it,
yeah, I pointed this out to,
to the Dean Tilton and he said, you know, we have made more appointments
in this year than we have made any other year in the history of this
institution. And this was a slip up that I apologize for and it was
immediately change to the original.
But, you know, if I hadn't pointed it out, uh And
um
the irony of course is that on the way out,
I got a more
costly and troubling bait and switch
and, but I don't think we wanna go to that yet. Let's not go to that.
Let's talk about coming into a su. So you decided to accept the offer and
come to a su and what were you going to be teaching here? Uh Initially,
you know, because
had no big graduate program, new assistant professors often taught three
composition courses and maybe one literature. In my case, the literature
was in the humanities program and I had 22 courses in English 101 English.
12, a little later, they added a kind of honors English called 105
in the humanities program.
Uh So they actually hired then by the English Department and Humanities.
Humanities was not a department. Uh It director Dorothy Schilling uh was
in the English Department.
Uh
She did not have a broad interdisciplinary background herself, but in a
very mechanical fashion. Felt this program should focus on
the best of
uh literature,
art,
philosophy,
but not touch history, the social sciences. Uh uh the, the fourth, it was
music, uh literature,
art, music, philosophy. And when I tried to, but literature in some kind
of social context,
her answer was simply I know that in some programs, they include the
social sciences, but we don't. And that was.
So when you took the position, had you, did you come out to a su to
interview? Had you actually been here? That would have been too expensive
for the uh budget at the time. Ah It was uh you know, the a dossier plus
uh
dossier including a letter of application and then, and then one telephone
conversation.
So when did you actually come out to a SU and what on the hottest day of
July of uh 1958?
And I
um
drove carrying as many of our worldly goods as I could pack into a,
a dodge station wagon
with a car top carrier and a U haul trailer behind
my wife was two young Children.
Flew here a week later. Uh
Our youngest daughter was born here in 1961.
So what was your first impression then when you arrived out here?
How do people?
Well, I hope we go call back. Uh
I called AAA to get the best routing to come through here. Whoever
put me through the Salt River canyon did not know and carry, you know,
with, with the kind of load I was carrying would not um did not know what
that route entails. And also there was road work going on so that there
was so much stopping and starting. Fortunately, I had started out with AAA
gallon container of iced lemonade.
So along the route, I added water to that at every opportunity, I didn't
have one of those desert bags which I acquired after we got here. Uh
By the time I reached the Salt River Canyon, that lemonade was very dilute.
And I wouldn't have gotten through that canyon if I hadn't been able to
use that jug
to pour into the radiator.
But I didn't know how badly I strained the car in making that trip after
my wife came and, and, and we settled in,
we decided that we could uh
leave Tempe and spend
several weeks in Northern California where her father
had a industrial consultant business in
San Francisco and a large house with a cantilever swimming pool in Marin
County up in uh
the wood of the mountain side on the way back. Even without the load, the
car threw a rod and the Salt River Canyon was the last gasp for that car.
Uh
I pulled into Victory Village,
the first man I encountered
was tanned bare chested,
but obviously a weightlifter. And I thought to myself, well, this is a guy
who helped me unload. Uh
I should have known that his shaved chest was not a good omen. Uh,
he was in the College of Business.
Uh, he said, well, I'd help you but I just took a shower.
I did get some help from a man who turned out to be in the, in the
department of English.
Certainly a good Samaritan.
His was one of the two funerals I attended between Christmas and New
Year's of this year.
Uh You want to name him George Herman.
Uh
So you arrived at Victory Village, when did you actually get onto campus
and see where you were gonna be working? What was that like the next day?
Uh
The English Department was housed in what is now the University club.
The first office I had
was sort of, well, if you walked into the, you know, at one time was the
old, it was an agriculture building. Uh
As you walked in through the front door,
the first office on the right was the main office of the English
Department.
Uh an office that you entered, not at the front, but at the uh it would be
the south side of the building would be the latter part of what's now the
bistro.
And that, that was my first office
shared with two other people.
Uh uh
I, I never dreamed
you'd be able to order a drink in that, in that building or
that they would ever go beyond the huge evaporative cooler
that chilled one half of the building while the other half roasted.
Bye. And so that was where your office was. Is that also where your, your
classes were held? Uh There were, I, I had one class in a room
immediately adjacent, just separated by a wall from that office. I had
classes in old main classrooms.
Uh
What were you teaching? But the humanities classes were down in. What's
the name may have changed now? Because it was, when I got here, I think it
was called the Academic Services building. It had been, I think the older
college business
and you know, it, it is adjacent to and, and, and, and, and uh I think
connected to the uh
administration building.
Uh
I'm sorry,
what were you teaching? Composition classes and the humanities? And I also
introduced a new course
with shared responsibility
from a man with a doctorate in music named uh Alton or Alden Bucher. Uh He
had no broad knowledge of American Society at all. It was called the
Humanities and America and then one semester of humanities in modern
America. Uh
uh he left here early afterward
uh to become a dean at one of the
Pennsylvania State Colleges. But as I said, he had no interdisciplinary
background at all and
uh a very great tendency to
tilt the chorus to popular culture.
It's not that I had a, you know, a more intellectual or aesthetic
orientation. It was that I had a broader cultural orientation, my
conception of humanities or humanity or interdisciplinary humanities.
What sort of, what came later to be called cultural studies, who was
chairman of the Department when you came port,
who also did not have a degree in English,
but uh degree in Spanish,
a phd in Spanish,
as did her husband
who may also have taught French. Uh He had already died when I got here,
but
Kise and her husband were colleagues of Grady Gamage. When Grady Gamage
was president at Flagstaff
and uh the
foreign language Department at ASU
bridled at bringing husband and wife into the same department. They
felt that this,
what's the term
blocked on it for the moment? Obviously not incestuous but nepotism. Yes,
exactly. Uh And uh
oh, yes, I think, I think that also uh a great many people in the English
Department at that time
had shared
with Lewis Myers, Mac Myers as he was known, experienced during World war
I I in uh
cryptography in Washington,
uh in a kind of uh early form of, of uh intelligence and
that,
that Mac headed and uh it included Fred Ostenberg and uh Katherine Turner.
And I think K had also been in that
in that program. And uh no, I, I may be wrong on that. Uh But who was the
Dean of the College Arnold Tilden? And of course, Grady Gamage was
president, uh had the college be coming. It was a su university, was it?
No, it wasn't, it was I, I,
I think my first contract
Arizona State College, however,
my wife was very quickly recruited and that's not even the, the right word
conscripted
into a faculty wives force
whose task it was
to knock on doors in Maricopa County advocating
support. I don't remember for what proposition it was. But as you may know
, Arizona State became a university
in a by pro by the plebiscite, the voters had to approve it. There was
intense opposition from PM car and especially centered in the University
of Arizona.
Uh my wife was not a very political person and this was a uh a difficult
kind of thing for her to, to get used to. But she was told in clear terms
, your husband's future depends on it. And uh there was an incident at one
of the, one of the first social gatherings up in the
what now the alumni lounge?
Is there a ballroom in the m as well as the alumni lounge.
It is probably in the ballroom and
my wife was talking to uh uh somebody else in the line she she had met and
you know, we we came without
right out of grad school and did not have money to put down as a house
payment uh with a va loan I did, I was able to pay for a home the next
year
to make a down payment on a very miniscule down payment.
But in that first year we did not set foot in a real house. There was no
social entertainment. Uh, the only house that I recall our setting foot
and was a, a party given by our Children
on the evening of the first football game. And it included, uh, you know,
a barbecue dinner. I don't know, but you had to get to the stadium on time
for the football game. So it was the,
everything had to be cleared by, let's say 637.
Uh
But my wife was describing to somebody she had met or maybe had known
before in the line what things were like in Victory Village? For one thing
, the archery range was just behind where
our house stood and where the clothes lines were.
So you had to be careful and not to be out there hanging clothes while a
stray arrow might have been directed uh at the close lines.
And of course, these were cooled by evaporative cooler and
they were very affordable. We were grateful
the rent was something between 50 $60 a month in utilities included, it
made that less than $6000
stretch pretty far.
Uh But, but she didn't know that she was within earshot of K Gage who was
listening to this and who as she the punch said, I'm sure they're not that
bad.
You know, the housing in Victory Village. Uh You know, it, it was uh you
know, the president's lady and did you get to know King. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes.
I'm glad we weren't on their list that they made
church Sunday calls
unannounced.
Do I have to say more?
I mean, not even a phone call,
but we did, we didn't, we didn't go to Victory Village for that. No. No.
So, do you have any other memories of, of gray damage or a cake damage?
Yeah.
A K was, I think, in many ways more sophisticated than radio.
Uh, Grady, I was quite authoritarian and, and uh
um
it was not an institution
in which academic freedom was understood.
And uh we tenure
only a semblance of tenure, euphemistically called stability of employment
existed. But the atmosphere, even among
people who describe themselves as democrats
found tenure an unacceptable form of
uh illegitimate job security.
And
I do remember
issues of
today would have been serious infringements of academic freedom
involving
dismissal of a faculty member in the College of Business
who had just been promoted to associate professor the year before
for
giving too many low grades based upon
uh an end of semester project or term paper, uh
which too many business students did not perform well on. Uh
And when I told
when I heard of this from my colleague in Victory Village Village, who was
from the College of Business and who hadn't helped me when I first arrived.
But we became friends and my wife baby sat sometimes with discomfort at
their place and they exchanged the service when we wanted to go out. But
at their place,
my wife always shuddered at the
sort of glass aquarium that housed
snake, a live white rat and a cat perched on top.
Uh, but yeah.
So when you came here, did you intend to stay here all these years, or?
What were your thoughts when you moved here? Well,
I did have the opportunity to move and was very much attracted to a
position. I was offered at the University of California Davis in 1970
I'd gone there as a visiting professor. They were on a quarter system.
After the first quarter, the man directing the program in American studies
whom I had known at Minnesota and where it was the kind of American
studies program
uh I was familiar with
uh
he did not want to continue in this administrative position. I took it
over and
in the spring of 70 was asked to stay on. But our oldest daughter
who was in school at as in Tempe
uh
had moved out of the dorm
and we were troubled
her decision to move in with a boyfriend, a colleague in political science
told me
he is suspected of a small time drug dealer, but also his advised in
political science. And we knew we had to come back. And by the time we got
back that relationship was over and she was willing to continue in college.
Uh but not to live in the dorm and
she did choose a place we didn't approve of, which did turn out to be as I
felt insecure. But that's another story, but that's why we came back. I
also, after coming back was offered invited to apply
for the directorship of the American studies program from which I
graduated at Minnesota.
We had just put in a swimming pool.
Uh This is our second house in Tempe,
uh where we lived for 29 years before the house that I
now still live in. My wife died 3.5 years ago.
Uh And we did not at that point
long to return to Minnesota winters.
Uh and both these positions, obviously Davis, which had a,
it was the agricultural branch, the land grant branch of the University of
California system. It has risen in other areas of research as rapidly
as, as has but not,
doesn't have the numbers the size, but it also has a med school, a
veterinary school and, you know, all all of the and obviously a very large
agriculture department. Uh It was a, a uh
research one before as was
uh I think we're running a little bit long on this. Let me, let's get on
to some of your um your career here at a su and what, what are some of the
outstanding points that you wanted to be sharing with you? Uh
Well, you know, in a, in a way. Uh Yeah, I'm grateful to a su for having
given me the opportunity to explore other opportunities while maintaining
a base here. Uh During the sixties,
we spent two years in Greece on a Fulbright where I had a major challenge
uh to
introduce
the serious study of American literature
in a department
where there were no Greek
faculty members on permanent appointment.
The department was headed by the director of the British Council, which is
a cultural organization
to a greater degree than U SI S United States Information Service or USA.
The same thing by one letter away which mixes a little more politics into
its programs than the British Council does. But the British Council was
the department chairman and he handled the British half. I handled the
American. I was lucky enough to have a very talented group of students. I
taught
both third year and fourth year students. And then in the second year, I
offered my own
on a voluntary basis, the second year class to prepare the students for
opera division work to give them more writing experience, expository
writing experience. Uh
I said I had such an exceptionally
eager and qualified group of students. Uh at
we have had
three students from that university
uh
take doctorates in English at a su or all of them in American literature.
I should say
one of my original students from 1961 to 63 who's already retired from
Aristotle University in Solani, another who has retired from the
University of Athens. Uh At one point I had six former students, two
generations as it were, who were teaching at the Aristotle University and
who had established the most prominent American studies journal in the
Balkans Hellenic journal of American studies.
Soliciting contributions from not only
local but throughout Europe and the British Isles. Uh
you know, the, the greatest teaching
honor
I've ever received was Yeah, in a letter a couple of years ago from the
last doctoral candidate whose work I directed, she is at University in
Turkey. E many Turkish words are formed by compression of its Aegean like
the restaurant in Tempe is called E which is E uh and
during the years that she was
graduate student that would have been 1992 to 96 working on her doctorate
at
she had the opportunity to visit to meet either two or three of my former
Greek students.
And uh also
at a conference that was held in Volvos, Greece, she met 1/4 who was at
the University of Athens. So she met these Greek older Greek counterparts.
And two years ago, her apartment in Izmir, which was the Greek city of
Smyrna.
Uh
I
had what they called a cultural studies conference
participants from throughout Europe and perhaps some from the United
States. And I know that another of my former students from ASU had gone to
that conference,
the chairman told this woman's name is Dilek told Dilek that
knowing that she had some acquaintances at Aristotle University in Greece.
There are two young women from that department here presenting papers.
Would you like to meet them? And, oh, yes, she was very interested. Well,
she said
she pointed out on the conference program where they were and they didn't
meet afterward. And the Turkish woman introduced herself and then said, I
know I have some friends in your department and you mentioned these people
and as you may know, Greek and Turkish relations are not without friction
,
Greece was and they'll never let you forget it. 500 years under Turkish
domination.
And uh you know, the name for this period is in Greek, the Turko Gratia,
which the Turk
uh
the young women, they both turned out to be doctoral students. And I
imagine at 26 years old, maybe or 25. So we were surprised
that they knew, uh that they like knew some of their teachers. And then
one of them said, and you know, these are young women, I've, I've never
met.
And this is what, 45 6 years after the fact she said, I can't, I can't say
this without choking up. Are you part of that of FG
Dr Fisher's gang? As if it were a mafia
and verse first
di you know, dick laughed, then they laughed and she said, and then we
cried.
Uh So that, ah,
so you have a real legacy over here. Uh And Uh
Well, the I, in 19
90 seven,
a couple of years after I was president of the Melville Society, that
group held its first international meeting uh at a city in Greece called
Volos. It on the uh GNC
and
three of my former students from Greece participated and also the Turkish
woman. Well, the Greek co chair of that conference was not a, a university
figure or literary figure. He was a liar who had by avocation
chosen to translate all of Melville's work into Greek and also to do
elaborate illustrations.
Uh
early on the first evening of the, of the conference,
uh I was introduced to his son, his son said, who, who was a graduate
student in the English Department and has since taken a doctorate at uh
Texas A and M which is a very good American literature department. But he
said
it is an honor to meet you. I have heard of you
many times.
You are a legend in Greece.
I don't want to stop there because there are other things I want to say by
way of experience at ASU. It's not all been good. The most important thing
I'm most proud of is having been able as department chair to hire in one
year.
It's got to be 1981. I think
in my opinion, the three best qualified minority candidates in the
Department of English and also to have during the period I was chair. Yeah
,
I think that the, the the course in American Indian literature or Native
American literature
may have been. No, I think it was introduced while I was chair as were of
course is in African American literature and in Chicano literature, the
three people whom we were able to hire in 19
81
were of
went on to be a Pulitzer Prize winner,
served two terms
as poet laureate of the United States.
Uh
and who was understandably lured away
from as by the University of Virginia, which which offered her an
appointment as a Commonwealth professor after, as had said, no, you can't
be a regions professor until you've been here 15 years. Really? That was a
term,
Jose Salar,
who was here, I think for either two or maybe three years.
Uh and who is now
professor, I don't think it's English but it's, it's, it's
uh hello
Chicano Literature at Berkeley. And the only one who was still here is
Alberto Rios all in one year.
I'm very proud of that,
but I am not proud of the three years that followed because we had
somebody in the department who was so opposed to Rita Dove's joining the
faculty.
OK, that he continued to humiliate her for a reason that I had no
knowledge of it. At the,
at the time, he insisted we were looking for somebody to direct our
creative writing program. He had
an impressive record of national publication and, and several novels
turned into films. His name is Mark Harris
films. I mean, his, his novels dealing with baseball, uh
South Paw particularly Bang The Drum Slowly
or good films. Uh
He did not
want read it of here in this program, he refused in, in, in his
appointment, he made something that we, we couldn't understand. Uh he
preferred not to be appointed with tenure but tenure to be granted.
Yeah, two years down the line or sooner at our mutual convenience. That
was his phrase. I subsequently found out that this was part of a deal that
he made with his previous university, which was so anxious to get rid of
him that they, they agreed to continue to offer educational subsidy for
his youngest son if he didn't come back.
Uh
Yeah,
he went so far
in opposing reader's appointment threatening to write her and tell her she
would not be welcome here. The university, there was no in house attorney
, but there was a law firm that handled university affairs. Said, well,
our view of this, oh, yes, I should say that in 19,
it may have been 1980 at any rate when he made this, this specification
tenure to be granted automatically two years down the line. I told Dean
Wagon, Guido Wagon that this was not something we could do at our level,
you know, write or rewrite tenure regulations.
And I composed a letter and the dean approved it, you know, saying, you
know, if, if you want an appointment without tenure. Uh We will grant it
with tenure to be granted uh in the date in two years down the line, what
the date was
9282
would have been
according to standards with which you are very familiar publication. Well
, he didn't want that because he knew he wouldn't get it. He had been
every place he'd ever worked, it turned out, but they wouldn't, wouldn't
tell you up front
what kind of trouble he had made. I also subsequently discovered
that he had a psychological discharge from the army
that in his autobiography, he detailed
spousal and child abuse. Yeah, blaming is giving up smoking for
breaking his daughter's 16 year old daughter's nose when she talked back
to him, throwing his
younger middle son down the stairs and breaking his leg and returning from
a ball game with the youngest son who
when he said something, the father didn't like
hit him in the hand with a wooden coat hanger, broke his hand. Uh The next
three years I think we need to change. Yeah, there's a, the next three
years were spent in litigation
and I had the three best years and the three worst years of my life
dealing with that situation.
Uh I'm proud to say, I, I remember I, I remain friends with all of the
people involved and uh I went to great lengths to not only ok
recruit, search out but to tell. Do you know, Tito Manny. No. Uh he was a
U of a graduate but very, very naive work working in Globe where his wife
was li librarian.
Was there anything more you wanted to add about that? And you, you
mentioned that Tito is the nickname of Alberto. Yes. Uh
Well, he has remained, obviously, he's had opportunities to leave, but
he's remained because he has such deep roots in Arizona. And so his wife,
uh
but I,
when he was, when he applied from Globe
with an address on Ice House Canyon, I
answered, you know, telling him to get the placement office at U of A to
help him prepare a dossier. He did not think he was entitled to that kind
of help. He thought that was only for the professional schools.
Uh So I had to detail the steps for him to follow. In other words, I had
to become his mentor
and nobody at U of A was doing it and he hadn't even thought he was
entitled to it. So we had to do this step by step. And the opportunity to
hire him really came about because Rita
before we hired her, told us that she had an invitation from Tuskegee to
come for the spring semester. In other words, she would come here for the
fall but take a 61 semester leave to be visiting writer in residence at
Tuskegee something she felt she could not say no to. And I agreed so that
Tito was her replacement for the spring. And you know, her, her leave made
it possible for us to hire him in the case of Jose Saldivar talking about
Tito. I know he mentioned that he never thought he was qualified to be a
university professor
until some somebody told him he was, he had won an award I think was the
other thing that brought him to your attention.
Uh Well, you know, there's, there's a good deal that we should have
covered in this history because
there is no record of any of this
in the English Department.
None of my annual reports to the college
exist in the English Department or in the college office or in the
Provost's office. And there is no account of the litigation with Mark
Harris
at any of these places. I finally had to, I finally realized I had to put
my personnel committee meetings, my correspondence, uh the
materials from the court into the archives because somebody writing about
Rita Dove, I told her, I asked her, may I do this? And of course, she said
yes. And there's somebody writing on Rita will need to use that material,
the archives now, yes, in the library with instructions that
access for the 25 years after I gave them there, they are to be viewed uh
only
with my permission because I did not want somebody carrying those out of
there. Since this is a, this is history at a wanton destroyed
the department, the college, the provost
maybe didn't want to preserve one other thing. I wanted to be sure and ask
you about, I saw you, then you mentioned the Melville Society. You've done
a lot of writing about Melville. How did you get so interested in Melville
? I realized that this was one of the American writers who received very
inadequate attention in his own lifetime
and who is sometimes remembered for and who was recognized for the books
he thought were his slightest
and who had such deep insight into the American character. Ok. It's
psychological,
its political,
its moral implications
that his writings take on new meaning with every generation that reads
them.
He was not a fortune teller,
but he did recognize more than anybody between
the 18 forties and the 18 through the early 18 nineties.
Uh
what lay at the heart of the American character and this applies to race,
to gender,
to political implications
to international relations. And you may see on my resume that the last
I think it's very soon to be published. It may be out now,
uh article on Melville
deals with one story written in the 18 fifties that is remarkably relevant
to the events that we've seen in the past five or six years as American
foreign policy has taken on a very
dangerous and debatable turn.
It's a story that deals with a confrontation at sea between
a representative ships representing
the new world, the old world
and Africans being transported by the European ship to slavery in South
America, the third world.
And he was writing about all those things that, what was the name of the
piece? Benito Serino
read it mostly he's known for what he did, which also uh uh is so
multifaceted
that it takes on new meaning with every generation. It's,
it's a social, it's a political, it's a religious
allegory.
And uh
it's also
I said religious, but it's, it's, it's theological. It deals with
uh
the injunction at the beginning of the Old Testament. Uh
you know, to go forth and multiply and exercise Dominion over nature and
its creatures.
And
there have been critics who have seen ahab a as a
four
of fascism. Uh It, it, it and all that mel would say when
that's Daniel Hawthorne's wife
asked if there were not allegorical meaning in this. He said, uh you know
, can be some kind of off putting remark like uh uh you may find it. So,
but I did not think that when I was writing it,
I know we're running short of time here. Were there any other important
things that you wanted to be sure to talk about today? I think we better
wind, wind it up. We have uh uh another session and I think you need to
break. Ok. Um One thing I'd like to ask everybody and I wanted to ask you
too is what kind of advice do you give to young people if they're trying
to choose their career? Oh, well. Uh, but
choosing, you know, in college and their career, uh, of course, when
the advice to undergraduates would not be exactly the same as, as
graduates. Uh,
and I think in many cases, undergraduates
face
decisions based upon family finances and so on, graduate students are
better able if they have the abilities to support themselves. But of
course,
uh
student loans are available for both. But graduate students, I would
encourage to equate themselves with the various aspects of American higher
education. Uh The PPF
Pff program preparing future faculty program at ASU does a marvelous job
that taking them to visit and to familiarize themselves with the community
colleges, four year colleges,
uh
research universities,
all of which would have different standards for retention and different
missions. I think the
they have to realize something about the,
the degree to which these institutions adhere to and fulfill their own
mission statements.
Uh They have to learn and understand the reward systems
in each of these institutions. Yeah,
in my generation,
we had to learn to do this ourselves.
Pff
provides it on a more organized and comprehensive basis.
OK. Anything else you wanted to add?
I had some notes
and yeah, you had an in an interesting uh question that we hadn't touched
on. You asked, describe what A U was like when you first arrived. Well,
I'd say it was like a general store.
And what it's become is like at Walmart, Super Mart.
OK.
With some
and even in its present
manifestation,
a lot of the work is performed by
part time,
we don't just have graduate students as teaching us working part time, but
we have far too many part time employees who if they want to
an adequate living to support growing families
have to put together programs,
taking them to a su or
community colleges. Teaching what is essentially a double load
is pitifully a half salary.
I've had too many graduate students, you know, doctoral doctorates
who have to put together a program
toting, totaling
thousands of miles going from MESA Community College to Glendale Community
College.
It's not easy
and it's not
professionally justifiable,
but it's part of the New American University too. And the old, right.
You know,I