Uchicago — English Department

marlowe1
Thu, 24 May 2018 14:50:16 +0000

@JHS , I would add the name of Michael Murrin to that of Bevington as really important scholars in the English Department in the period just preceding the present one (and both are still going strong with new publications). I would quibble about Herman Sinaiko’s eminence: though a legendary undergraduate teacher, I do not believe he was an influential scholar, and certainly not in literary studies. I have read that he was considered a lightweight by the heavyweights in the Committee on Social Thought and was not immediately admitted to the club. His buddy James Redfield, who still occasionally leads alumni tour groups, did not have that trouble.

You’re certainly right about Maclean: Other than his contributions to “Critics and Criticism” he had no publications whatever to his credit other than a manual he prepared for the U.S. Army in the Second World War on, I believe, map-reading, until he broke loose after retirement with “A River Runs Through It” and “Young Men and Fire.” The first of these is a collection of stories and the second a multi-faceted account of a famous Montana brush fire that killed nine young “smoke Jumpers”. He also always planned to write an account of Custer’s Last Stand and did in fact produce several very interesting chapters but not a finished work. I think of the second book and these Custer pieces as being something more than journalism. He had a very literary sensibility, and that made him a wonderful teacher and led ultimately to the writing of those two beautiful books.