"That truth should be silent I had almost forgot"--Enobarbus in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, back in Rome after having been too long in Egypt.---------
Melville's PIERRE, Book 4, chapter 5: "Something ever comes of all persistent inquiry; we are not so continually curious for nothing."
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Hershel Parker and James B. Meriwether January 1981
Hi--James B. Meriwether was my father; this was taken when I was in law school; I do recall my father working with Hershel Parker. Nice to see. Rebecca Meriwether Lindsey, New York City
Rebecca, Jim played a big role in my life though I spent very few days with him. This is from something about the late 1960s, after I had returned to Northwestern as an assistant professor:
I had no one to talk to. Then one evening in the Fall of 1967 on a narrow staircase in the Near North townhouse of the director of the Newberry Library I began talking about Melville's texts to James B. Meriwether, seven years my elder, a lean Virginian who spoke a Southern dialect I had never heard, "booting" his "abouts." Soon, we were talking excitedly even as we changed positions every few minutes to allow passage for other guests, for from his study of Faulkner manuscripts, typescripts, and published texts Meriwether had arrived at conclusions astonishingly like those I was making from Melville's texts.
Adjourning to a table in a dark bar west of the Newberry, streets I had never been into and never went into again, we talked passionately for hours about author's revisions, about the all too soberness of sober second thoughts, about the sacredness of the creative process. If we had been overheard we could have been shot on the spot for heresy by two different thought-killing squads: first, the bibliographical adherents of Greg we had just left at the party, whose theory held that an author retained control (legal control and aesthetic control) over all parts of a literary work as long as he lived; second, by the hoard of surviving older and younger New Critics, who ruled out of consideration all information about the author, biographical information being irrelevant to interpretation. That night changed my life.
Meriwether could have hired me at South Carolina (where some of the voices would have sounded familial, since my mother had learned to talk from Mississippians whose people had paused a few generations in North Carolina) but I knew that I worked best if I worked slowly and alone, free to make false starts and recoveries. I wanted to be in touch with Meriwether about what we were learning but not to be on departmental committees with him. Northwestern had reneged on the promised raise in salary once it thought I was safely captive (thinking I ought to be grateful still that they had broken precedent by hiring me back). I was carrying far too much of the weight of the Edition and getting inadequate credit for my efforts, and I was not being allowed to think with the evidence I was uncovering. Somewhere else, surely I would find others besides Meriwether who had learned to think unconventionally from textual evidence. The next day, when I was beginning my third year as an assistant professor at Northwestern, I began looking for another job, only in California. In January 1968, with three offers in my pocket, I went to see the new chairman, Samuels. He agreed, all too belatedly, to give me the $500 raise I had been promised for the year before, so that I would be making $10,500. When I told him David Malone and Max Schulz were ready to hire me for the fall of 1968 at the University of Southern California, he incautiously offered to match the salary. When I told him the USC was offering $16,000 he swallowed, then blurted one word, "Jesus!"
Hi--James B. Meriwether was my father; this was taken when I was in law school; I do recall my father working with Hershel Parker. Nice to see. Rebecca Meriwether Lindsey, New York City
ReplyDeleteRebecca, Jim played a big role in my life though I spent very few days with him. This is from something about the late 1960s, after I had returned to Northwestern as an assistant professor:
ReplyDeleteI had no one to talk to. Then one evening in the Fall of 1967 on a narrow staircase in the Near North townhouse of the director of the Newberry Library I began talking about Melville's texts to James B. Meriwether, seven years my elder, a lean Virginian who spoke a Southern dialect I had never heard, "booting" his "abouts." Soon, we were talking excitedly even as we changed positions every few minutes to allow passage for other guests, for from his study of Faulkner manuscripts, typescripts, and published texts Meriwether had arrived at conclusions astonishingly like those I was making from Melville's texts.
Adjourning to a table in a dark bar west of the Newberry, streets I had never been into and never went into again, we talked passionately for hours about author's revisions, about the all too soberness of sober second thoughts, about the sacredness of the creative process. If we had been overheard we could have been shot on the spot for heresy by two different thought-killing squads: first, the bibliographical adherents of Greg we had just left at the party, whose theory held that an author retained control (legal control and aesthetic control) over all parts of a literary work as long as he lived; second, by the hoard of surviving older and younger New Critics, who ruled out of consideration all information about the author, biographical information being irrelevant to interpretation. That night changed my life.
Meriwether could have hired me at South Carolina (where some of the voices would have sounded familial, since my mother had learned to talk from Mississippians whose people had paused a few generations in North Carolina) but I knew that I worked best if I worked slowly and alone, free to make false starts and recoveries. I wanted to be in touch with Meriwether about what we were learning but not to be on departmental committees with him. Northwestern had reneged on the promised raise in salary once it thought I was safely captive (thinking I ought to be grateful still that they had broken precedent by hiring me back). I was carrying far too much of the weight of the Edition and getting inadequate credit for my efforts, and I was not being allowed to think with the evidence I was uncovering. Somewhere else, surely I would find others besides Meriwether who had learned to think unconventionally from textual evidence. The next day, when I was beginning my third year as an assistant professor at Northwestern, I began looking for another job, only in California. In January 1968, with three offers in my pocket, I went to see the new chairman, Samuels. He agreed, all too belatedly, to give me the $500 raise I had been promised for the year before, so that I would be making $10,500. When I told him David Malone and Max Schulz were ready to hire me for the fall of 1968 at the University of Southern California, he incautiously offered to match the salary. When I told him the USC was offering $16,000 he swallowed, then blurted one word, "Jesus!"