from Lee Edelman

I lack the novelistic imagination required to capture my sense of Alan in a series of anecdotal recollections. To succeed in this genre would demand the talents I associate with Alan himself--talents that Alan spent so much time and energy cultivating in others. I continue to marvel at the patience, the generosity, the enthusiasm he brought to his discussions with students about the progress of their creative writing. Because Alan's office was opposite mine, and because we both used to work with our doors left open, I spent many hours preparing classes while overhearing Alan's conversation with an externally variable, but fundamentally unchanging, undergraduate attempting to describe a story that really wasn't quite "there." Being inclined by temperament to believe that taking seriously the undergraduate "creative" imagination would be a punishment more intolerable than Sartre's idea of hell, I never failed to wonder at Alan's capacity not only to listen to what seemed to me so much dreary banality, but also to elicit from it shape, originality, texture, the movement of thought. How much of that was Alan's skill at discovering the pearl in the oyster's drool and how much was the gift of handing over his own, and far more compelling, ideas, is something I'll never know. But I'll never forget how Alan brought together encouragement with rigor, support with a constant goading toward something more shapely, more particular, more distinct. Nor will I forget how those conversations were invariably punctuated by laughter. Alan's knack for putting his students at ease, for giving them the support they needed to take intellectual and emotional risks, made it possible for him to push them beyond what others might have seen as their limits.

That laughter, of course, was something I got to enjoy more directly as well. I fondly recall the many late afternoons when Alan and Linda and I would gather in one or another of our offices just to share our sense of the absurdity of some aspect of the academic life. Those conversations, which allowed for an abreaction to the vagaries of the institution itself, were important parts of the day for me, and they sealed a bond that remains one my fondest memories of life in East Hall.

Now that Alan is enjoying his life outside of East Hall, I have to confess that life within it seems seriously denuded. Not only do we miss his conversation, his wry sense of humor, his ironic perspective on the daily goings-on, but we also miss his wisdom in department meetings, his unfailing sense of perspective, and his embodiment of departmental continuity. Maybe, in part, we also miss having him there to be the "elder" statesman--a role that now seems, oddly and disconcertingly, to have fallen to us! But Alan filled the role so much better.

Fortunately, Alan's retirement from East Hall is really only nominal. He'll be back in the fall to teach again and that will allow us to prolong our sense that all is right with the world. In the meantime, though, we take comfort in the thought that he's finally free to read, write, and think without the distraction of papers to grade or meetings to attend or those damned letter of recommendation to write. And then, of course, there's the added comfort of knowing that we can always arrange to have dinner with him and Nan!

The English Department at Tufts is much diminished without Alan there. So I'm delighted to think, as this semester ends, that he'll be back again in the fall. And delighted as well that the summer ahead will give us a chance to get together and relax!

Lunch

I’ve known Alan since either ’65 or ’66 – it’s so far back I have trouble figuring it out. I came into his life as a student, progressed to a tutee, and somewhere along the line (it may have been at one of three thoroughbred racetracks at which we would hold our tutorial sessions) became a friend. In about ’71, I took a spiritual sabbatical that lasted over ten years, and we hooked up again. I moved back to Cambridge in ’88, and for the last eighteen years we’ve had a weekly lunch date.

We started at Frank Fox’s sandwich shop on Mass Ave. He had inexpensive but decent wine, but you couldn’t really call his Classico a sandwich. It was something more, a small piece of heaven. Eventually, things soured with Frank, and we moved on to the Casablanca and six or seven other joints. The French fries with the burgers went, and then with the advent of great antacid drugs, returned. Recently, we’ve been very happy at the B Side Lounge, where they have an excellent chicken club.

Over the course of these eighteen years, our friendship has mutated into something rare. Sure, we relate current news and tell stories, but mostly we just banter, enjoying the choice of the words that relate whatever might come to mind. And we laugh. You see, we have shared the thick and thin of two lifetimes. We have talked about all the friends, family, girl friends, wives, marriages, divorces, children, grandchildren, the books we’ve read, are reading, or have written, the countless presidential administrations, the wars, the illnesses, the deaths, the dreams, and the amazing strokes of good fortune. The extremes – the horrific and the comedic – have merged together into what sometimes appears to me as a numinous whiteness.

Now, one might naturally wonder if this fog is only a function of the fine spirits we consume at lunch. I think not, because, over the years, the unfortunate necessity of moderation has shown us its pinched face. Alas, we simply split a single bottle of red, yet – that slightly glowing aura still has us in its grasp. It’s wonderful. We’re very much our selves, but we are also each other. It is, I think, as close as I’m going to get to church or organized religion.

When I think about what Alan has given to the world, I’m humbled and amazed. He was an extraordinary teacher forty years ago, yet he has only gotten deeper into his understanding of the works he teaches. A river of humanity has been exposed to his fine mind and finer heart. I was lucky to have him. I am proud to be part of that river.

One of the qualities that Alan and I have shared, even as young men, is an appreciation for the uncertainties. At this point, looking at the future has become both laughable and, I confess, a bit spooky. My feeling is that if there are a few more lunches with Alan out there, I’m OK with whatever comes.

Oh, yes, and my love to you, as always.

Tono Hixon

from Adam Sachs

I'd like to mention the voice. Ala -- sorry -- Professor Lebowitz (I could never get used to the first-name thing) would read us choice bits of Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and after that it was impossible to hear those writers in any other voice. Much later I came across a recording of the real Hemingway talking and it was like listening to an Alvin and the Chipmunks record. Lebowitz stood at the front of the room and stretched the words thin: "Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?" My roommate Darin was in the class and we repeated this so relentlessly that another friend of ours took to mimicking it like an oppressed parrot. Sixteen years later the friend, never prompted, does a creditable Lebowitz-Hemingway.

I don't -- not can't, just don't -- remember much about my Medford years but I do hear that voice clearly. I heard first when I'd cornered Lebowitz trying to talk my way off the waiting list for Hem-Faulk-Fitz. Sorry -- class full.

"But I spent my summer reading Absalom, Absalom!" I'd shouted. Shouted not because there's an exclamation in the title but because I was a crazed young person and because I really, truly wanted to take that class. Alan turned back and sized me up. He had what later I'd recognize as a grin but took then to be a sneer.

"Is that how you get your kicks?" the voice asked. I thought he might punch me. "OK, come by on Thursday and we'll see what we can do."

In the group therapy of the fiction writing workshops the voice was forgiving, precise, encouraging, easily amused. It helped talk us down from our self-invented ledges. I heard the voice again on my last official day as a student. I'd lined up, shaken hands with a stranger, accepted what I think was my diploma in a pleather pouch and was descending into the fields of nachas when I heard my name called again. It was Lebowitz, standing up in his own gown, crossing over to greet me at the bottom of the stairs and shake my hand -- probably the single nicest gesture of my academic career. So, Profess -- OK, Alan: Thanks for that and for the voice that guided so many of us through so many books and years. I think I thought at the time that the teaching of literature was about words and sentences; I understand now it is about people.

Adam Sachs ('92)