Preface to Further Entries about the Underground Grammarian

I've spent the last week or so jotting down what I remember from my classes with Richard Mitchell. I'll be posting more entries soon. But there is a short encounter that I had with him that is useful to keep in mind.

After class one day I went up to his desk for a little talk. He often took a student or two outside for a cigarette after class. I don't remember what I was going to ask him, probably because I never got to ask it. Before I could say anything, he picked up a note that was on his desk.

"What's this?" he asked himself, even though he was the one who put the note there before class began.

After looking at it for a moment, he crumbled up the note, dropped it in the trash, and muttered, "Him again."

We walked out of the classroom and I asked him who wrote the note. He told me that some pain-in-the-ass had been bothering him for months. He said that the man was writing a book about great thinkers of the 20th century, and that he wanted some biographical information to include in the book.

"But I'm not going to tell him that," (he emphasized the word "that").

"Well, then what are you going to tell him?" was the most logical reply I could think of.

At this point our paths diverged. I stopped and he continued down the hall.

"Lies! Lies! Lies!" he yelled, his back to me, while laughing a devious laugh.

(I wonder what happened with that book.)

I'm not sure how much of what Mitchell said in his classes was "Lies! Lies! Lies!" As a teacher myself, I've come to believe that teachers have to say the right thing to students, even if that's not the true thing. He never talked about this, but I think he made the same distinction. You'll see what I mean when I post a few more entries.