Remembering Richard Mitchell, Part 6

I got this story second hand from another professor at Rowan University.

In a previous post, I told the story about how Mitchell once told me that I had written one of the best undergraduate papers he had ever read. That moment meant a lot to me. But I haven’t written about my final meeting with him.

When I graduated from Rowan, I spent a year studying philosophy at Temple University. I didn’t like it and I wasn’t sure what to do with my academic future. Hoping for advice, and longing for a return to earlier years, when things were so much simpler, I went to Rowan one morning to talk with Mitchell. I went to find out if I could audit his class the next semester. I also wanted to know if he had any recommendations for graduate school. But really I just wanted to hear him talk again.

I waited for him outside of the classroom. Class had ended, but he was talking to a few stragglers about gardening. He described himself as a gardener’s assistant (his wife, he said, was the real gardener). I had heard a version of this story before. He said his wife used to make him go to flower shows a lot. Listening to him talk brought back memories that were only a year old, but filled me with the same fondness of childhood memories like when my grandmother used to take me out for hamburgers at the Five and Dime. Special feelings, you know?

I’m not sure what I expected when he walked out of the classroom. Something short of throwing his arms around me, but more than what actually happened. I asked if I could talk to him for a few minuets, and he said gladly, provided I didn’t mind if we did it outside where he could smoke. There was no recognition in his face. I told him I was his student for two classes, I told him what the classes were, I told him what books we read. He remembered the books and said he vaguely remembered me. Not what I would expect for someone who wrote him such a good paper (I couldn’t bring myself to try to remind him of that for fear that he wouldn’t remember). I asked how the semester was going, and he said he had just read a paper that was so good he wanted to keep it and use it as a sample for future classes. I guess he would keep it with mine.

He wasn’t able to give much advice because he stopped paying attention to graduate schools well before he retired. But talking to him again was well worth it, even if it shattered an illusion.

Now to the second-hand part. Two years ago I interviewed to teach a couple of English classes at Rowan as an adjunct. I spent most of the interview talking with the department chair about Mitchell (she hired me, but I had to back out to accept a full-time high school job, which I quit after five months). Towards the end I told her about my disappointment at his not knowing me. She told me not to worry. She said that, towards the end of his life, he had done some things that were difficult to explain. As he had the reputation for being eccentric, no one paid much attention (I recalled one day in class he asked us a simple question. No one answered, so he walked to the door and yelled, “Help! Someone has replaced my students with zombies! Help! Help!” No one so much as peaked into the room). But after he died, people started to talk to each other about him.

She told me that one day he had sat in on another teacher’s class. The teacher wasn’t an English teacher and didn’t even know Mitchell. He sat in the back taking notes. At the end of class, he proceeded to savagely critique her lesson. She complained, but everyone chalked it up to Mitchell being Mitchell. That was the only story she told me, but there were presumably others.

The point, she said, was she suspected that he had been ill for longer than anyone knew. He got sick for the final time around the Thanksgiving break, and then he died just before New Year’s. She wondered if his sudden illness had anything to do with some of his inexplicable behavior. Maybe that’s why he didn’t recognize me. Or maybe she said that to make me feel better.

Remembering Richard Mitchell, Part 5

I reserved my copy of the latest Harry Potter book about 3 months ago. The anticipation of the book's release among young readers is amazing. With that in mind, I thought I'd share what Mitchell said about Harry Potter.

In Spring 2000, when I had Mitchell for the first time, a girl in the class asked him if he had read any of the Harry Potter books. He hadn't, and he said it was funny she should bring it up, as his podiatrist had asked him the same question during his last appointment. The conversation ended with the student telling him he should check out the books, and he said that he might do just that.

Later in the semester (the week before Spring Break, I think), that girl brought in a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for him to borrow. He responded with what at first appeared to be sarcasm, but actually turned out to be genuine thanks.

"For me? My very own Harry Potter book. Thank you."

A week or so later, he returned the book to the girl (he said he had only read about 2/3 of it). When asked what he thought, he replied, "Well, there's certainly nothing wrong with it." To that bathtub water-warm endorsement, he added, "But it'll make kids want to read more, and that's a good thing." He also commented on the accuracy of Rawling's description of the teachers at Hogwarts. He had himself been a teacher in a prep school before he went for his PhD., so it rang especially true for him.

That was around the same time I started reading the novels. While I thought the first 2 were OK, it wasn't until the third and fourth that I got sucked into the series. I think the books have been progressively better since then.

I wonder what Mitchell would've thought had he continued the series. I think he'd have nothing but joy in seeing the kids get so excited to read.

Remembering Richard Mitchell, Part 4

On the first day of class, he had, in the course of his introduction, written on the board the names of the books we'd be reading (Candide, Faust Part 1, and The Brothers Karamazov). Mitchell had been talking for a while, with no prospect of stopping (in fact, he told us that if the class period ended and he was still talking, we should just leave. He would stay and finish whatever he was discussing, by himself if necessary.).

Finally, as the class period was about to end, one student couldn't control himself any longer. He raised his hand and asked (more like demanded) when we'd be getting the syllabus.

"The syllabus?" Mitchell asked. "What do you mean?"

The student fired back, "Most teachers give us a syllabus on the first day. It has all of the information for the class."

"What do you need that for? What is a syllabus but a list of books you're going to read? There," he pointed to the board. "I've written the syllabus." He then resumed his talk as if he hadn't been interrupted. The student was silent.

I got to know that student over the course of the next year. He was in the other class I took with Mitchell. We were both psychology majors, but we took his class again anyway. That was the thing about Mitchell. He'd talk and talk and most of the class would daydream, study for other classes, or sleep (his classes were always early). But there'd be a couple of students in the class who recognized that they were having some of the most edifying experiences in their lives. I was one, but there were a few others, ones I didn't even know until the memorial service after his death.

Recently, I learned about a website where students can rate their teachers. I've been accused on a couple of occasions of talking about things unrelated to class. I don't think this site was up when Mitchell was still alive, but if it were, I'm sure he'd get some of the same responses.

I like that.

Remembering Richard Mitchell, Part 3

I'm encouraged to see that a few people are reading my blog (thanks to Mark and others for the links). I can't post as often as I'd like, but please continue to check in from time to time.


Once he told us about the only time that he tried marijuana. A former student of his had paid him a visit after returning from Vietnam. Upon leaving the office, the soldier gave Mitchell a “gift.” He said he thanked him and immediately hid the joint in his desk.

Later, while sitting in his office with time to kill, Mitchell decided to give it a go. He said that as he lit the joint, he half expected the FBI to burst into his office and arrest him. But they never showed. As someone who rolled his own cigarettes, he said his first reaction was to wonder why people would smoke something that tasted so horrible.

He then went to have lunch with a colleague at a Glassboro diner. He said he’s always been a picky (sometimes he brought his own food when he went out to dinner with others), extremely light eater, but on this occasion, he found himself ordering seconds. In the middle of a particularly engaging conversation, Mitchell said Attila the Hun walked up to the table. After briefly stopping his conversation, he greeted the warrior, then continued talking to his friend (he said that neither he nor his colleague ever mentioned that lunch afterwards).

That evening he had to do a show in Philadelphia (I have no idea what show and welcome any information that anyone might have about it). It was raining and the night was foreboding. He mentioned a particularly ominous Sunoco sign that had since been torn down.

He didn’t say much about the show, except that he felt it was the best show he had ever done (at least he thought so that night), though he has no recollection of what he said.

That was his first and only experience with marijuana.

Remembering Richard Mitchell, Part 2

Mitchell did his Masters thesis on Theodore Dreiser. One day he told us a little about his work.

He had gone so far as to visit Dreiser’s house (I guess it had been converted into a museum). When he was being examined, one of the teachers was so impressed with how much he knew about Dreiser that he asked, jokingly, whether or not the color of the wallpaper in the author’s living room played into any of his fiction. As he had just explained the significance of the plastic ornaments on Dreiser’s front lawn, he said, the wallpaper was no problem.

(I thought Mitchell was joking about this. Then I studied English in graduate school. I discovered that seemingly trivial pieces of information do in fact find their way into the essays and theses of students and professors.)

But the most interesting part of his Dreiser studies was what he called “The American Tragedy Experiment.” Mitchell wanted to see if it was possible for Clyde to really navigate through the woods in the dark like Dreiser describes in the book. So he tried it. He went to the lake in New York were the murder took place, waited until it got dark, and then took off in Clyde’s direction. He couldn’t have a flashlight, he told us, because Clyde didn’t have one.

After a few hours of walking, he was convinced that Clyde couldn’t have made that journey. He stopped and waited for daybreak.

When he arrived in the town the next morning, he struck up a conversation with one of the townsfolk. Mitchell explained what he had been doing and was surprised to find that the person he talked to, who seemed like an ordinary workingman, knew the novel and the story on which it was based.

Mitchell told the guy that Clyde’s journey was impossible, but as he was explaining himself, he told us, he had a revelation. He wasn’t able to complete his journey because he had no dead girl to run away from. What he had to do, he said, was take a girl to the lake, drown her, and then see if he could make it.

He never said if he tried the experiment a second time.

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.

Remembering Richard Mitchell, Part 1

I just got an email from Mark Alexander. He runs the site that has all of Richard Mitchell's writings. He's working on Mitchell's entry for Wikipedia and he's compiling remembrances from people who knew the man. Here's the first installment.

Richard Mitchell was the most important teacher I ever had. The best think he taught me was that I had a lot to learn, about reading, about writing, about living. After my first class with him (Masterpieces in Western Literature, Spring 2000), I started to fill in the deficiencies in my education. I’m still working on it.

I took Adolescent Literature with him in the Spring of 2001. I didn’t need the class, but I wanted to see if I could improve on the less-than-stellar work I had done for him in the first class.

I anxiously awaited the return of our first essays. He was not very punctual about returning essays. I think he said he had left them at a friend’s house for a week. He didn’t give me my essay, but instead told me to see him after class. I had been feeling pretty good about my work, but this request scared me so much that I remember little of his lecture.

After class he led me to a small seminar room, windowless and barely large enough to hold the table and chairs. He followed me and closed the door behind him. The room got smaller. Then he handed me my paper and I saw, in his barely legible handwriting, A+. He called it “one of the best undergraduate papers he had ever read” (I wrote his exact words down as soon as I left the building. I refer to them often, especially when my writing is going nowhere.). He asked what my plans were after graduation, and I told him I was applying to graduate programs. He said that was a good idea. In fact, he told me he had planned to “kick my ass” if I had answered otherwise.

For some strange reason, there was a stack of original issues of The Underground Grammarian in the middle of the desk. He asked if I knew who put them there. Having never been in that room before, I didn’t have the slightest idea. I told him that I had read them all online and learned a great deal about writing in the process, but had never seen an original. So he grabbed a stack, gave them to me, and sent me on my way.

I think I was one of only a few students in his classes who took him for anything other than a crazy old professor. Having him as a teacher was my most important experience in college, but most of my classmates probably don’t even remember his name. I became a college English teacher 3 years ago, and remembering Mitchell has helped me cope with many an uninterested student. It seems like I’ve never stopped learning from him. I probably never will.