F0r those who are curious, the links to the first five chapters can all be found in the post I wrote on June 28, 2009. I would really like to know whether anyone other than that one very kind person has any interest in hearing about my experiences at the University of Chicago, Columbia, and UMass. My founding and management of University Scholarships for South African Students has already been posted on early entries of this blog.
A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
MEMOIR
Long time readers of this blog will recall that last June, I posted five chapters of a memoir that I wrote in November of 2003. The memoir, prompted by the prospect of my seventieth birthday, covers the first twenty-seven years of my life, and is titled A Harvard Education: A Memoir of the Fifties. The actual memoir, written in four weeks and running abut 300 pages, has six chapters, but for some mysterious reason only the first five chapters seem to have been posted. Now there has been a thundering call for the memoir to be continued. [O.K. So one person said he would enjoy seeing it.] Inasmuch as I originally projected a three volume work, bringing things up to the present, I am now wondering whether I ought to go back to writing my memoirs. Once I return to Chapel Hill, I can call the OIT help desk at UMass and find out once again how to post lengthy documents on the server they maintain.
The first five chapters were highly entertaining, I do so look forward to the next instalment.
ReplyDeleteI'd be extremely interested - haven't yet read the first five chapters, but the autobiographical bits in the preface to the later edition of In Defense of Anarchism were terrific.
ReplyDeleteWell, that settles it. When I get home, I will start writing volume two. I will also revise chapter six of volume I and put it up on line. I have a lot of stories to tell! And I will name names.
ReplyDeleteSince this period includes the Columbia strike of 1968, it is all the more important to have this statement from one who was directly involved and supportive of the students....IMHO.
ReplyDelete...as if anything else mattered in your very distinguished career....! :-)
Thank you Ann. Good to hear from you. That was an extraordinary time, and I have a lot of great stories about it, all of which will be in the memoir. The Chinese have a curse, "May you live in interesting times." But I think it was a blessing to have the good fortune to be there then. In many ways, it shaped the rest of my life. It was, indirectly, one of the reasons I chose to leave a senior professorship at an Ivy League university.
ReplyDeleteYes, I'd love to read more -- I've read the first two chapters so far, and I have enjoyed them very much,
ReplyDeleteYou have certainly lived in interesting times, and our great fortune is that you have perfect recall of every moment of it....
ReplyDeleteThese events shaped our lives too, and it is very important to come to terms with that....even now....or especially now.