Jerry Fresia has written a simply lovely response to my exclamation that I love to teach, a response that warms my heart and fills my lungs with air. At the end of his marvelous comment, he writes “sounds to me that Fast Eddie is back”
The references of course is to the classic old movie The
Hustler from 1961, starring Paul Newman, George C Scott, Jackie Gleason, and
Piper Laurie. For those of you who have not seen it (if indeed there can
possibly be anybody in this category), the movie concerns a smalltime pool
hustler, Fast Eddie Felson, who goes up against the king of the hustlers,
Minnesota Fats. In what is, at least for me, the greatest scene in the movie,
Eddie takes on Fats in an epic all night match. At one point, Paul Newman runs
off a long streak of successful shots, moving around the table like a great
cat. He is “in the zone” as great basketball players describe it, and says he
cannot miss.
That is, in my small way, how I feel sometimes when I am in
the classroom explaining a complicated idea to the students, showing it to them
in its power and beauty and simplicity. It is at those moments that I feel
myself to be most fully and completely who I am. It has nothing to do with
winning an argument or being right. It must be the way Yo-Yo Ma feels when he
leans back in his chair and seems to be listening to his cello rather than
playing it.
The first time I felt that way was in the spring of 1960. I
was teaching philosophy 130 at Harvard – CI Lewis’s great
old course on the Critique of Pure Reason.
I had been working harder than I ever had before and ever would again to
make absolutely clear and simple Kant’s central argument in the Transcendental
Deduction of the Categories. The course met on Tuesdays and Thursdays but I had
called a special Saturday extra meeting to finish my analysis and all the
students had shown up! I spoke nonstop for an hour and a half, until finally I
could write on the blackboard those magical letters Q. E. D. When I laid down the
chalk and started to walk out of the room, the students burst into applause. I
knew then that it was the greatest moment I would ever have in a classroom and
reflected on the strangeness of the fact that it came at the beginning rather
than at the end of my career.
I am 62 years older now and feeling the effects of age and
Parkinson’s disease, not to speak of the general awfulness of the world, but
last Monday, as I sat in front of my class wearing a mask and speaking of the
thought of Karl Marx, there were moments when the look in a student’s eyes or
the nod of her head told me that I had reached another mind and had shown the
beauty of an idea.
7 comments:
In addition to the exhilaration of teaching new ideas to receptive young minds, you don’t run the risk of having your hands broken by thugs.
1961, the year in which The Hustler was released, was a banner year for great movies. Paul Newman, nominated for Best Actor, lost to Maximillian Schell, portraying the defense attorney in Judgment at Nuremberg. The Hustler, nominated for Best Picture, lost to West Side Story. Paul Newman, one of the most charismatic actors of the 1960s through 2002, when he made his last movie, Road To Perdition, always turned in a stellar performance, from egotistical rogues in The Hustler and Hud, to the symbol of 1960s alienation in his greatest performance as Cool Hand Luke, to a lawyer down on his luck in The Verdict, to charming rapscallions in Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and The Sting. Nominated several times for Best Actor, he won his only Oscar for his reprise of Fast Eddy Felsen in the mediocre The Color of Money.
I was going to mention other Paul Newman movies in reply to Marc when I realized that if I did that, I would be accused of hijacking the thread.
However, my impulse to continue talking about Paul Newman does not obey any nefarious or even subversive purpose but rather stems from the fact that Professor Wolff mentions a Paul Newman performance and that leads one innocently to mention others.
Probably, if I had mentioned Paul Newman and Marc had replied, sooner or later the conversation topic would have drifted towards another theme. For example, if I had mentioned the movie "Exodus", someone might have brought up the theme of Hollywood's pro-Israel bias and so on.
I just want to emphasize that there is no evil intention behind any of this.
Very cool to hear! I think you said something recently, half-jokingly, about your "sell-by date" - but it's always nice to be reminded that life doesn't necessarily work that way. :)
On the beauty of ideas: Out of curiosity, have you read any of Kant's writings on the philosophy of religion? I just finished a couple shorter ones ("What Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?" and "On the Miscarriage of All Philosophical Trials in Theodicy"), and I found it oddly exciting just to see his method of classifying theodicies in the second of the two. As Kant's work often does, it gave off a certain appearance of not only completeness, but also elegance and "symmetry" - for a moment it called to mind all the flak Kant takes for supposedly forcing everything into an artificial "architectonic" mold; but I actually find that one of the most interesting and endearing features of his approach, and I imagine it can add something to the pleasure of teaching him.
and Eddy is someone who is coming back anyway, because in 1986 Paul Newman in Matin Scorsese's The Color of Money, shows Tom Cruise how to make money playing pool.
What a delightful homage to me, Professor.
Much love,
Jerry xx
Professor Bob --
I am interested in what you intend to lecture on, i.e., Genesis, and I wonder if Marx
discusses in any detail the Greco-Roman vs. Christian view of "virtue" and what counts as a "good man" when discussing creativity vs. labor?
Cheerios! and good teaching! JR
This article is quite interesting and I am looking forward to reading more of your posts. Thanks for sharing this article with us.
23 Public International Law Assignment – Australia.
Post a Comment