University of Virginia Library

What Are You Doing?

Q. You talked about reaching certain points in your life
when you've got to rethink just exactly what you're doing in
literature. You did this by withdrawing from literature for a
while.... Is it possible to try to lead a double life, to continue in
graduate school and at the same time to try to figure what
you're doing there?

A. I think it's perfectly possible. It's a matter of deliberately
undertaking to extend your horizons....reading works that
provide a breather. I remember Professor Trilling saying one
time that after he finished his Ph.D. he couldn't read for a year
and a half: "I couldn't look at a book - it turned my stomach."
You've got your nose rubbed into these books....you've been
forced to read them when you didn't want to, and after a while
you've had it. But if you are really drawn to the life of ideas,
you'll read something else. You won't read fiction; you're sick
and tired of fiction. You're sick and tired of criticism. So you
read a book on science, if you're interested in science. You're
interested in psychology, you read a book on psychology.
You're interested in sex, read a book on sex. Your whole idea is
to clean your head out. (I'm not against performances either.)

Q. I was wondering if you feel, one, that good teachers don't
have to be critics and scholars, and two, if a person is a critic
and a scholar and a good teacher, will that make him better than
the other good teacher who isn't a critic and a scholar?