(photograph by Constance Meath Baker)


Via email I received an invitation to contribute to a memorial tribute to Jeremy Jacobson, of whom I’m fairly certain you’ve never heard, unless you happen to be deeply addicted to the internet. Jeremy was a college teacher of English, and a blogger and twitterer of relentless energy. He died in his late fifties, and in his lifetime wrote a single book: a published version of his doctoral thesis on the incursion of literary critics into American English departments beginning in the 1950s and through the 1980s. Jeremy Jacobson was also, briefly, my student. I didn’t take long to decide that I would not be contributing to his online memorial.

He came in ten or so minutes late, took a seat in the front row, and, looking up eagerly at me, spread out his notebook and made himself at home. The course was on Henry James, with forty or so students, which I taught from 10.30 a.m. to noon, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. First day of class, I hadn’t planned to keep everyone the full ninety minutes. I gave a twenty or so minute talk outlining James’s life and career, passed out copies of the syllabus, wrote my office hours on the board, and ended by remarking that Henry James was a leading figure in my small pantheon of gods. Before dismissing the students, I warned that I planned to do all in my power to convert them to the cult known as Jamesianism. As everyone was beginning to leave, Jeremy raised his hand.

“How, exactly, do you expect us to read these novels?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“I mean,” he said, “from a Marxist or feminist or Derridean perspective, or what?”

“I hope I don’t disappoint you,” I said, “but we’ll read them to discover what is in them and what Henry James might have had in mind in writing them. I’m fairly sure this will be enough to keep us busy through the term.”

After everyone had left the room, and as I was gathering up my notes, he came up to introduce himself.

“Jeremy Jacobson,” he said, putting out a hand. “I’m a graduate student, but very passionate about Henry James. With your permission I was hoping to audit this course, even though it’s for undergraduates.”

A small man, on the plump side, wearing rimless glasses, brown hair parted near the middle of his head, he looked Jewish, though as I later learned, he wasn’t. He was twenty-six, older than most beginning graduate students, having worked for a while on a small-town newspaper in Oregon. He had gone to school at the University of Washington.

“I’m especially interested,” he said, “in the influence of Henry James Senior’s Swedenborgianism on the development of William but especially on that of Henry James.”

“I know next to nothing about it,” I answered. “You may be wasting your time sitting in this class.”