My primary reason for leaving the wilderness was to undertake an in-depth study of poetry and philosophy, something I could not do easily in the woods, at least in the primitive conditions under which I lived. I needed access to a library and to teachers, and I knew I would benefit by the discipline of a formal course of study. I gave very little thought towards requirements for a degree, greatly to the (wholly justified) annoyance of my parents, who were paying my way, but I made good use of my time and their investment all the same by taking every upper-level course in English and American literature and Western philosophy that the college offered, and doing well in them.
Before it fell on desperate times and sold off all its bequeathed lands and collections like a starving man selling his internal organs one by one, Rockford College was a place of modest beauty. Situated along Aldeen Park, with extensive old woodlands and original prairie of its own, and with buildings mostly of a clean architectural style that blended unobtrusively into the woodlands, the visual effect was one of quietude and harmony. On the first day that I walked onto campus, being not long out of the wilderness and not having lost my wilderness ways, I came on foot, through the woods, pausing every so often to stop and view the college at a distance, as though it were a natural feature that I had stumbled upon by accident. I was sizing it up, assessing it on my own terms, preparing myself to take the plunge into what was for me a largely alien culture.
For the rest of my time at Rockford College I would almost always approach the campus in this way. There was one parking lot in particular which was situated away from the campus, back in the woods. I would park at the far edge and instead of walking towards the buildings, I would take a trail away from campus, circle wide through the woods for about a quarter mile, and finally step back onto campus among the dormitories which were set well back into the trees. On my way in, I would usually take the time to stroll down into one of the secluded glens of Aldeen Park, close to the purling waters of Keith Creek, where no one ever seemed to venture, and sit for a time under a favorite old maple, pull out my copy of Wordsworth or Keats, and read for a half hour or so. It was my way of preparing each morning for intellectual battle.
defending the Romantics
If I had hoped for professors sympathetic to my literary heroes: the Romantics, the Transcendentalists, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Symbolists, I was to be disappointed. To a man (there were no women professors of literature, philosophy or history at that time) they were openly hostile to such writers and artists. While they had many points of contention among themselves, they were alike in having been educated during the hegemony of High Modernism, and in having been imbued with Modernism’s disdain of the literary achievements of their immediate predecessors. Their heroes were such figures as Jonson, Donne, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Johnson, and Burke. A handful of novelists and essayists from the nineteenth century merited their grudging respect, but among the poets only the few who might be considered proto-modernists gained any approval: Browning, Hopkins, Hardy. All of them esteemed T.S. Eliot, not only for his poetry and criticism, but for his politics and religion as well. Two of my professors had studied under the Agrarians (Ransom, Tate, Davidson) and one was a longtime friend of Williams and Frost. It was in this company that I was expected to defend my views — by formal means in the classroom, and be any means available after hours in the taverns, where my avowals of admiration for the likes of Shelley and Swinburne were met with undisguised derision.
see also ‘early skirmishes at Rockford College’ in the river ran red: literary wars.
The Walker brothers
The first time I met Thomas Walker was in a state institution, a locked ward for the criminally insane outside Rockford, Illinois sometime in 1974. I was working as a nurse’s assistant and had gone over to a neighboring wing on some errand or other. Thomas looked a little like the lead singer in Jethro Tull, scraggly beard and shoulder-length hair, and a sardonic expression which I would soon learn never altogether left his features. He was on the telephone, intent on his conversation, and paid me no heed. I gathered from his end of the conversation that he was talking to a potential suicide. He looked supremely bored and not a little annoyed. Finally he said, very cuttingly, “Why don’t you just do it then and get it over with and stop wasting my time.” And he hung up.
My jaw must have hit the counter. I was horrified and I’m sure it showed. I would later learn that the “suicide” was a chronic attention-hound, whom no one took seriously as a suicide threat. What they took seriously was how much time he took up on the phone, tying it up to no good purpose and making it impossible for anyone else to call in. If he were tying up the line with his endless and pointless chatter, someone actually on the verge of suicide might try to call in and receive only an endless busy signal. There was a standing directive to keep the phoneline open as much as possible and to cut any frivolous calls short. But I was new and hadn’t yet read all the material I had been given to read, and had no idea the caller wasn’t entirely on the level. Walker, for his part, was delighted that I was horrified, and did nothing whatsoever to disabuse me. It amused him to observe that I clearly considered him a callous and heartless bastard. When I objected to his handling of the suicide, he played his part to the hilt. “He was a sniveling worm,” said Walker “The world will be a finer place for his absence from it.” It was an appalling sentiment, though nicely phrased. It was also all for show, his way of testing me, and having a bit of fun. I wasn’t easily put off, and having spent a good many weeks in the twilight existence of the night ward, I was more than ready for some conversation. So we got to talking.
Whether at the end of that night, or soon after, he invited me over to his place — a rented house he shared with some other joes — after our shift, for a congenial smoke, music, and more conversation. And so began what was to become — apart from the last two women I married — the most important friendship of my life.
I’m not sure how well I ever knew Thomas Walker. He was never an easy read. Though by no means dispassionate, he seemed, at least in comparison to myself, a thorough-going cynic and skeptic. Yet he was less so than his devilishly handsome younger brother, Dennis, who in discussions with us tended to stand off unconvinced even after Thomas had become engaged with some idea or other. Of the three I was the undisputed enthusiast, the romantic, the believer. Thomas fell somewhere between Dennis and myself, though where exactly was always impossible to say. The Walker brothers were nearly the same age and were both students at Rockford College. They were both uncompromising, aggressive, argumentative, excellent pool players, and devoted tournement chess players. They frequently got into heated arguments — never about women or sports or politics, as far as I remember, but about ideas. In particular they would become red-faced and in each other’s face on the topic of Stendhal’s The Red & the Black, which they both seemed to regard almost as a kind of scripture, or Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor. The difference between them can be summed up by their chosen majors. Thomas majored in literature; Dennis in philosophy. As I took every upper-level course on offer in both areas over a three-year period, I had one or the other of them in almost every class.
(this section to be continued . . .)
