Comments on: Friends

By: Crooked Timber » » 7-year old Richard Rorty served little sandwiches to Whittaker Chambers

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:42:34 +0000

[...] No kidding. Says so in Achieving Our Country [amazon]. As a teen-ager, I believed every anti-Stalinist word that Sidney Hook and Lionel Trilling published in Partisan Review – partly, perhaps, because I had been bounced on their knees as a baby. My mother used to tell me, with great pride, that when I was seven I had had the honor of serving little sandwiches to the guests at a Halloween party attended both by John Dewey and by Carlo Tresca, the Italian anarachist leader who was assassinated a few years later. That same party, I have since discovered, was attended not only by the Hooks and the Trillings, but by Whittaker Chambers. Chambers had just broken with the Communist Party and was desperately afraid of being liquidated by Stalin’s hit men. Another guest was Suzanne La Follette, to whom Dewey had entrusted the files of the Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials. These files disappeared when her apartment was burgled, presumably by Soviet agents. (p. 61) So I guess I no longer find it strange, relatively speaking, that Hegel and Schelling and Hölderlin were roommates. (I’ve really got to read The Sociology of Philosophies, which people have been insistently recommending to me [amazon].) posted on Friday, August 25th, 2006 at 10:15 am Post a comment [...]

By: Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 13:02:46 +0000

Hegel and co. should genuinely not be so suspicious: they came from a common tradition and shared broad similarities in view. Hegel was an admirer of Schelling in his early days and an admirer of Holderlin to the end. Nothing odd about that.

By: T. Scrivener

T. Scrivener — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 04:23:11 +0000

“But then again, neither had written much of anything before the war, so you could argue that they both became famous poets because they knew and encouraged each other, and it wasn’t that much of a coincidence after all.”

Has anyone considered the exciting possibility this raises, that genius may not be that rare and that meeting the right people might make it bloom? There are cases of teachers with several famous scientists/intellectuals etc as pupils, this suggests that having a brillant teacher/mentor can enormously change you.

By: Colin Cmiel

Colin Cmiel — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:56:35 +0000

This sort of thing always reminds me of Charles Rosen who says in the Classical Style (and I paraphrase) that the entirety of the classical style has been defined by history as consisting of two close friends and their student.

But what friends! and what a student.

By: Ray Davis

Ray Davis — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 16:20:55 +0000

Jack Spicer and Philip K. Dick.

By: ajay

ajay — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:57:45 +0000

So did Raymond Chandler and P.G.Wodehouse, but they didn’t collaborate on something brilliant. In fact, the mind boggles at the very idea of the attempt.

You want to be careful saying things like that on Making Light, old boy…

By: harry b

harry b — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:02:34 +0000

Richard Thompson went to school with Hugh Cornwell. I think they were in a band together, and RT taught HC to play.

Think of Shrewsbury in the early 1950s—Peter Cook, Michael Palin, John Peel, Willie Rushton, Paul Foot, Richard Ingrams (who’s the odd one out?)

By: david tiley

david tiley — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:02:23 +0000

Serge Leone and Ennio Morricone went to school together.

So did Raymond Chandler and P.G.Wodehouse, but they didn’t collaborate on something brilliant. In fact, the mind boggles at the very idea of the attempt.

By: T. Scrivener

T. Scrivener — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:28:04 +0000

“then the relationship is even less surprising.”

Also consider that geniuses tend to seek each other out ( witness all the friendships between them). Intelligent people are often drawn together out of loneliness, how much more geniuses?

By: ajay

ajay — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:54:47 +0000

I suppose it’s quite a coincidence that, in the whole British armed forces, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves ended up in the same battalion at the same time (1 Royal Welch Fusiliers). But then again, neither had written much of anything before the war, so you could argue that they both became famous poets because they knew and encouraged each other, and it wasn’t that much of a coincidence after all.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:36:35 +0000

Why has no one mentioned Cary Grant and Randolph Scott?

By: ron up north

ron up north — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 02:44:07 +0000

Wally Cox and Marlon Brando!?

By: Jim Harrison

Jim Harrison — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 21:28:54 +0000

As a compulsive reader of prefaces and bibliographies, I can attest that Collins’ book is everywhere these days, though often well under the surface. More generally, lots of folks seem to be pursuing what might be called the Great Clique theory of intellectual history, c.f. Jenny Uglow’s book The Lunar Men, which describes an amazing collection of friends in late 18th Century England that included Erasmus Darwin, Wedgewood, Joseph Priestly, James Watts, and many others.

By: Adam Kotsko

Adam Kotsko — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 21:14:36 +0000

Um, guys—this isn’t the same kind of coincidence. They worked closely with each other, at least for a time, and one might expect that people who closely collaborate or start a major intellectual movement would come together through more “official” or “intellectual” means than simple luck of the draw on being college roommates.

By: derek

derek — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 20:26:21 +0000

I’m always amazed that X famous comedian turns out to have sat next to Y famous musician at school.

Or, for that matter, that Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore were roommates at college.