Roger Shattuck, RIP: A rare edition

For me, Roger Shattuck was the best kind of mentor: the kind who had no idea he was playing that role. I admired his work well before I was able to gauge just how much intelligence and generosity of spirit informed it.

That latter part I discovered about 20 years ago, when with the effrontery of ambitious youth I called him out of the blue to ask for a recommendation: I was seeking a grant for my then-embryonic biography of André Breton and wanted his support. To my delight (and astonishment), he asked to read the proposal, and soon afterward called to say he would be glad to offer his help.

Not long after that I moved to Boston and was able to meet him in person. On various occasions, over lunches at Boston University or panels on which we both found ourselves or informal coffees at some student union, my respect for—and sheer enjoyment of—his conversation was given free rein. These conversations ranged from cordial debates over some obscure facet of Surrealist lore to the local Vermont politics he was involved in, and later to the writings of his that I published at the Museum of Fine Arts. Not that I agreed with everything he said: schooled by the 70s-era Structuralists and New Critics, I sometimes found Roger’s approach to literature frankly old-fashioned, a bit too “humanistic” for my taste. But with advancing age, if not wisdom, I’m coming to recognize more and more lucidity in his arguments.

As I suppose often happens when we lose someone, memory drags up moments that haven’t been unearthed in years. I recall Roger obligingly sitting through a guest lecture I gave at Boston U., and making it appear he was glad I came to hear his lecture at the same seminar the following year. I remember him acting as a gracious, if inadvertent, host one afternoon when he and I were to be interviewed for a documentary about Surrealism, making the hours pass enjoyably as the cameraman endlessly wired Roger’s office for the shoot. Perhaps more than anything, I remember visiting him in his campus apartment upon his retirement from BU, having been invited to come take away some books from his shelves. It was a difficult time in my life, and this mark of generosity—yet another one—was welcome in its own right. But Roger had also chosen books that he knew would appeal: rare editions, old copies of Breton’s works, the kinds of books I had consulted in archives when doing my research, and that were now being offered to grace my own shelves. Or else reading copies that bore his marginal comments, cryptic annotations that sparked further thoughts about works I felt I knew. I hope that when my own time comes, I’ll be able to pass these books on to someone who can treasure them as I do.

Of all the writings Roger published, the one that comes back to me today is one that I didn’t much appreciate at first. It’s a piece called “The Poverty of Modernism,” from his collection The Innocent Eye, and in the best Socratic tradition it takes the form of a fictional (I presume) dialogue between the professor “Edgar Carlson” (read: RS) and his former student “Chuck.” There is, admittedly, something a bit staged about couching an exchange on literature and philosophy as a short story. But in many ways, this shows Roger–both as author and as character–at his best: open-minded, relaxed, quietly persuasive, enlightening, humorous, anything but dogmatic. Reading it again, it brings home what a joy it must have been to have him as a teacher, and what a gift it was to count him as a friend.

Note: Mark Polizzotti is director of publications at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the author of Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton. He is married to TeleRead e-book critic Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti.