Wayne Booth, RIP

The New York Times reported today that “Wayne Booth”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/11/books/11booth.html passed away yesterday. In addition to sharing a university, Wayne and I had another connection — I worked as his personal assistant troubleshooting problems with his computer at home. For much of graduate school I supported myself by working in computing in various ways, including make house calls to help professors out. Typically this included emeritus types who fell through the cracks of the support policies of their divisions as well as very busy professors — I am one of the few people who can say they’ve been paid to defragment Homi Bhabha’s hard drive. But out of all of those people I remember Wayne the best, and I am truly grieved at his loss.

When I first began working with Wayne I knew that he was a famous professor, although I had not done more then glance at some of his work. As someone who provided desktop support to professors, I knew that they sometimes had egos or a sense of self-importance that needed fixing as often as their computers did. It did not take long after my meeting with him to get a sense of his unique personality: laconic in the great tradition of the American frontier, but extroverted as well. In fact his writing could sometime seem self-absorbed — this was a man, after all, who wrote articles about his hearing aid in local literary journals. By the time I met him, Wayne was a man who had already spent decades being feted as one of the most important intellectuals in his discipline. He was a teacher who had not just won every teaching award Chicago had to offer, but had helped define the character and goals of the College at the University of Chicago. He was a faculty member hardened by decades of departmental politics — all of which he had won. He was in many ways a real role model to me.

One of the things that impressed me about Wayne was how he had managed to do this without becoming proud and haughty. He had an ego — you don’t get to the top of any field without feeling the need to prove something about yourself to the world — but he wore it lightly, and he put it in service of his work with others. One of Wayne’s biggest problems when I knew him was his hearing — he wore a hearing aid and had special amplification on his phone. As a result I spent more than one occasion defragmenting his hard drive or dowloading his mail while listening to him work over a dean or department head on the phone. On these occasions he demonstrated the self-confidence and emotional intensity necessary to get one’s way in institutions like Universities, where influence is the currency that power comes in. But in his personal life he was a remarkably loving father and husband — he and Phyllis had been married for more than a half century and had an obvious and uncomplicated love for each other that was amazing. As I helped him send and receive email I occasionally read correspondence between his daughters and himself which revelead their relationship to be equally open. Indeed, their encouragement to him as he worked through health problems and general old age revealed a kindness of character which was the ultimate proof of Wayne’s ability as a father. And of course, over the computer were pictures of grandchildren and other relatives. When he worked, his family was literally never out of his sight.

I know that Wayne was a great teacher because he taught me. Many senior professors patronize the younger and less able, but Wayne’s ego directed him to teach rather than judge. He was generous of his time with me and his paychecks were always ten or fifteen dollars more than I had asked for. His situation at home was a mess — an ancient, virus-filled computer running a modem connection on faulty wires operated by a man who knew little about computers, but whose scholarly life depended on word processing and email. When I had to back up his data, wipe his hard drive, and reinstall his operating system in order to convince the networking people his computer was virus free, he bore it out with a patience and trust that few of my other clients did. As we got to know each other better, we discussed areas of common interest. We were both musicians, both had an interest in rhetoric, and were both opposed to the war in Iraq (he called himself a ‘dove’ — a term from a conflict decades gone). At one point I waived my usual fee and asked instead for an office hours so that we could talk about Kenneth Burke — a unique opportunity for me. He not only spent an hour with me talking about Burke and suggesting readings, he offered to lend me books from his own personal library and then, at the end of the session, insisted on paying me for my work on his computer anyway. I still own and teach from the copy of “The Craft of Research” that he gave me — I wish now I had the nerve to ask him to sign it for me.

Working with Wayne was a unique opportunity for me to watch a genuinely good person and an unquesitonably great professor live out a life filled with success and happiness. I send my condolences to Phyllis, the rest of his family, and his colleagues.