Sean Latham

Robert Scholes 1929-2016

Robert Scholes, an inventive and visionary scholar of modern culture, passed away peacefully at his home on 9 December 2016. He wrote or edited some forty books on topics like the history of storytelling, the creativity of science fiction, the complexity of language, and the enduring value of figures like James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. These works were translated into several different languages and studied in classrooms around the world. Scholes did some of the earliest archival work on James Joyce, co-wrote with Robert Kellogg what remains the standard study of narrative history, played a key role in legitimizing science fiction as a genre worthy of serious study, helped create the legendary semiotics program at Brown University, and co-founded the Modernist Journals Project, an early and enduring digital humanities initiative. He wrote textbooks about poetry and fiction as well as literary theory and the reasons why we study literature. He won nearly every honor the field offers, including a Mellon professorship at Brown, a Guggenheim, the Modern Language Association’s award for distinguished service, and the National Council of Teachers of English award for research. He held honorary doctorates from universities in the United States as well as France and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998 and president of the Modern Language Association in 2004. This long and distinguished list of books and awards, however, does little to describe the life and impact of a man whose work helped to shape careers and classrooms around the world. Scholes was an agile thinker and able writer who never lost touch with the basic elements of the profession, even in the era of high theory and academic superstars. Some of his greatest books, including Textual Power and Protocols of Reading, urged us to understand the importance of literacy and the slipperiness of language. He offered, for example, a legendary interpretation of a profane bumper sticker, showing just how complex the everyday world around us can be. He wrote or edited ten textbooks on writing and poetry, storytelling and rhetoric, precisely because he believed that teaching lay at the very heart of things. Indeed, some of his final books, including the Rise and Fall of English, urged scholars to turn away from the minutiae of theory in order to re-engage with the basic skills of grammar, logic, and rhetoric in the classroom. Despite his enormous accomplishments, Scholes was a modest,

An Accidental Editorship

I arrived at the James Joyce Quarterly in 2001 by accident—literally. The year before, I had applied for a job at the University of Tulsa in “Modernism” and been politely rejected. The next year, however, a new job advertisement appeared: an open-rank appointment for the editorship of the JJQ—one of the most distinguished academic journals in the suddenly booming field of modernist studies. It also happened to be the journal that had just (again politely) declined to publish a piece I’d written on Joyce and snobbery. I asked my trusted dissertation director if I should apply for this new job, and he said “no”—if they wanted me they would have hired me. That seemed like good advice, but amid the now somewhat quaint process of printing cover letters, ordering dossiers, and stuffing envelopes, I ended up with one extra application packet. Rather than throw it away, I wrote out a Tulsa address and dropped it in the mail. A few months later, the black box of the job search opened, and the department chair called to say that they were considering an interview, but were unsure since many people remembered me from the previous year. That seemed like another way of saying—again, very politely— “thanks but no thanks,” so I was surprised again when an interview was scheduled late in evening at the MLA convention. The interview must have gone well, though it took place so late at the end of a hectic day that I have absolutely no memory of it beyond my wife finding me in the lobby, tactfully announcing “you look awful,” and leading me to a shop where we spent a scandalous amount of money on a small sandwich and a cup of coffee. I had submitted a writing sample, of course, and eventually the committee asked to see the entire manuscript for my first book before inviting me to campus to give a talk. There was only one catch: I couldn’t deliver a talk on any of the material they had already seen. So with less than two weeks, and in a querulous state of disbelief, I managed to produce the not very subtly titled talk “Hating Joyce Properly.” I can’t imagine why I thought this a good idea at the time. Maybe titles like “Don’t Hire Me” or “Who Are You To Judge Me?” seemed too subtle. Having nevertheless written this passively aggressive lecture, I then finished my preparations for what would be a three-