As Part of the World: Letters from Sherman Paul

Abstract

I was a doctoral student in English at the University of Iowa from 1974 through 1980. One of my strongest motivations for choosing the university was to study with the distinguished Americanist Sherman Paul. His wise guidance and encouragement of my interests (and tolerance of my idiosyncrasies), as well as his own example as a scholar, were indispensable aids to my completion of the Ph.D. Friends who also studied with SP agreed with me that he seemed to have a series of steps through which his graduate students had to pass, which corresponded to the quality of their work and progress toward their degree. For example, if you did well in his courses, you might move on to an independent study, in which you would meet periodi cally at his home rather than his office. For me (and no doubt for others) the greatest unanticipated boon of the long effort of achieving the Ph.D. was the chance it gave me to come to know Sherm and be accepted as a friend whom he would stay in contact with for life if I held up my end of the relationship. My postal correspondence with him began in 1919, as I was finishing my doctoral dissertation, which he directed. As usual, he was spending the summer at his second home.