In Memoriam: Martha Banta 1928–2020

Abstract

In Memoriam:Martha Banta 1928–2020 Pierre A. Walker [Martha Banta, past president of the Henry James Society, influential and prolific scholar, esteemed teacher and mentor, treasured colleague, Professor of English, Emerita, at the University of California, Los Angeles, passed away March 31, 2020. The following tribute by Pierre A. Walker speaks for the Henry James Society. —Editor] In July 2013 I taught a summer course at Renmin University of China, and one day, in the campus hotel where most of the foreign summer faculty lodged, I found myself riding the elevator with a friendly Asian woman who struck up a conversation in perfect English. "Who was I? Where was I from?" she asked. After responding, I asked the same questions and discovered that my fellow elevator passenger was Cheung King-Kok, a member of the faculty of the English department at UCLA who often taught in the summer program at Renmin. The revelation of her UCLA connection led to the obvious question: "did King-Kok know Martha Banta?" My question elicited what I afterwards realized was the obvious answer: of course King-Kok knew Martha; Martha was a great friend. Our mutual affection and admiration for Martha was so palpable that right then and there King-Kok and I formed what I considered to be the Beijing branch of the Martha Banta fan club. King-Kok's and my elevator meeting was classic Martha: her impact in academia and particularly in the area of American studies has been felt in so many ways all over the world. When the 2002 Henry James Society International Conference was in its planning stages, the decision was made to invite three keynote speakers, one from England, one from the U.S. (the two countries where James resided), and one from France (the conference's host country and a country very important to James and to his work). [End Page 95] The selection of the keynote speakers would emphasize their importance as teachers of younger James scholars. For France and England, the choice of keynote speaker was immediately obvious, as it seemed that virtually all of the younger British and French James scholars then active had studied under the same British or French senior scholar. But the choice of an American was much more difficult. There are more universities with more doctoral programs in American literature, and while there were and are a number of very influential James scholars active, no single one dominated the training of the next generation. The organizers were reminded of David McWhirter's remark that he had learned how to give conference talks from observing Martha. His comment helped me to understand that even if we hadn't been Martha's actual students (neither David nor I ever studied under her), we had nonetheless all learned from her, from reading her books and articles, from hearing her present at conferences, and from having her as a friend. As a result, we invited Martha to be the American keynote speaker at the 2002 conference. I have always pondered exactly what David meant by his comment, as I find David's conference presentation style quite different from Martha's. What, I wonder, did David think he had learned from Martha? I don't know how he would answer the question, but I know how I would: at conferences Martha did not read excerpts from articles or book chapters in progress. Even if she did make use of such an excerpt, she prepared her conference remarks as a conference presentation. She spoke directly to her audience, both in off-the-cuff asides and in the prepared remarks, which would directly address the topic of the conference and the interests of that particular audience. And she put her own personal style into her demeanor as a presenter. As a James scholar, Martha was often cited for her early book, Henry James and the Occult (1972). She wrote countless articles and a good dozen more books before she published another book specifically about James: Henry James: An Alien's "History" of America (2016). But she always maintained that James figured "behind" her books. Her keynote talk at the 1995 joint conference at the University...