Remembering David Minter 1935–2017

Abstract

Remembering David Minter 1935–2017 Carolyn Porter (bio) Thinking back over the countless memories I have of David, I’ve been reminded of something Faulkner said, speculating at large, in Light in August: “Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what that other man or woman is doing” He’s talking about Byron Bunch, and how little people know about him, about what a good man he is. But he’s also pondering the limits of what any of us can know, even about those we think we know well. And there is a lot we never know, except by accident. For instance, a fellow student of David’s, Barbara Morris, once told me a story I’d never heard before. Many years ago, she was at a football game at Rice Stadium. Few fans were there. It was rainy and we were losing, she said, a moment all too familiar to Rice students of our generation. She was on her way up the steps to buy snacks for her family when she saw David talking to a campus cop who was trying to evict an elderly couple from a pair of seats that did not match their tickets. They’d moved there to watch the game in shelter from the rain. David was talking to the cop, trying to get him to leave them be. Barbara told me she didn’t know the end of this story for a fact, but knowing David, she and I both could tell you how it must have come out. You can just see David, or rather hear him, in that controlled, measured voice, steadily making the case to the cop. “They have tickets,” he’d be saying, “They are doing no one any harm. Look at this sea of empty seats.” I imagine the old couple, with wet plastic rain hats on and frayed but sturdy umbrellas stowed next to them, looking up in startled awe at this handsome stranger with the voice of a preacher and the demeanor of a judge who had emerged out of nowhere to defend them. I wasn’t there, but I am quite sure that the cop backed down. Because even if he didn’t follow the impeccable reasoning, he would have to hear the authority in those patiently, but ruthlessly delivered words. When David spoke that way, with that focused intensity that seemed to come from a kind of solar plexus of his mind, you listened. It’s also worth remark that David would have noticed this scene—the cop harassing the little old couple. (I see them as little somehow.) Because David paid attention. Here, it was a kind of peripheral vision through which he suddenly saw what was happening, instantly focused on it, and moved in to deal with it. As students, we witnessed the more sustained intensity of his focus on a work of literature, and the relentless attention he paid to the argument he was developing about it, and, for some of us, the lucky ones, the attention he paid to what we thought. [End Page 101] Which brings me to what I know not by accident, but for sure, what I know bone-deep, to use one of David’s favorite expressions. The most precious experience for David’s students came when you found him paying attention to you, to what you had to say, whether on paper or in writing. It was not a matter simply of seeking approval; it was more deeply a matter of what Faulkner called that “happy marriage of speaking and hearing” in which you could think out loud with impunity. You could trust that you would be understood, pressed to go further, to explain what you meant, all the while knowing that your ideas were being taken seriously by the most serious mind you were ever likely to encounter. David’s brilliance, his impeccable honesty, his open-minded curiosity, his open-hearted generosity—all these stand out in memory, as they stood out, day to day, year to year. For me...