Gaddis the undergraduate

[Brian Stonehill Media Studies Pomona College]

Never imagined that I'd end up telling this story here.  But now that Mr.
Gaddis' education is a thread of its own I should report that when I was a
graduate student at Chicago, Richard Ellmann told me that Gaddis was an
undergraduate in the first class that he, Ellmann, taught at Harvard.  In fact
they did not get along well, according to Joyce's biographer in the mid-'70s.

If memory serves, Ellmann remembered distinctly a paper that the freshman
Gaddis had written for him, a caustic account of the huge lawns in front of
some conspicuously large estates on Long Island.  But then the young writer
Gaddis decided that it was okay for there to be such extravagance because the
lawns were there for him to enjoy.

Ellmann further recounted that on another occasion that same year he
embarrassed himself, neophyte teacher that he was, by recommending to Gaddis a
book that Ellmann had not yet read.  It was Edmund Wilson's _To the Finland
Station_, Ellmann somehow misrepresented what it was about (trains?
Scandinavia?  I didn't dare ask), & Gaddis went & read the book & called
Ellmann on it.  Small wonder they "didn't get along."  Yes, that was at
Harvard.  I always liked Dick Ellmann for telling a story or two at his own
expense.