Prof. Stewart’s last year
English professor Larry Stewart reminisces
Ramsey Kincannon
News Editor
After 45 years, Professor Larry Stewart of the English department will be retiring at the end of the academic year.
Kincannon: How long have you been at Wooster?
Stewart: This is the 45th year.
Kincannon: What drew you to this school in particular?
Stewart: Well I haven’t quite figured out where I would rather be than Wooster.
I don’t like saying nice things about administration and so forth, and I seldom do publicly, but I think Wooster really has been very fortunate in its administration. I think I have been here for five of the 11 presidents at Wooster and every one of them has come out of the classroom in one way or another, and I just think that’s so important.
Students here are, for the most part, interested in education and a liberal arts education. Obviously people aren’t going out saying “Teach me more teach me more — I wish I could go to class more often.” But at the same time, I think students coming in here really do have a sense of liberal arts education and don’t get a lot of the kind of mentality that people are here just to get a degree and are simply trying to go through the steps.
I really like the students we have here and the kind of mutual support. Somebody will come in with a part of an I.S. and explain how various people said this and you realize they’re really talking about what they are doing with each other.
So you say why here and I think from top down, the college is about teaching and this department is great and I think 18-22 year olds, with exceptions, are just about the most interesting people in the world. And I think that’s just about what I’m going to miss the most.
Kincannon: Aside from talking to me, what is there anything you’re going to miss?
Stewart: The classroom itself. Reading papers is one of the fun parts. Evaluating people though is not fun. You always have this sense that you’re evaluating them instead of just the paper or that those two spill out on to each other. But no one finds grading papers to be the fun part.
Kincannon: Did you always know you wanted to be a teacher? I know you once said that if history classes were offered in the afternoons, you might have gone to law school and not become a professor, but were you seriously considering anything else?
Stewart: The two things I was thinking about mostly was either law school or graduate school for English. And I’m not sure that’s just all about history classes being offered in the morning. In those days, everyone thought to go to law school you should be a history major. We now know that’s not true but those were less enlightened days. So no, I think law and doing this were my only options.
I think it was sometime in high school that I started thinking about it. We were at some kind of event at a college campus and the dean talked to a few of us about how people should think about college teaching and it never really occurred to me that regular people could do that and I think the seed might have even been planted back in high school.
Kincannon: You went to undergrad at Simpson in Iowa which is this small school that didn’t describe itself as a liberal arts school but it seemed to contain some elements that was similar to Wooster, though I don’t know if they did that when you was at school there.
Stewart: As an undergrad even, I think I knew who every faculty member was there, and I’m not sure every undergrad at Wooster knows every faculty member. And it wasn’t like going to Wooster, but it prepared me for teaching here. Liberal arts are all I’ve known. I had a number of job offers at research universities, state colleges and so forth. And I was never really interested in doing that.
Kincannon: How long after you started here did you start to take on the I.S. projects?
Stewart: Really the second year. There was a full year of Junior I.S. and then I really did I.S. with them as seniors the next year.
Kincannon: So you’ve had nearly 45 years of I.S. projects. Are there any that stick out with you? Any favorites?
Stewart: No, I will not name any favorites because all of the people that I don’t name because I’ve forgotten them will be offended. So instead I’ll just say no.
Kincannon: Any memorable ones, then?
One interesting one I always use at admission events was the double major in English and Computer Science. I didn’t know enough programming and the Computer Science advisor clearly didn’t want a pure narrative. What it ended up being was an interactive novel in which this person did all of the programming and you could at any point make a choice and go in any direction. It was put together in such a way that it really worked as a narrative. It was really one of the more interesting and unusual ones just because you wouldn’t expect these two to go together.
Kincannon: Do you have any special plans for retirement? Like, are you going to write more articles or criticism?
Stewart: People say you are supposed to have plans in place and right now I haven’t had any time to put plans in place. I’m thinking there’s this conference that I usually go to each year and I think I’ll go to it again this summer to do a paper. Since I have been doing so many stylistics lately, and no one in the U.S. is interested in stylistics, this conference that I go to that is based in England, but has a large contingent from the continent, and also a large contingent from Japan, it’s always in interesting places. It’s in Malta this summer. And it’s always fun. You get to meet a lot of people and go to a lot of interesting places.
Kincannon: Any reason you chose this as the last year or did you just wake up one morning and know it’s time?
Stewart: Yeah, I mean a couple people came in a month or so ago and asked why are you retiring and said they were deputized or something and I started out by saying ‘Number one, I’m very old.’ They said “yes but…” and then we started talking about how yes isn’t the proper response to I’m old, no matter how complimentary the buts are. So in that sense, it’s time. I think it’s always better to go before people start hinting it’s time for you to go. And I don’t mean this to sound self-serving, but there are really good, young people there and you hate to plug up the system from the top and there are people out there that should have the same fun I’ve had.
Kincannon: Do you have any fun memories or anecdotes you care to share from back in the beginning? Or what was your first day like here at Wooster?
Stewart: I’m not sure I can do the first day. I do remember one of the first things I went to with other faculty. There was this one older faculty member. He said “Young man, if you stay around here long enough, you know it’s time to leave when bagpipes start sounding like music.” And that hasn’t happened yet but I was afraid it was never going to happen for me. Nothing like insulting the whole music department.
I remember when I came down here for the interview, the chair of the department was a very dignified, very old-school, wonderful person, was showing me around the department. And obviously, English departments don’t have that much to show. It was basically a copy room that was the only in there. Just a copier. Opened the door and there was this faculty member absolutely covered with blue ink, swearing and so forth. And the chair closed the door and just said “We’ll see Mr. Johnson later”
Kincannon: Was that when you knew Wooster was the place to be? So, you too could be covered in blue ink?
Stewart: Yeah, I miss the smell of ditto sheets in the morning or whatever it was. But I think I properly figured Wooster was the place was when I had an interview in New York and went in there, in the hotel room with this guy from the department and he kept saying “I don’t know where my colleague is.” So we were just talking and heard this weird noise and it turned out the colleague had locked himself in the bathroom, scratching against the door and such, and I still don’t know how you do that. Matt’s story of his engagement is so good and I just can’t follow that.