My Generation Read Online Free PDF

it by a man like William Blackburn and his love, requited and unrequited, and his rapturous teaching.
    [From
Duke Encounters
. Duke University Office of Publications, 1977.]

Almost a Rhodes Scholar
    I n the winter of 1947 it appeared that I was on my way to becoming a Rhodes scholar. During the period after World War II when I went back to continue my studies at Duke University, I had applied myself with considerable passion to what was then, as now, known—I think unhappily—as “creative writing,” and it became about the only academic discipline in which there was descried that I had any talent at all. However, my promise was such that my late teacher, Professor William Blackburn—God bless him—determined that it might be a good idea to apply for a Rhodes scholarship on the basis of my writing ability. I was a graduating senior, an English major, impoverished, with nothing much looming on the horizon in the way of a livelihood after my midyear graduation a month or so hence. Professor Blackburn—who had himself been a Rhodes scholar—was, like most Rhodes scholars, an ardent Anglomaniac, and was able to beguile me with visions of all the delights that a year or two at Oxford might offer: studying Old Norse and Middle English in the damp and drafty rooms at Merton College—a place which, he said, one grew fond of; reading Keats and Hardy under the tutelage of Edmund Blunden; drinking sherry and eating scones, or picnicking on plovers’ eggs and champagne, as the pale lads did in novels by Aldous Huxley; having one's own fag—whatever that meant; going
down
to London for weekends; enjoying summer vacations in Normandy or boating along the Rhine. Another attraction: one would be paid a reasonablestipend. Whatever its defects (and I could not see many), it mostly sounded perfectly wonderful, and so I was quite acquiescent when Professor Blackburn urged me to try out for the preliminary competition—that of the state of North Carolina, held in Chapel Hill. I was a little apprehensive; my grades had not really been outstanding throughout my academic career, and I had been under the impression that “Rhodes scholarship” and “outstanding” were virtually synonymous. No matter, said Professor Blackburn; the new policy of the Rhodes selections placed much less emphasis on scholarly achievement than previously; candidates were beginning to be chosen far more for their promise as creative talents, and therefore I stood a very good chance. Well, it turned out that he was right. I submitted the manuscripts of several short stories. To my astonishment, out of a field of more than twenty I was one of
two
students to win the competition from North Carolina. The field had been loaded with hotshots, too: straight-A scholars from Davidson and Chapel Hill, an accredited genius from Wake Forest, a magnificently proficient German linguist from Duke. What a heady and vainglorious triumph I felt—and what a victory it was for the creative spirit! I was so exhilarated that day when I heard the good news that many hours passed before sober reflection set in, and I began to wonder just how much of my success had been determined by the fact that Professor Blackburn, my beloved and idealistic mentor, had been chairman of the selection committee. Anyway…
    The regional competition for the Southeastern states was held a few days later here in Atlanta—indeed, within the very bowels of this hotel where we are all meeting. I was twenty years old and the trip marked several “firsts” for me. The era of air travel, for instance, had not then really arrived in all of its dynamic and stupendous actuality; it was not yet really part of the matrix of our national existence. I had flown several times on military planes in the Marine Corps, but my trip to Atlanta from Durham was my first experience with a commercial aircraft. It was an Eastern DC-3, and I got slightly airsick, though my malaise may have been compounded by the truly