Washington College: Bob Day and Lit Culture on Campus

I entered the Literary House through the side door, Edith purring anxiously and nuzzling my ankles until I eased the door open enough for her to escape out onto the porch. I felt like an outsider staring into the strange faces that stared blankly back into mine until I finally broke the silence, asking, “Do you know if Professor Day is in yet?”

“He doesn’t have an office in here anymore,” remarked a stodgy blond girl, finally surrendering a smile as I shifted awkwardly about the room.

I could hear his polished southern voice echoing from the stairwell with all of its quiet sophistication and colloquial charm, so I hurried up the stairs in the graceless way that tardy people often do and found that he was running a few minutes behind as well. Fumbling with a tie that he has probably never worn, combing his matted hat-hair with his fingers, he welcomed me into the room as he was preparing to have his photograph taken.

This man is an enigma to me, a fascinating blend of passion and patience, refinement and humility, enlightenment and curiosity. He promised that his class would change his students’ lives in a reference that he made to Nabokov in our syllabus, and having come close to the end of my time with him I admit with unimpeachable certainty that my life will not be the same because of one professor and his course.

There is something present in him that provokes enthusiasm in his students. It could arguably be his “outbursts of low grade profanity” or his eccentric sense of humor that ignite the rooms that he enters, but there is more. There is an admiration in him that draws out an admiration in others – admiration for the authors that we read, for the prose, and for the teacher himself.

Says Senior English major Jill Ward, “ I think most of us just sit in the class listening to the wisdom drip from his tongue, waiting just to lap it up and retain whatever bits of it we can ... he's an amazing man.” This is a man who claims that his appreciation for books is his only strength, the only thing he feels comfortable bringing to his students, confessing humbly that he does not believe himself much of a scholar while simultaneously praising the other members of his department for their brilliance. Yet when has another member of the department inspired such inquisitiveness and creativity? With a Lit culture that already seemed to be on the decline, I was concerned for the loss of its initiative entirely as one of its driving forces steps down.

I voiced my concerns to fellow student writers first, who were inclined to agree that something was amiss with our creative society. Second semester English major Allison Fischbach was disappointed to find that WAC did not publish an annual literary and art magazine, discovering that “for a liberal arts college focused on writing, a large portion of the student body seems to ignore the creative writing publications.”

New to the department as well, Mary DiAngelo agrees that the writing program seems to “fly under everyone’s radar.” She says of the Lit House dwellers and such, “[the program] seems to be a sort of exclusive club.”

Allying with many other upperclassmen, Aileen Brenner was disheartened that students are incapable of majoring in Creative Writing at the college with the largest undergraduate literary prize in the nation. “For a college so proud of its creative writing department,” she asserts, “I'm upset that there isn't more of a department and more opportunities for learning in it, such as a major option with a thesis.”

But what does this have to do with Professor Day? Sophomore Della Roberts explains, “everything I wrote in my creative writing classes was forced and dry, but it was different with Professor Day's class.” Rather than having students examine literature on a technical level, Day allows students to read for the simple pleasure that it brings. Directions in his syllabus include: “Take your time. Read slowly and with care. Reread passages you admire. Throw away your cell phones. Do not connect your literary life to Google. Admire sentences. Paragraphs. Punctuation. Lists.”

I went to Professor Day, told him how I felt about the decline of literary culture on campus and asked him about some of his own philosophies, hoping to gain some insight. This is what he had to say:

Me: So, I heard a rumor that you’re retiring. I really hope that’s not true, because I know that a lot of students will be very disappointed.

Day: Well goddamn, how nice! Well, I am going to become an adjunct professor. After this semester I will retire as a full time professor. I’ve got some writing to do … so yes, it’s true. That’s why I gave you all my ties, I’m going to announce it to my students on the last day of classes, so I will ask you to wear your ties.

Me: Sort of like the scene from Dead Poets’ Society?

Day: I like to think of myself as a live writer and not a dead poet, but I guess so, something like that.

Me: Well, enough about your leaving. What about your years here at Washington College? Your teaching style is so refreshing. Why do you choose to emphasize the students’ appreciation of the literature more than the examination of its technical aspects?

Day: I only teach classes I would want to take, and I take all the classes along with the students. I’d like to write all the papers I assign. I don’t have a lot of strengths in literature, but I have one good one. I read with affection and admiration. Students who want to study literature with me respond to my peculiar assignments with splendid work. Their stuff is … full of beans and rice.

Me: As such a strong advocate for creativity and literary appreciation on campus, how do you feel about our writing culture? Do you feel that it is, well, ‘in decline?’

Day: One of the reasons literary culture is no longer the supreme culture is because other cultures have grown up, and good for them. There should be lots of intellectual cultures on a college campus; it’s important that each student has a home.

Me: What about the society you spoke of here during the 60’s and 70’s, for instance, when Allen Ginsburg tried to levitate Bunting Hall – do you feel like we have devolved since then, or simply changed?

Day: Allen Ginsburg’s dead. Hell, I may be dead. I don’t even know. Every generation has its own wildness. I don’t know about this generation, but I’m sure they’re crazy enough. But when it comes to literary culture, don’t wait to be invited. Show up. Revolutionize it if it doesn’t have any zip, because as far as I’m concerned students are the Z-I-P of literary culture.