Monday 20 November 2023
Steve was my second semester Freshman writing professor. His devotion to truth, understanding, and education was awe-inspiring. He did not allow you to settle for quick, simplistic answers. He demanded that you explain yourself completely. He expected you to show every step in your thought process. No shortcuts, no skipping. Until Steve became my college instructor, I had no teacher who challenged me this way. He might have been my undergraduate instructor in a writing course; however, his expectations for me, then as a college student, were as though I were a graduate student, writing a Master’s thesis. He taught me to weigh every word, sentence, metaphor, and paragraph. He taught me that writing a long paragraph was acceptable. I learned from him that I needed the space (and patience) to illuminate the passage, question, or problem. He taught me to slow down, and dive deep into the text. One of the most profound lessons he offered me was not to be content with the first answer. The better explication was still to be determined. Try harder. Don’t say what everyone else is saying. Respect the artist. If I needed an additional page or five to argue my points, write them. He demanded I identify all my thoughts. “You can always go back, and edit; but say what you mean,” Steve would repeatedly counsel.
He impressed me. He became the standard by which I evaluated all my future professors, including myself. Later, while struggling with an upper undergraduate term paper on Jospeh Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—Steve wrote and later published his dissertation on Conrad—I asked him to review my draft. Although officially he no longer was my instructor, he treated me as though I were still his student. I respected him more for challenging me (again). He reviewed my draft, and he wrote comments, responses, criticisms, corrections in response to every word, every sentence I wrote. This method of pedagogical instruction was Steve. Other insecure, unappreciative students complained that he ended up writing more in their papers than they did. I saw Steve’s writing on my papers as a man who genuinely wanted me to learn: to see how to correct my mistakes, to demonstrate what was possible, to model how to write that way myself, and to raise my own standard for excellence. What I simply didn’t know (yet) how do by myself, he nonetheless inspired me to dare write that way. What I was too afraid or insecure to do myself, he encouraged me to try. “Your subject matter isn’t easy, Dan. Break it down into smaller, more manageable pieces. I admire your ambitious reach, but you need to learn how not to be intimidated. Ask those difficult questions, but answer them clearly, simply, thoroughly” he insisted.
The following year, I asked him again to help me with an undergraduate paper on the Holocaust writer, Aharon Appelfeld. I noticed a pattern in Appelfeld’s books: the symbolism of trains. My instincts understood what I wanted to say about the trains; however, my conscious mind still lacked the organization, analysis, and confidence to write what I sensed to be an important motif in Appelfeld’s books. Steve treated my Appelfeld draft the same way he had done with my earlier papers; however, instead of reviewing the draft with me, he began asking me questions. Nervously, I would answer them. Clumsy at first, my responses were too shallow. “Why do you say that?” He pressed me for clarification. “What else?’ He countered. “Where do you see that in the book?” He pushed me for precision. As I clarified my argument, he would say, “Write that down. That’s what you need to say in your paper.” He urged. What I was now writing down were insights and explanations I didn’t say in my earlier draft. I was re-writing my paper. I wasn’t disappointed or embarrassed that I was essentially starting from the beginning. Real learning was happening. He made me feel smart. This study session lasted one hour, but I felt as though the time lasted longer. I felt my mind transforming. I felt less ignorant.
I then decided to attend graduate school for a Master’s degree, and once again sought Steve’s consultations. “I’m not getting what I need to learn from my classes. I need a tutor; I need a mentor. I’m tired of not knowing how to think, of not writing well, of not understanding politics. I want to be an intellectual. I need your help.” I pleaded. Steve nodded, pleased by my invitation. From that moment on, he was no longer “Professor Ressler;” instead, he became Steve. “Read Irving Howe’s Politics and the Novel.” He decreed. After reading it—and I didn’t understand initially everything Howe wrote—I confessed, “How can I write like that?” He chuckled. He wasn’t ridiculing me; instead, he recognized that I was serious about becoming an intellectual. Moreover, Howe was Steve’s mentor, a teacher who inspired him to write on Joseph Conrad. Steve gifted me a copy of Politics and the Novel; on the title page, he inscribed: “From Irving to Steve to Dan!” I felt as if I was entering a brotherhood, a guild of intellectuals, writers, and professors.
Winning an intellectual or political debate with Steve was a personal achievement; it was thrilling because prevailing against him was not an easy task. Quick, rash logic infuriated him. Stating the obvious was a grave intellectual sin. If I agreed with him by only saying: “Yeah,” he would scold me. His passion for art, literature, everything dealing with the life of the mind and the world not only interested him but consumed him. He suddenly would stop in the middle of a busy Manhattan sidewalk because an insight into a topic we were talking about revealed itself to him. He just stood there, eyes closed, working out the logic until he arrived at an explanation. He was entirely oblivious to the people behind him who would collide with him, thereby cursing him. He was a column of stone; I couldn’t budge or move him aside. Unfazed, he stood there, transfixed. Only when he solved the riddle that his sphinxlike insight posed to him, he would begin to walk, sharing his understanding with me. I revered his dedication to intellectualism.
When I returned to graduate school to earn my doctorate, Steve immediately recommended I purchase the newly released collection of Lionel Trilling essays, entitled: The Moral Obligation To Be Intelligent. The book’s name astonished me because to be intelligent wasn’t merely a choice; this duty meant that the individual must do everything to be intelligent. And now as a first semester doctoral student, I was ready to be intelligent. Steve’s tutelage and mentorship prepared me for this transformative intellectual moment. I must become a professor; I must become intelligent. To be intelligent represented a life of the mind; to be intelligent demanded a lifetime commitment to improving the mind. To be intelligent was a daily challenge to learn, understand, and appreciate the world. Each day’s achievement had to be reconfirmed, reassessed, revised, and retested.
Steve never finished writing his decades long book project on the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen because he was never satisfied with his interpretations and arguments. He always perceived that there was something missing in his thinking. He would repeatedly read Ibsen’s A Doll’s House to catch some detail or clue he had missed during the previous read. Steve was always unsatisfied with his literary interpretations. He was demanding; he refused to settle for simple, neat conclusions. For Steve, art represented the complexity of life. His interpretations traced every nuance. Sometimes pursuing those subtleties drove him to a mild form of madness; however, he understood this bout with madness as touching the divinity of human creativity. He needed to see, feel, hear—to experience the fullness of what lies behind the insight. For Steve, to be intelligent was intellectual exercise. For Steve, to be intelligent did not mean a quickness to comprehend or a pretension of sophistication. For Steve, to be intelligent signified a sensibility that intensified his appreciation for creativity, life, and art in all its forms.
And for Steve, this responsibility to be intelligent was his greatest virtue. Like Irving Howe’s Politics and the Novel, Trilling’s essays became another benchmark, another model to learn from, and Steve insisted I discover that virtue and make it my own. At one point, Steve even urged me to stop reading them because ultimately, to be intelligent now meant a serious existential responsibility to discover those insights by yourself. No one could—or should—show you the thinking process. You must find one for yourself. Howe and Trilling never taught me that lesson; Steve did. The title: The Moral Obligation To Be Intelligent became and still is my conviction: my daily reminder that I must strive to become better informed and attuned. It demands I become more perceptive, experienced, and discerning. Thank you, Steve.
Education didn’t stop once I wrote my dissertation, receiving my doctorate. Steve taught me that to be intelligent was a daily reaffirmation to be curious. Trilling taught me several other important lessons; however, what Trilling at times only implied, Steve demonstrated those lessons more directly, clearly, and dynamically. One of Steve’s greatest lessons was that each artist or writer had their own moral code or values that shaped their art and thinking. Look for patterns; trace how those patterns develop, change, or regress over time. For Steve, moral themes weren’t static or proscriptive. They varied from artist to artist, and they didn’t remain fixed for individual artists. For Steve, moral questions were political questions. Steve didn’t follow any scholarly “-ism;” he found literary theory to be too limiting. He considered literary theory to be too far removed from the actual work of art; he saw theory as a distraction, pulling his attention away from the novel, poem, painting, or music. The art taught Steve more than any literary critic ever could, and Steve had passed on that lesson to me.