Recently I walked through a heavy rainstorm in Berkeley to get to my office in Tolman Hall on the University of California campus. When I arrived, my shoes were so soaked I had to remove them; I put them in a wastebasket to drip dry. I sat in my office chair and enjoyed the tactile warmth and good feeling of being in a secure, familiar place.
I am on the last lap of my academic career, and this is probably my last office. Watching the rain pelt down on the window, with the North Bay in the distance, I recalled other academic offices and work spaces that I occupied during the past 40 years.
My first office was in a room on the third floor of Berkeley's Wheeler Hall, where the English department placed its graduate students. It was a large room divided into small cubicles, each of them about 6 square feet, encased in metal and glass, with enough space for a small desk and a chair. I dutifully studied in mine. One day my wife, Aneta, came by, surveyed the scene, and opined, "When the English department feels that a grad student is ready to leave — with Ph.D. in hand or flunked out — they pop the student out of the cubicle like you pop an ice cube from a plastic ice tray."
My day eventually came. I obtained a tenure-track job at Indiana University at Bloomington. The English department there is in Ballantine Hall, a tall, soulless building constructed in the 1960s of limestone and glass. In the main lobby sits a huge globe of the world.
I arrived on a humid summer day. The department's head secretary gave me the key to an office near the far end of a long corridor and told me to see her after I had inspected it. I remember unlocking the door, crossing the threshold, and suddenly feeling wonderful — as if I had physically crossed a line from years of childlike dependency into a world of independent maturity. I was no longer an obeisant graduate student and teaching assistant, scrambling to find a place to meet with my students; I was a grown-up faculty member with his own office. (I soon learned that some obeisance is expected from assistant professors, but it is a much better version than grad-student servitude.)
When I returned to the main office, the secretary explained that a famous Romantic-period scholar occupied the office across the hall from me, and that he suffered from serious diabetes. He always kept his door open, and I had to do likewise, because he might lapse into a diabetic coma at any time. If that happened, I had to run down the hall to a Coke machine in a student lounge, get a can, run back, and force some down his throat. I agreed to the arrangement. That fall, when he returned to the campus, I started working with my door open.
The elderly scholar — I had used his anthology in graduate school — was always frosty toward me and rebuffed my attempts at polite conversation. I soon learned from departmental gossip that he was a well-known anti-Semite, and that when he had been chairman, he had refused to hire Jewish applicants.
What to do? I certainly wasn't going to apologize for being Jewish, but I would keep my door open. One day I heard a loud gagging sound and looked across the hall — he was having a seizure. I knew the drill and even kept some spare change in my desk for this emergency. I grabbed it and started down the hall to the Coke machine when it suddenly occurred to me: Hey, stop, don't get the Coke. This is your chance to win one for the Jews, all those landsmen he'd turned down.
But the instinct passed, I got the Coke, forced some down his throat, and he revived. Did he thank me profusely? No, he never thanked me at all, and seemed upset to realize I was the one who brought him out of insulin shock.
Writing or even reading in that office was impossible. With my door always open, colleagues constantly dropped by, lost students wandered in, book-sales people considered me easy prey. I could not write a paragraph without interruption.
Fortunately the university offered faculty members an alternative work space — a library study. The library was another tall, soulless building constructed out of limestone in the 1960s, but with a minimum of glass. Every faculty member could obtain a study there but had to share it with a colleague.
I was assigned a study on the 10th floor: 10-154 was a 9-by-9-foot cubicle with two desks and chairs, a thin floor-to-ceiling shelf, and no windows. No phones were allowed, and, years later, Internet connections were prohibited. It was like working on a lost spaceship: The world outside could be collapsing, but faculty members in their library studies would never know about it. In fact, one time a tornado touched down nearby and, except for a flicker of the lights, I had no awareness of it until I left the library.
My study mate was Paul Strohm, who, as it happened, had been in the Wheeler Hall ice-cube tray with me at Berkeley and was now working on articles about medieval life and literature. We were, and still are, close friends, but we were not compatible as study mates.
I like my rituals before I start working: long, slow drinks from my large Thermos of coffee; a leisurely read through the morning paper, lingering in the sports section, then an eventual shuffling of work papers and the start of work. On the other hand, Paul had no time to spare (he had lots of administrative duties and was a single parent raising two boys). I would be sipping my coffee and perusing the box scores when he would open the door, move directly to his electric typewriter — computers had not come into use yet — turn it on, and start typing. All in one motion.
I regarded his efficiency as a rebuke to my apparent sloth — although when I eventually got to work, usually after he finished, I accomplished a lot. He considered my methods irritating. I also like to spread my work on as many surfaces as possible. Paul is very neat.
One day, after he found some of my papers on his desk, we had a brief argument. Out of it came an excellent solution. I was about to go on sabbatical for a year. I would leave my area absolutely clean, and he could have the whole study to himself until I returned to Indiana. He would then let me have 10-154 for a year (he had a sabbatical planned for that year). But we would register with the library as study mates, as if two people were using the space. And when we were both on the campus, he would work in the morning and I in the evening.
We continued that arrangement for 17 years. In our study, Paul produced three wonderful books and many articles on medieval literature; he went from a reputable but not well-known scholar to the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. For my part, I wrote four long books and numerous articles on college sports and college life. When Paul left Indiana for Oxford, the library authorities were so impressed by our production that they allowed me to have the whole study to myself until I took early retirement in 2004.
As I cleared out 10-154 for the last time, I thought of the books that had come out of it and the good vibes in the walls. It was difficult to close the door for the last time and turn in my key. In the same way, that same week, I was sad when I cleaned out my Ballantine Hall office and gave the key back to the head secretary.
Both work spaces contained so many memories but, at the end, stripped bare, they seemed so different, so unfamiliar.
However, my new office in Tolman Hall at Berkeley is oddly familiar: It's in a tall, soulless building constructed in the 1960s out of glass and concrete. It's a California version of Indiana's Ballantine Hall. In fact, the first time Aneta entered the building, she looked around and asked, "Where's the huge globe?"
I like to imagine that, as faculty and staff members, we pass through these large buildings and leave some of our soul in them, thus rendering them less soulless. But it is hard to tell. The cartoons on office doors age and lose their relevance. But maybe something from the people who were inside the offices remains.
