Professor New was aware of and sensitive to the politics of exclusion and elitism, but nevertheless championed brilliance, genius, and individual accomplishments. He had that about him which I would feign call master. It was the one time I most felt like a true pupil, an apprentice, learning at his feet.

Prof introduced me to Mann, Proust, and Woolf, and gave me a more thorough introduction to Joyce, Kafka, and Faulkner. Alongside these literary giants, he taught me what I really needed to know of theory. It was my second theory class, and unlike the first, in which we sampled every literary theorist of the past 200 years, his class focused on three. Two of those still heavily influence my thinking: the moral philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the writer (there's no better word to describe him) Walter Benjamin. I am still trying to wend my way through Benjamin's Arcades.

Prof was hard, demanding voracious reading habits. He both expected us to remember minute details and how those led to the universal themes. He challenged us to move from the esoteric, metaphysical nuances in A la Recherche du Temps Perdu to the practical, compassionate realities stemming from such nuances. If Marcel's disorientation is emblematic of the perpetual state of human existence and the source of our desperate outpouring of communication, maybe, also, this understanding could increase empathy and combat the hatred, warfare, and subjugation that humans do in the desire to form some fixed identity.