I’m now three pieces in to Eli’s compilation Alone with Each Other: Literature and Literacy Intertwined. I’ve read the intro, the framing chapter from his first book, and his study with Michael Smith of his classroom discussion in an intro to lit course, obviously at Villanova.
It’s like going through a box of one’s old things, but rather than things, it’s all the conversations and group discussions I’ve had with Eli over the years that I am rediscovering.
At the same time, it’s also like finding a box of one’s parent’s things, even their own journals: you realize where all their influences came from. So much of what I was struggling to say about language in my graduate and early book writing days turns out to be summed up nearly in the people Eli quotes, Bakhtin certainly but also Nystrand (well he did used to mention him a lot), and Berger and Luckman (how did I never know these names?).
Nor did I ever realize how Eli admired and emulated Dave Bartholomae. I so wish I had ever gotten to know him. Now it’s too late.
These are the things I am noticing about Eli’s project (in Harris’s sense of the word):
The attunement to institutions
how that attunement could help us with our own institutions of comp-rhet, or whatever it is these days, and English studies broadly
how that attunement could be actually more helpful than his more overt explanation of why composition (what he calls literacy) and literature can get long better (in part because I think his definition of literary study would not be accepted by anyone my age or younger in the field—it is not really about individual author study).
Finer points to admire:
everything he is talking about, as far as the diversity of linguistic and rhetorical orientations among his students in the “Alone with Each Other” article, is exactly what I am trying to do but never quite articulated so fully. Maybe it’s time to write a follow up study (of myself and my own teaching? gah that sounds troublesome).
how deeply attached he is, even at his most intellectual, to people and place, to family, friends, and Philadelphia. I am so grateful to have found him to allow me to be that too.
just a note: Eli signed his book for me when we had lunch on March 24. I started this Substack on March 23. Finally, I am writing in the way Eli always recommended and it feels great.