creature than I really am. To him I am a perverse child growing into manhood with no prospects or bourgeois ambitions, utterly unequipped to meet his world. (He is wrong, am not unequipped but unwilling.) My father and probably all fathers like him have an extremely naïve idea of education. They think it is something formal, apart from actual living, and that it should give one an air of highbrow eminence coupled with material substance (money). They do not expect it to have an effect on the moral life, on the intellectual life, and I doubt whether they have ever heard of an esthetic life. They are good folk, when they are not neurotic, and what after all can we expect? Such conflicts must come if we are to honestly follow out the concepts we learn or teach ourselves. What nexus have I with the old man? What shall I say to him? In his way he is a curio. For instance: He boasts of having read the complete works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoyevsky. I believe him. But how has he been able to look open-eyed at these men and act as he has shown himself capable of acting? [ . . . ]
So much for the family.
So you’re going into anthropology; sweet Jesus! It’s a hell of a lot better than the English department. And if you are not going to train yourself in a money-making technique you could choose no better field. It is the liveliest, by far, of all the social sciences. Since it is your intention to go to school, I think it is the best discipline, the one that will aid you most. Of course, you will have to learn to keep your balance, but that should be easier in anthropology than in English. As for satisfying the finance corporation that is putting you through— Rien n’est plus simple [ 1 ]. For the good student there are scholarships and fellowships galore. You have no notion how naïve socially many writers are. The tendency of our time, anyhow, is to rate the moral excellence over the esthetic. I don’t think any of us are pure estheticians. Closest is Isaac, who also falls short. There will be a little awkwardness in anthropology—prehistory and physical anthropology and parts of descriptive anthropology. But after all, these are the least important parts of anthropology. I regard them as necessary implements, the tools of social philosophy. With a little effort and application you can brush them out of the way. Moreover, if you are good at rationalizing, you can find certain charms in even the tools.
You ought to meet [Alexander] Goldenweiser. Even Isaac is completely won by the man. A perfect cosmopolite, a perfect intellect. He knows as much Picasso as he does Tshimshiam religion, he knows Mozart as well as Bastian, and Thomism as well as Polynesia. You ought to see the books that line his shelves. Next to [Alfred L.] Kroeber stands Sidney Hook, and Lenin, and of course many of Trotsky’s pamphlets. He can open up in a seminar and discuss for an hour the anthropological thinking of Elisée Reclus, the anarchist geographer, the great friend of Kropotkin. He is a piano virtuoso, an esthetician, a Bolshevik, a deeply cultured man.
I am taking a seminar with the great Kimball Young, in advanced social psychology, a class with friend [Eliseo] Vivas, about whom Isaac will be delighted to write you. A course in the classical economists, and one in European prehistory.
I guess you have a good half-hour’s reading in the above. Leave you to digest it.
Alexander Alexandrovich Goldenweiser (1880-1940), a Ukrainian-born social scientist and disciple of Franz Boas, was greatly esteemed for his groundbreaking research in totemism as well as for his charismatic teaching style. He was in residence at University of Wisconsin, Madison, for the academic year 1937-38.
To Oscar Tarcov
[Postmarked Madison, Wisconsin, 13 October 1937]
Dear Oscar:
How shall I help you? What can I do? Whatever I could I would do with all my heart. If I were lying next to you in hell I would help you with
So much for the family.
So you’re going into anthropology; sweet Jesus! It’s a hell of a lot better than the English department. And if you are not going to train yourself in a money-making technique you could choose no better field. It is the liveliest, by far, of all the social sciences. Since it is your intention to go to school, I think it is the best discipline, the one that will aid you most. Of course, you will have to learn to keep your balance, but that should be easier in anthropology than in English. As for satisfying the finance corporation that is putting you through— Rien n’est plus simple [ 1 ]. For the good student there are scholarships and fellowships galore. You have no notion how naïve socially many writers are. The tendency of our time, anyhow, is to rate the moral excellence over the esthetic. I don’t think any of us are pure estheticians. Closest is Isaac, who also falls short. There will be a little awkwardness in anthropology—prehistory and physical anthropology and parts of descriptive anthropology. But after all, these are the least important parts of anthropology. I regard them as necessary implements, the tools of social philosophy. With a little effort and application you can brush them out of the way. Moreover, if you are good at rationalizing, you can find certain charms in even the tools.
You ought to meet [Alexander] Goldenweiser. Even Isaac is completely won by the man. A perfect cosmopolite, a perfect intellect. He knows as much Picasso as he does Tshimshiam religion, he knows Mozart as well as Bastian, and Thomism as well as Polynesia. You ought to see the books that line his shelves. Next to [Alfred L.] Kroeber stands Sidney Hook, and Lenin, and of course many of Trotsky’s pamphlets. He can open up in a seminar and discuss for an hour the anthropological thinking of Elisée Reclus, the anarchist geographer, the great friend of Kropotkin. He is a piano virtuoso, an esthetician, a Bolshevik, a deeply cultured man.
I am taking a seminar with the great Kimball Young, in advanced social psychology, a class with friend [Eliseo] Vivas, about whom Isaac will be delighted to write you. A course in the classical economists, and one in European prehistory.
I guess you have a good half-hour’s reading in the above. Leave you to digest it.
Alexander Alexandrovich Goldenweiser (1880-1940), a Ukrainian-born social scientist and disciple of Franz Boas, was greatly esteemed for his groundbreaking research in totemism as well as for his charismatic teaching style. He was in residence at University of Wisconsin, Madison, for the academic year 1937-38.
To Oscar Tarcov
[Postmarked Madison, Wisconsin, 13 October 1937]
Dear Oscar:
How shall I help you? What can I do? Whatever I could I would do with all my heart. If I were lying next to you in hell I would help you with
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