Almost twenty years ago, a young man appeared at Bartlett Gym at the University of Chicago, overawed and terrified, to register for graduate work in the Department of English. His advisor was The Chairman; and at the appointed time, in those pastoral and pre-computerized days, the student appeared with a bushel-basket of cards that stated his religious preference, his hobbies, and his visible scars and birthmarks. He piled these in front of The Chairman, who gained the student’s immediate and eternal admiration by waving everything but the course-list aside with an imperial, "I don’t care about any of that crap!"

That student took most of his course work from that chairman—Walter Blair, wrote a dissertation under Walter’s direction, and became a close friend of Walter (and Carol) Blair, a collaborator, a colleague, and a debtor of such staggering academic sums that even now, cynical and balding, it boggles his mind. Even more mind-boggling is the startling truth I have discovered in sixteen years of academic meandering: across the country, there are others in our profession whose friendship with Walter was the greatest fringe-benefit of their academic careers.

His classes taught us that, although American humor was a serious business, the art of teaching consisted in large part in informality, in lighthearted dialogue which might even withstand large doses of sly, deadpan, and usually outrageous humor—frequently in the form of surreal illustrations on the blackboard that accompanied his lectures. The secret was that he cared: papers came back decorated with comments in a rainbow spectrum of ballpoint pens. (The more earnest students tried desperately to decode the colors—red for spelling, green for syntax, black for factual errors—until they learned, some of them anyway, that the Technicolor method was a sophisticated hoax.) For any questions we had, Walter had a book or two to lend, a stack of 3x5 cards with at least a comprehensive and encyclopedic answer—and sometimes with a doodle left over from a faculty meeting or a final oral as an added joy. His vast knowledge of American humor and Mark Twain wasn’t simply his; it belongs even now to his students, former students and letter-writers who simply inquire, asking his help. What Walter did and still does is remind us all that exhaustive research and academic integrity are not synonymous with pedantry.

It would be silly to waste time and space informing readers of Studies in American Humor of Walter’s scholarship: we are all so familiar with and dependent on his academic books, his classroom texts, and his scholarly

articles that we do not need to be told that almost single-handedly he discovered, analyzed, cataloged, and gave respectability to American humor as an academic discipline. Native American Humor, Tall Tale America, Horse Sense in American Humor, and Mark Twain & Huck Finn are among the most important tools of our trade. Less immediately obvious but equally formidable is the roster of his former students who have researched the field of American humor under his tutelage. And his own investigations and writing continue at a prodigious rate.

Of course, no one’s absolutely perfect. And before Walter’s well-rehearsed false modesty absolutely shatters, let it be recorded that he will commit inexcusable puns without the slightest hint of shame, that he has co-authored a mystery novel under the pseudonym Mortimer Post, and that he has even been known to cheat small children at tic-tac-toe—but only after they have cheated first. Of course, on the occasion of his election to the first Honorary Life Membership in the American Humor Studies Association it would be improper to linger over these foibles; so a few of his former students have assembled this "Walter Blair Issue" of Studies in American Humor in his honor—as a small fraction of the interest on the debt which we all owe him. This issue is "his" literally, in the sense that his influence shows on almost every page; it is also for him, with the gratitude, esteem, and abiding affection of us all.

UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

Wind—Notes from a faculty meeting

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