Ode to the Toughest Professor Ever.

Everyone needs to have had a teacher like Stan Sultan.

I wouldn't have said that between 1994, when I arrived at Clark University to embark on my Master's degree in English, and 1997, when I left.  I was happy to leave, because Stan was one of my professors as well as my thesis advisor, and when I left, the gray hairs I'd sprouted during those three years had Stan's name etched on them.

It was my own stupid fault that'd I'd gone and chosen this topic on which to write my Master's thesis: Jewish- and Chinese-American Immigration Short Fiction by First- and Second-Generation American Writers.  That was not my title, it was Stan's--just to give you an idea of how unnervingly detailed he was.  Stan was the only professor in our small department who could advise me, owing to his strong background in Jewish literature (it didn't hurt that he descended from Syrian Jews who emigrated to America, either).

To give you an idea of how much I feared this man ( I'm sure by others did, too), I couldn't call him by his first name until I'd passed my oral exams, which was exactly one week before I left campus.  I called him "Professor" in person, even at his house while he fixed me lunch. He called me "Miss Hiller, " as in Ah, Miss Hiller. I see you're back to grace me with your presence. I always held my breath before knocking on his office door, because he was normally so engrossed in reading something so inconceivably academic that my mere, lowly grad-school-student presence was probably offensive.

What truly offended Stan about me, though, was my writing style.  I was flowery, prosaic (not good for a thesis); Stan demanded clarity through lifeless, staccato sentences I couldn't stand to pen. When I'd offer him ten or so pages of newly-researched and written work, he'd murder it suggest edits with red ink, and we'd rework those pages for about a month.  Jesus, Monica! He'd lay into me. You've got some real shite here! Ha! Let's begin. (And out came the pen from the breast pocket of his coffee-stained, ancient, cotton, short-sleeved shirt. Click-click!) You can only imagine, then, how long it took to write an 80-ish-page thesis.  (Well, you can't--double the amount of time you're thinking, because my laptop was stolen from my apartment when I was on page 56. The first time I was on page 56.)

Stan and I first met when I took his mandatory course, Introduction to Graduate Studies.  Each week, one of us newbies was responsible for presenting a short lecture to one another, and to Stan, in a round table of sorts, only to be ripped to shreds mere moments after the last word left our quivering lips.  No pictures exist of our seminar, but believe it: if there were any, you'd see seven or so 20-somethings sweating through their shirts, sitting far enough away from each other to keep their private reek of fear to themselves. You knew you were in real trouble when Stan began his post-lecture comments with Okay--let me tell you everything that's wrong with what you just said.  Intro to Grad Studies met every Friday morning for one semester. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach every Thursday night.

I "won" with Stan--during our three-year relationship--twice. TWICE.  Once, I answered a Stan Question correctly in our Grad class, and my answer made him gleeful--it was the first time he'd ever smiled at me. And once, an impassioned argument we were having over semantics in a short story that hardly anyone's ever heard of resulted in his genuinely conceding that I--I--was right, and he hadn't considered my interpretation ever before. I was so happy about this that I actually went for a run that night, and was propelled mostly by the joy of knowing I wasn't a complete idiot. For the record? I am NOT a runner.

Though I'd been informed about Stan's passing away in February, I came across his obituary in my Alumni Magazine.  I'd read the issue cover to cover and yet somehow had missed this column, only to find it today when I was ripping pages from the magazine with which to wrap and pack away some glasses.  If you read it, you'll see a fitting tribute to a most erudite, world-reknown scholar.

"A chocolate egg cream contains neither
egg nor cream," he taught us.

What that obit is missing, though, was the side of Stanley Sultan that I came to know as I was finishing my work there.  A fellow Master's candidate--who became my roommate and closest friend at Clark, and who remains one of my top sister-friends to this day--and I were invited to Stan's and his wife's home for lunch. It was a chatty lunch, punctuated by Tina's and my finding the humanizing quirkiness of this sometimes stoic, always impassioned, always serious man: for instance, in his lecturing us about the anatomy of a chocolate egg-cream while showing us an old-fashioned seltzer bottle.  Stan's crazy, old-man eyebrows lifted and lowered while he excitedly espoused the merits of using just the right amount of chocolate syrup and why one should own a seltzer maker, his index finger pointing upward in true Professor form.

On another visit to his home, this time alone with only the last chapter of my thesis to accompany me, Stan talked about a concoction that he and his wife, Betty, had been refining--and keeping in their freezer--for over a decade: what he called a Chinese Master Sauce.  (Recipe below.)  I think about it every time I make stir-fry.  I find it ironic that the two recipes Stan ever gave me are Jewish and Chinese ones.

I think of Stan every time I write. EVERY TIME I WRITE. I can hear him lambasting me for using the passive voice when I could be more clear, style be damned. I can hear him asking me if I need to use so many words to say what I mean. I can hear him guffaw at my puns, and then hear him sigh as he crosses them out with a red, word-murdering pen.

I think of Stan every time I challenge myself to do something that feels beyond me. It was Stan who introduced me to Yeats's The Fascination of What's Difficult, and it was because of this poem that I survived perpetuated made myself Stan's vulnerable and impressionable pupil, ultimately staying in the English program when after this or that meeting with Stan I'd just wanted to give up and go home.

When, finally, the thesis was complete and time came for the oral exams, Stan told me he'd be on the examining panel which would soon pummel me with questions to test the depth and breadth of my literary knowledge. (Hello? It was terrifying. I studied for weeks.) During the entire exam--was it one hour or two?--Stan wore a smirk. Was it a grin? Was it smug or genuine contentment that our time together would be formally done, whether or not I passed?

And I passed. Many hands were shaken (Stan, the passive voice just feels right here).  And when I asked Stan how he could smile while my makeup melted with sweat, he answered, to my glee: I was always on your side, Miss Hiller.

What's your hardest teacher story? Comment below, here, at the A&B FB page, or 

tweet me @monicagebell. 

This Old House

A few weeks ago, a total stranger called me up to ask if she could come to my house. 

You don't know me, but we used to live in your house, she said, and explained that her parents, who'd retired to South Bend, Indiana, would be back in their hometown--and wouldn't it be cool to surprise them with a trip to the very house they'd raised their seven--SEVEN--kids in? Deirdre asked if I wouldn't mind if she had a few siblings in tow, too. Those closet walls, in my room, she said. They knew all my secrets.  I wrote down the names of the guys I liked.  Are they still there?

Immediately I was in.  I didn't just invite her over--I demanded that she, the few siblings she was bringing with her, and her parents stay for brunch.  Deirdre and I, both kind of giddy with the whole idea of the family-house reunion, decided on a date, and--the sign of a soulmate--decided on food.  She'd bring the Kennedys, the bagels, and coffee, I'd have some fruit and pastries and a dining room table set to fit all of us around it, so that we could Talk House.  I couldn't wait to hear about where everyone slept, where everyone's stuff went, how they fit, how they made it work.  Anyone who knows us knows that with a third baby, we're feeling cramped here. And he doesn't even take up that much space yet.

Some history: okay, I don't really have much to share here. Our house was built in 1900; none of us know who owned the house originally, but once in a while, I get a whiff of a perfume... and, well, let's just say that Heath gets me when he says, Oh, is it the ghost? Whoever lived here at the turn of the last century smelled really, really nice. There once was knob-and-tube wiring (we fixed that) and there are leaded windows and built in bookcases and pocket doors. There is a double staircase that separated the help from the family, though we can't be sure how that worked.  There is a faucet in the garage where people once washed their horses.  This house rocks.

The Mommas: me & Mrs. K.

Whenever my house is mentioned at block parties, it is referred to as The Kennedy's House.  The family lived here through the '60s and '70s, (and I believe part of the '80s too), and has remained infamous for their friendliness.  The Old Guard of my street: the couples and families that lived here during the mid- to late 20th century, most of whom have moved away to greener pastures (namely, ranch houses or condos with first-floor laundry rooms) still talk about their vivid memories of this or that Kennedy.  I couldn't wait to hear first-hand the Kennedy's own memories of living here.

Coincidentally, we'd gotten most of the interior of the house painted just days earlier.  The walls, ceilings, stairs, and some of the cabinets and doors looked better than they had when we moved in, but the paintings and pictures had had to come down.  A fresh coat of paint and a whole day of cleaning?  My house looked Good.  I couldn't wait to meet our predecesors.  I couldn't wait to see their faces looking at their "old" house with new eyes. 

Brunching with most of the Kennedy clan, and
our next door neighbor, also a bonafide
keeper of neighborhood lore.

My favorite moments of this visit was looking at Deirdre's pictures of her room (now my daughter's room), from her "punk days," when she'd spray-painted her walls with anarchic abandon, and listening to her parents' recollections of where all the kids slept, who shared rooms, which rooms were used for what as kids got older and moved out.  (I couldn't believe that our second-story landing--a space we've hardly used at all--was the Kennedy's t.v. den.)  Deirdre told us that behind one of the wall boards is a dumbwaiter--Heath's dream-answer to how to get food up to his mancave without ever having to come downstairs, and that all of the floors were covered by shag carpets.  And what Mrs. Kennedy still calls her tree I also call my tree: my tree, as in, let's go look at my tree.  My weeping cherry tree that blossoms just around Mother's Day... well, that was/is Mrs. Kennedy's tree, a gift to her from her son, on a Mother's Day.  

Seven years in our house, seven times this tree
is lousy in beautiful pink blossoms on Mother's Day.

I loved meeting this personable and warm family, and am so grateful to have shared a home that has such a rich history.  

Who doesn't want to go back to their old house? I grew up in a house where the boys (the Narramores!) who lived in my room in the 1950s charted their heights on the inside of my closet door, the slowest contest ever; where I could practically draw the outline of the hole my dad put in the wall with a door handle after I'd made him crazy one afternoon; where the afternoon sun would shine through a rainbow sticker on my west-facing window and make a rainbow trail across my pink, shag carpet for hours; where my brother practiced a squeaky saxophone in a bathroom and where I practiced my headache-inducing tap dancing on the tiles in our basement. A wall between my brother's room and my room, on which we'd knock before going to bed sometimes, or just to signal that we were still awake. Et cetera. I loved the house I grew up in, and I often wish I could go over and take a peek inside.

Here's my confessional: I still drive by my old house sometimes, and tell my kids that that's where I was when I was little.  It's hard not to park in the driveway and throw my shoes off in the mudroom.  But someday, I hope very much to make that phone call.  You don't know me, but... 



Have you ever considered visiting the house you grew up in?

Would you go if you were invited? Visit the A&B Facebook page (c'mon, you can "like" it!) or tweet me @monicagebell to weigh in.

What happened when YOU went back to visit your old house? Comments welcome! Aprons & Blazers: This Old House apronsandblazers.com/2013/05/this-o…

— Monica Gebell (@monicagebell) May 14, 2013

Book Review: State of Wonder

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This book had me in its clutches from the beginning; I loved Patchett's Bel Canto and had forgotten how effortlessly she can wend a reader into evocative and powerful imagery. There were a couple of scenes that literally made me shudder, and, because 3/4 of the novel takes place in the heart of the Amazonian forest, when an ant started crawling on my hand from my ice cream parlor table (outside), I jumped a good two feet off my chair.

Piranhas, anacondas, & fire ants,
oh my! I never want to go here.

If you've read Heart of Darkness--or haven't, but have seen Apocalypse Now--you'll definitely find all the parallels between Patchett's and Conrad's novels, though Patchett has some fun reinventing the race/gender assignments of the main characters, and rather than a descent into the mind of a madman intent on death, Patchett insists that his female counterpart (Swenson) be consumed with life, in this case, feverishly researching how the women of a particular Amazonian tribe are able to bear children well into their seventies. I'll let you discover all the other fun intertextualities, but wow--well done, Ann!

This book has what to say about aging, about the paths we choose, the lovers we choose, and plays around with the archetypal missing father figure.

Toward the end of the book AP did start to lose me, however. A few unanswered questions and a shocking ending that seemed completely implausible, to me anyhow, led me to rate this just short of four stars. A good read if you want a real escape. And I am certain that I will never, ever, ever tour the Brazilian rainforest.



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