This was a eulogy for Jim Sledd, a professor in the English Department who was retired by the time I was a graduate student but famous for his crankiness, his book on dictionaries, and his fight against bureaucrats and racists. I only met him once, when a fellow grad student, Chris Pearce, and I went to interview him. I talk about meeting him in the piece, which I did for the Observer--Sledd used to write for the Observer and was a friend of former editor Michael King.

Teaching writing to freshman college students–teaching writing to anyone–is like digging fencepost holes on the prairie. It is necessary work: without a hole there’s no post; without a post, there’s no fence; without a fence–everything falls to entropy. It’s also endless work. After you dig one hundred thousand holes, the horizon’s still no closer, and somehow the feral-minded children popping out of the undergrowth seem wilder, and younger, than ever.

The late James Sledd, who died on July 21, 2003, a professor emeritus of English at The University of Texas and longtime contributor to the Observer, dug many fencepost holes himself, first as a graduate student at Texas from 1939 to 1945, then as a professor from 1964 onward until 1985...

To read the full eulogy, go here.