Sourpuss

Having not long ago closed down a university teaching career of thirty years, I would like to go on record as saying that I wouldn’t have done it for a penny less.  Teaching is arduous work, entailing much grinding detail and boring repetition, interrupted only occasionally by moments of always surprising exultation.  And I should like to add that I don’t think I learned a thing from my students.  God love ’em.

That is from Joseph Epstein’s new In a Cardboard Belt!: Essays Personal, Literary, and Savage.  I might add he taught at Northwestern, not an inner city high school.  By the way, Epstein has even less kind things to say about George Steiner and Harold Bloom, both of whom have evolved into essay writers much like Epstein.