I think of him often. He passed in 2020. I remember him from my little world, one of his (more unlikely) students. He gave me Sources and seriousness. Humility. Honoring the antecedents. Lessons like that. I found him later and was able to tell him enough that he heard me. Good good, Mr. Goodman, yes you’ve told me.
From the Full of sh** series
You live in the town he left from, George you will call him, you hadn’t imagined this place when you were his student.
George taught you the Greeks, Homer and Aristotle the histories and the tragedians in the original. Sources. O George.
He would have been a priest but the priest life ate him up and what he found in the ancients purified. None of this he talked about but you knew it.
George taught you that without ever using your first name in conversation but you confused him when you left for Jerusalem to study Hebrew.
You told George it was his influence. This really confused him. You watched George pray in the Newman Center after class and this is how George taught you prayer.
George also taught you how to read and how to be a student. About prayer you missed a clue – he prayed alone.
It’s going to eat you up too, George was trying to tell you. All your best teachers told you that. They had all been chewed up.
You wrote to George a few times from Jerusalem and years later you tracked him to his sister where he retired to a middle American city.
He was still nose deep in Sources asking you a question about Aramaic. Two remnants still loving Sources and ancient languages.
George. I’m alive. Not full of sh**, still reading fragments of Aristotle in manuscripts. Consulting with Maimonides. Thank you for the Originals.
George L. Carver. Requiescat in pace.
j/sg
Carver, George L., d. 2020
(1965), Professor Emeritus of Classical Languages retired from Arizona State University; B.A., M.A., University of Texas, Austin; S.T.B., Saint Mary’s Seminary; Ph.D., Saint Louis University