In Mermoriam: Joseph N. Riddel 1931-1991

IN MEMORIAM Joseph N. Riddel 1931-1991 This issue of the Arizona Quarterly pays homage to Joe Riddel and celebrates his continuing influence among those who were privileged to have known him. A contributor, member of the Editorial Advisory Board, and generous friend of the Quarterly, Joe is missed by those ofus who have been touched by his vitality and generosity and influenced by his pioneering efforts in the theorizing of the study ofAmerican literature. My own memories ofJoe, those traces of his presence—his look, his body, above all his voice—inevitably take shape against the background of a particular time and place, and I want briefly to celebrate a personal side of his career by recalling a moment from the past. I first met Joe in 1965 when, in his role as Director of Junior Recruiting for the English department at suny Buffalo, he interviewed me for an assistant professor position. The mid-sixties were heady years in the profession particularly at Buffalo where Joe along with Albert Cook and Norman Holland was building an iconoclastic and exciting department. In 1966 and 1967 Joe recruited at least twenty-five assistant professors to join a department that included, among others, John Barth, Leslie Fiedler, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, C. L. Barber, Dorothy Van Ghent, Angus Fletcher, Herbert Schneidau, Gale Carrithers, Marcus Klein, and René Girard. It was a wonderfully diverse and energetic department and an especially hospitable one to junior faculty who not only shared full voting privileges and a two-course teaching load with the senior faculty (a practice virtually unheard of at the time) but who, thanks to the efforts of Joe, were immediately integrated into the social and intellectual life of the department. Joe's home and office were open to junior faculty, and he was always ready to exchange ideas, offer advice, read manuscripts, write letters of recommendation, and discuss the fortunes of the Buffalo Bills. For me as for a number of other assistant professors and graduate In Memoriam students Joe came to represent the spirit of the Buffalo English department of the late sixties and early seventies, a democratic spirit of generosity , intellectual diversity and vitality that crossed traditional boundaries of rank and disciplines. That spirit remains for me a professional ideal, a sign that the personal can in fact inform and energize the institutional. The editors of the Arizona Quarterly wish to thank the contributors to this issue, old friends and colleagues, who have joined in paying homage to Joe, an extraordinary critic, teacher, and, above all, a loyal friend. Edgar A. Dryden ...