Quite Good

MANY DARTMOUTH graduates will write about Professor Peter Saccio: English majors, for example, who undertook some grand writing project and sought him out for advising; or members of his Shakespeare course who remember him as he swooped into 105 Dartmouth wearing a cape, lectured brilliantly on King Lear, wept as he read from the play, and stormed out with- out acknowledging the stunned class, his cape following him to some wind-ravaged heath.

I remember Saccio far more simply. I was a pathetic English major, someone who cowered from grand writing projects. First I tried to major in chemistry but almost failed Chem 6. Then it was math, but that didn't last much after Math 5. I stumbled into an English major soon after taking Don Pease's class on Modern American Drama, but even that route was problematic: professor after professor told me that my prose was, in short, indecipherable. Not very auspicious for an English major.

I remember writing an essay for Saccio's Modern British Drama. It was on Harold Pinter's TheHomecoming, and I was excited as I fiddled with the themes in that grim play. (My essay's title had the phrase "mother whore'' in it, which, back then, probably titillated me to no end.) In the back of my mind, however, I could hear what every professor had said to me previously and feared the same refrain from this man whom I so admired.

One spring afternoon I sat in Saccio's office as he read a draft of that paper. It was due in two days, but by some miracle I had written enough of the essay to show him then. He finished reading, looked at me with a grin, and— I will never forget this—said, "You're quite good, you know?" While I nodded calmly on the outside, I yelped "Hoorah!" on the inside. Finally, I'd done something right as a student, and while it was only five words, I have remembered those five words always. I must remember them, in fact: As an English teacher myself now, I know the look my students have when they come to me with their writing. I hope that I can say just the right thing to them, as Peter Saccio did 15 years ago: there's the possibility that my words, too, will be remembered forever.