William “Will” Howarth, professor of English, emeritus, and eminent Thoreau scholar and environmental humanist, died of interstitial lung disease at Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center on June 6. He was 82.
William “Will” Howarth, professor of English, emeritus, and eminent Thoreau scholar and environmental humanist, died of interstitial lung disease at Penn Medicine Princeton Medical Center on June 6. He was 82.
Will Howarth, my long-time colleague and friend, exemplified the highest Princeton tradition of the teacher-scholar. Even more important, he was simply a very fine man whose intelligence, energy, and broad intellectual sympathies enriched innumerable lives during his long years of service. It is very difficult to accept that he is gone; but he will live on in the memories of scores of undergraduates whom he taught, advised, and befriended.
On the first day of American lit, 150 or so students sat expectantly in the lecture hall, waiting for the first class to begin. All of a sudden, the lights went dark, to a complete blackout. Moving lyrics appeared on a giant movie screen with a bouncing white ball hitting each word (—this was 1988, so the tech was off-the-charts impressive). Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes” started *blaring.* We were mesmerized, listening to the whole thing. After it was over, Howarth delivered a convincing lecture about how Simon’s lyrics were American poetry. It was a “wow.” I didn’t know a class could be that exciting, that entertaining, that informative, and that provocative, all at the same time. Honestly, that’s probably the moment when I decided that teaching was what it (—life, academia, my career) was all about.
https://youtu.be/-I_T3XvzPaM
It’s been way too many years, but I have such fond and distinct memories of the seminars I took with Will. I still have the spiral-bound reading journals he asked us to keep and which he enthusiastically read and commented on. Simply put, he was a great teacher, and I count myself very lucky to have been one of his students.