To introduce his newly published memoir, my friend cites the advice of a nineteenth century writer to those who might want to choose a last name. That author, Samuel Butler, recommends the name Aaron because “you will be pretty safe to head all alphabetical lists.”

Starting from his schoolboy days during World War I, Daniel Aaron has presumably headed hundreds of lists. Now in his 95th year, he has just published The Americanist; in it, he looks back over his life and work with quiet satisfaction about his accomplishments at home and with mixed feelings about his part in explaining American culture abroad.  

The title of his book comes from the role Aaron took on long ago, as a graduate student at Harvard. In 1943, he was the second person to complete a Ph.D. in the new field of American Studies. This academic specialization combined history, literature, sociology and other disciplines in order to reach a deeper understanding of American civilization.

Before receiving the Ph.D., Aaron had accepted a faculty position at Smith College where he taught from 1939 to 1969. He then returned to Harvard and taught there until his retirement in 1980.

Retirement, however, has never meant stopping work. In fact, Aaron walks from home to his office every day and spends his time reading, writing, and keeping up with his many friends. Until recent years, he rode his bike regularly: every Sunday he would pedal, with a couple of colleagues, from Harvard Square to Lexington.

He remains intellectually acute, as his memoir shows, and interested in the world of ideas and action. My friendship with him extends back only some ten years, during which time I have felt fortunate to talk with him frequently.

For anyone interested in literary America, Dan is a treasure house of memories. In the memoir, readers will recognize the names of many distinguished writers. Among the poets, he knew W.H. Auden, Robert Frost, and E. E. Cummings (as he was known before he dropped the capitals.)

Prose writers included Katherine Ann Porter, James T. Farrell, Truman Capote, Edmund Wilson, Richard Wright, and Sinclair Lewis. One of Dan’s great achievements was co-founding the Library of America series, which has published definitive editions of important American writers.

He also knew, or at least met, significant political figures like Adlai Stevenson, Socialist leader Norman Thomas, and Massachusetts governor Foster Furcolo. When he lived in Northampton, he often received visits from aspiring office seekers who wanted to stir up support in western Massachusetts.

Aaron’s own politics were consistently leftist, and his best known book, Writers on the Left, reflects his interest in those who shared that orientation. Looking back to 1954, he refers to “fellow travelers like me,” implying sympathy for the Communist Party, though he was never a member of it. However, he seems to regret that, long before, he had upbraided the “reactionary press” for criticizing the Soviets.

In the post World War II period Aaron spent much time in European countries and elsewhere as a guest lecturer or member of university faculties. He had not expected to do this, because he was not fluent in other languages. But opportunities arose that made him a kind of spokesman for American culture abroad.

Despite his obvious experience of the subject, the author does not say very much about old age, though I would have welcomed his reflections on its mysteries. Rather, Dan seems to take it as a matter of course. He does notice changes in his own thinking: “At post-ninety,” he writes wryly, “I have less to conceal than I did when I was twenty, and I look back over the years I’ve lived through, if not complacently, at least with relief that I’ve managed to escape hanging.”

His review of the past has been supported by the personal journals that he kept in earlier years. These private writings have now enabled him to recapture how he felt about events that happened long ago. Without this younger voice, it might have been far more difficult for him to reclaim the past.  

Of course, he remains aware that memory is fallible. Early on in the book he writes: “Some of the comments and judgments herein, many of them drawn from old journal entries, lack historical dignity and weight, and not all of the ‘facts’ cited here are certifiable.”

Were the memoir more deeply personal than he intended it to be, the author might say something about “the ills that flesh is heir to” in later life. In fact, he has had to deal with serious mobility problems in recent years.

It has been a special pleasure for me to find out more about the life of a friend, and learn things that do not always emerge in private conversation. The Americanist is published by the University of Michigan Press, and thanks are due to that publisher for bringing Daniel Aaron’s remarkable story to a wider public.

Richard Griffin