Well, Mr. Mudrick Said ... A Memoir

"Well, Mr. Mudrick Said ... A Memoir" tells the story of an impressionable young man learning about books, literature and life in the classrooms and courses of one of America's greatest literary critics, Marvin Mudrick (1921-1986). Mudrick was a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1949 until his death. He was the provost of that university's College of Creative Studies from the time he created it in 1966 until 1984. Under his direction, it was the single most successful program or school in the U.C. system. Mudrick was born in Philadelphia, the last child of immigrant parents who had escaped the pogroms in Kishinev. He graduated from Temple University, served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II and then earned his Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley. His book on Jane Austen was for many years the most important critical study of her novels. He published several books of his literary criticism, a hundred review-essays for The Hudson Review and dozens more for, among others, Harper's and the New York Review of Books.