Bellairs taught Humanities III during the Fall semester, with his first class meeting on or around September 15, 1966 in a classroom on the second floor of Hostetter Hall overlooking the quadrangle.
All Shimer classes met around large circular discussion tables, with typically eighteen or fewer students: "this was the Socratic method, the formal lecture of which Shimer College was known," says former student Patricia Thomas. Having maintained some of her exames and papers from college (though no syllabus) she is able to reconstruct some of the course's reading list, which like most classes at Shimer, covered a lot of ground:
| The purpose of Shimer College is to provide an educational program that is not only exciting to the superior student, but is a challenging one that most students can master. Comparative studies have shown that over the last fifteen years many students in all ranges of ability do significantly better at Shimer than elsewhere. A well-motivated student can thrive and profit tremendously in this community of intellectually curious fellow students. Such a group learns to think vigorously, which implies a willingness to accept the necessity of self-discipline as well as external standard and order. |
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Statement from
President F. Joseph Mullin
The Excalibur, December 12, 1966
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Thomas notes that John stammered when nervous and didn't immediately make a great impression as a classroom lecturer. She describes Bellairs as a bundle of tics, bobbing his head, stuttering, and blinking rapidly in situations where he wasn't at ease. "He did not make a first impression unless you could see through this to the substance of what he was saying. Fortunately, our classes were supposed to be Socratic discussions, and in this he excelled. His extraordinary memory for detail and his encyclopedic interests made him a natural for this type of interaction with students, aided by his wonderful sense of humor. So we were soon eating out of the palm of his hand, and certainly I wanted to excel in his class so that he would think well of me. One way he got around his tics was to switch into the voices of different characters, as a way of saying things that might otherwise be difficult for him to say. Robin Williams does this best, but John was pretty good at it."
Warner Johnston, another former student, remembers one of his courses with Bellairs "met at 8:30 in the morning and I was very appreciative that he didn't take attendance. I was, at that time, a dreadful student and my only real interest in college was the theater. I was the teacher assistant (TA) in theater that spring and did all set/lighting design. I fear that I attended more of my classes with John Bellairs after having been up all night working on a set than I ever did rested and prepared.
Classes consisted of two 80-minute discussion groups with the students and a teacher, and then one 50-minute lecture which included all of the discussion groups en mass," Johnston recalls. Reading lists changed from semester to semester: "I know that the Ulyssess course was taught in the fall of 1966 as I had to transcribe a record of a reading of Lestrygonians to tape for the Language Lab, which I was the TA in that fall. I am positive that Phaedrus was Humanities II and Humanities III as being concerned with James Joyce's Ulyssess. Humanities IV was a spring course."
Praise for Bellairs as an instructor is also echoed by former student Barry Karp, who recalls John a supportive instructor. "He was one of the most inspiring teachers at Shimer...he was the one who said that I actually had some talent -- what a revelation, what an opportunity to grow. His support of my creativity and imagination has led me into a strong and enduring career in the theatre." The Pedant and the Shuffly still rests on his bookshelf, Karp proudly adds.
"After I introduced him to my mom at a parents weekend, she remarked that he seemed to have the body of Charles Laughton and the mind of Oscar Levant," recalls George Tanty, a 1969 graduate, who today still has fond memories of Bellairs. "I can also recall times spent in his apartment, and in the dining hall, and on the quad, listening to his observations about life as well as dramatic readings of some of his works. I am proud to have a copy of St. Fidgeta in my library and I also know that somewhere buried in my papers is a pre-release manuscript of The Pedant and the Shuffly. I can't bring to mind any specific anecdotes but rather a general memory of a man who impressed me with his wit, his knowledge, his ability to express a cogent thought in a humorous but thought provoking way and his stinging sarcasm when the occasion called for it. I remember John as someone who helped to shape what I am today and I thank him for that. I was not fortunate to have him as a professor since that was my second year and I wasn't taking a Humanities courses that year. But John is certainly one of three members of the teaching staff of Shimer during the years that I was there that most impressed me."
By December, Shimer faculty member John Hirschfield made the recommendation that the Spring 1967 Humanities II course would include St. Fidgeta and Other Parodies as a text. The course, with emphasis on readings from different type of literature of which Fidgeta would represent parody, would oddly enough be taught by Bellairs in the months to come. In an article in the Shimer student newspaper, The Excalibur, Bellairs said of the decision, "I always thought that writings books and then requiring them for courses that you teach was a racket. Now I know it is--lust! Greed!"
