English Professor Brings Literature Outside Class

Judging by the titles of his books--The Death of Satan; Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now; Moby-Dick Or, the Whale--the writing of Andrew H. Delbanco '73 would seem more at home as beach reading than on the shelf of a highbrow literary critic.

But Delbanco, Levi professor of English at Columbia, does not want to confine his appreciation and study of American literature to the academy.

"These books express my engagement both with contemporary American culture and literary tradition," Delbanco says.

He aims to reach beyond his classroom to American readers at large, focusing on American literature. His areas of specialty include Herman Melville, Richard Wright, Walter Percy and subjects such as American education and the Shaker tradition.

A teacher at Columbia since 1985, Delbanco received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1980.

"I knew I wanted to study literature, but I didn't really know why," Delbanco says of his undergraduate academic pursuits. But he says the time and attention his professors gave him helped him narrow his literary focus.

Loker Professor of English Robert J. Kiely advised Delbanco's thesis on Nabakov's Lolita.

"He was very generous with his time," Delbanco recalls.

Reviewers are also generous with praise for Delbanco's books, lauding them for their accessibility.

"It is my hope to bring into public discussion the insights of our great American writers," he says.

To Delbanco, literature has a value beyond mere language.

"I see reading, teaching and discussing literature [as] a way to confront the basic issues of human experience," Delbanco says. "We have some writers in the American tradition who have confronted them very well."

Delbanco says he enjoyed his years in Cambridge, as an undergraduate in Dunster House, a graduate student, a resident tutor in Dunster and then a professor.

His wife and college sweetheart, Dawn Ho Delbanco '73, describes him as an "intense and serious" undergraduate, but adds that he was also very funny. He first caught her eye when he was performing a comedy routine with his roommate.

"Both of those have remained essential parts of what he is, and they are also essential to his work, as well as to his writing," Dawn Delbanco says.

The Delbancos were married on a Sunday three days after their commencement. Dawn Delbanco also teaches at Columbia as an adjunct professor of art history and archaeology.

Andrew Delbanco says the atmosphere during his undergraduate years was markedly different from that of his brother's, Professor of Medicine Thomas L. Delbanco '61.

"When my brother came to visit me and saw women in the Houses, he almost flipped out," Andrew Delbanco says. "In his day that would have been punishable by expulsion."

"In that sense, I guess we were a pioneer generation," he adds.

But he also reminisces about lost traditions that today's undergraduates will miss. In a fate similar to that of The Tasty, Delbanco's favorite hamburger joint, Elsie's, was replaced by a BankBoston ATM on the corner of Holyoke and Mount Auburn Streets.

"I can no longer keep up the pace of playing squash at 11 at night and going to Elsie's for hamburgers," Delbanco says. "I can't do that anymore, and it's a great shame that no one else can either."

Andrew Delbanco recalls Harvard fondly, but adds that he feels fortunate to be teaching in Manhattan.

"Living and teaching in New York is a constant reeducation," Delbanco says. "Columbia does not have quite the sanctuary quality of Harvard, but it's location in New York keeps me in touch with intellectual currents and the excitement of contemporary society."