the last book I ever read (Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin, excerpt twelve)

from Remembering Denny by Calvin Trillin:

“I guess toward the end of his life he could be a real pain in the neck,” I said to Ed Morse one day in New York. Morse now runs the Petroleum Intelligence Weekly, a newsletter for the oil business. He seems to retain a lot of affection for Denny, even though their last contact amounted to Morse’s showing up for a dinner date at a Georgetown apartment Denny was then living in only to be told by the doorman that Denny had left for New York. Morse said that Denny had indeed made no secret of his belief that SAIS was a corrupt academic environment. “He thought the people who ran it were cynical,” Morse said. “And he thought that the professors were interested in their little fiefdoms rather than teaching, not interested in collegial relationships, not interested in spending time with students, toward whom they had an incredibly patronizing and condescending attitude.” With these views, Denny probably did seem rigid and arrogant and moralistic, Morse said, but “on the other hand, he was right.”