Teju Cole on John Updike

"Had John Updike been African, he would have won the Nobel prize twenty years ago."

Letter from Amish Country

Rachel Yoder visits the Amish in the July 2023 Harper's Magazine.

rest in peace, John

Only yesterday, I learned that teacher and historian, John H. Ahtes III, died young at 48 in 2010. A tall, talented, and eccentric academic, he certainly had lived as a reader. In Philadelphia's Center City, he could be found in bookstore coffeeshops in the 1990s and 2000s. 

To me, he had a sense of humor about his elitist, conservative leanings even as I could accentuate my left-of-center origins and modest upbringing. Possibly, his upbringing was modest, too. I remember that he would insist that a key to avoiding trouble with the boys in blue was to wear a jacket and tie downtown. I can't recall ever seeing him without one. He would invariably have something interesting to say—a breath of fresh air in a world where recent novels and news stories can be packed with clichés. 

The last time I saw him in person was around twenty years ago in Barnes and Noble on Rittenhouse Square. He was in between college appointments and dealing in antique furniture. He advised me that the trick to surviving as an adjunct was to not take too seriously ourselves or the negatives associated with an itinerant role. Good advice, yes, but also understandably challenging to execute at times. 

It was also only yesterday that I learned that Professor Ahtes was central to a research project on 57 Irishmen who arrived as labor in 1832 and were dead within six weeks of their ship's docking in Philadelphia. In a trailer to the documentary based upon the researchers' collaboration, Ahtes notes that the story concerns "the dark side of immigration" and "the dark side of industrialization." The Pennsylvania Gazette's "Bones Beneath the Tracks" is the most extensive online writing I've found about the historians and their work. It sounds significant, so I bought a copy of their book to learn more. Rest in peace, John.

hit on the head inside his office

From 1996 through 2007, I taught classes in this building, Anderson Hall at Temple University, and so this story, too, touched me very directly. There's the indignity of being 81 years old, contributing to campus by teaching Intellectual Heritage at Temple (you don't have to be Eva Keuls to know there is also a war against Thucydides and friends in this country), and then getting robbed and beaten inside "his" office (most likely a shared one). The adjunct instructor is presumably on Medicare, but as a "part timer" he wouldn't have health coverage from the university and because PA has rejected the Medicaid expansion, he most likely wouldn't be able to afford any health coverage were he under 65. As best I understand the latest news on the story, although he suffered "brain trauma" he was well enough to be released from the hospital after a one-night stay. This man deserves better, no?