Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 14:41:44 -0600 (MDT)
Message-Id: <1.5.4.16.19970515164124.0f7f3e28@pop.uvm.edu>
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To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
From: TR Young <TR.Young@uvm.edu>
Subject: re: Harold Garfinkel
I accept your friendly amendment to my characterization of
HG; in general...in the particular instance of which I spoke
crude, insensitive, uncolleagial and/or other synomyns are
acceptable.

....and it is good to know that working with him was a high-
light in your program...
                                                        TR


At 11:13 AM 5/15/97 -0700, you wrote:
>As a student of Harold Garfinkel's here at UCLA, I can't resist telling some
>HG stories myself, from one who "sat at the foot of the master".  Personally
>TR, I like to think of Harold as being more of a "character" than an
>"ass-hole", but either way he is definitely NOT an easy person.  When I
>decided to enroll in his grad course on Ethnomethodology, I did so knowing
>that there was as much a chance of getting an "F" as an "A", (he had been
>known to fail otherwise excellent students) and that I was willing to risk
>that just for the experience of working with him.   The entire class was
>like an experiment in EM.  I had the sensation the whole time that I was
>chasing a mirage... just as I started to come upon something that I could
>grasp, my previous understanding would disappear as I took another step
>forward.  It was absolutely exhilarating.  Harold often created his own
>vocabulary for referring to things (I suppose he found the given language
>too constraining), and once you got the meaning of the words, he would make
>up new ones.   He would give us vexing assignments (ie: go home and watch
>the phone ringing), which he would rarely explain or discuss even after we
>completed them.  He patently disavowed not only others' interpretations of
>his work (and their own EM studies), but the value of almost anything he had
>ever done up until what he was currently working on (scientific discovery).
>During the semester he took each of his students (only a half dozen or so
>had survived past the first weeks), individually, to lunch and discussed
>what we were interested in.  His encouragement to continue in radical or
>controversial pursuits was something I will always treasure.  He told me to
>learn to play the game but to look for those (subversive) compatriots where
>I could find them.   His final assignment for the course was for us to write
>a "Dear Harold" letter telling him what we got out of it.  I called him to
>ask whether I could turn the paper in late and he hung up on me.  I took
>that as a "no" and made the deadline.  I won't say here what grade I got, it
>wasn't the point.  What I can say is that studying with him was one of the
>great highlights of my career as a sociologist, and perhaps beyond.  JILL
>
>
>
TR Young
Sociology
U/Vermont
TR.Young@uvm.edu