June 23, 2007

Dear Colleague:  

    There are two kinds of scholars: some like to make "a mountain out of a molehill," others like to do just the opposite, "make a molehill out of a mountain." I am, sad to say, the former kind. I do a bit of research, find data that prompt a thought, and immediately—prematurely—try to make a mountain (a book) out of them. True scholars are of the latter kind. They patiently do the spade work, compile an enormous amount of data, and then either file them away or write a short but perfect paper based on them. To me, gathering data is the salt mines, which I am tempted to abandon at the first opportune moment. Heaven, for me, is to build a shining edifice, however insecurely fastened, out of what I have mined. In this regard, I am the opposite of my Minnesota colleague, the recently deceased John Rice. He loves to dig up the most recherche of facts in his areas of expertise. He doesn't mind in the least, indeed he rejoices, in spending years in dusty archives—in what I have called the salt mines. He organizes and refines the data he has uncovered, contemplates them with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and then stores them in drawers or in cyberspace with no desire to mold them into finished works that can be presented to the public as his children.

    A mountain of data can so weigh down a scholar that he loses the freshness of outlook, the energy and even the desire to make something of it. A case in point is the Harvard historian Perry Miller, an authority on the Puritan mind and author of the much admired book, Errand Into Wilderness (1956). Miller was extremely ambitious and competitive. His chief rival at Harvard was F. O. Matthiessen. Miller boasted that he could write a masterpiece on Emerson and Whitman superior even to the much acclaimed work, American Renaissance (1941). While making plans for the project, hubris went into Miller's head. Rather than attempt a workable literary history of a few key figures, he sought to recreate the entire intellectual universe of romantic America. Miller usually worked alone. This time, in view of the size of his project, "he decided to hire a research assistant, a young man of phenomenal energy. Miller's wife bitterly fought the decision, at first because she did not care for the young man's manners, but in the long run because she saw how eager he was to aid and abet Miller's grandiosity. 'Every time he brings you another shoe box of note cards,' she warned her husband, 'he makes your book less feasible.' Unfortunately, Miller refused to listen to her, and the pile of shoe boxes continued to mount."

    They continued to mount until they became a "mountain." Data overwhelmed Miller. He took to drinking heavily. His wife left him. He died unattended on December 9, 1963 in his fifty-ninth year. There was not even a molehill of a work to bear witness to his ambition, his scholarly seriousness. (Kenneth S. Lynn, "Perry Miller," American Scholar, Spring 1983, p. 226). This is, of course, a sad story. On the other hand, what scholar would not prefer this story to be told about him than one that shows him to be hasty, careless, altogether too eager to rush into print for passing recognition?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu