Word: finley
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Once upon a time there was a colorful section man in Hum 2. "He's not teaching anybody anything," complained another teaching fellow to John Finley, the lecturer in the course. "He's the closest thing to a mad man I know." "Ah," said Mr. Finley, "but he has flair...
There are competent people about--students and section men alike. But Finley, for 25 years Master of Eliot House, reserves his highest praise for those who possess the elusive and transcendent quality of flair. His own, of course, is legendary. In appearance he combines the best traits of Henry James' English gentleman and Robert Frost's New England farmer. Custom tailored three-piece suits with cuffs that really button set off a lined, craggy face. The white hair is long, sometimes over the collar, and the flaring bushy eyebrows suggest now an urbane devil, now a hoary Puck...
...Finley's hallmark is his verbal legerdemain...
Undergraduates sometimes suspect an elaborate show designed to dazzle them. But Finley's show does not play to special audiences, and it is continuous. Recalls Professor Cedric H. Whitman, a colleague in the Classics Department: "I hadn't seen John in a year. Then one day I met him on the street. His very first words to me were, 'Humanities 2 is like a mulch pile. Each year I throw in a few new ideas, and they sink down to the soil...
Ensconced in his panelled study, surrounded by teacups and undergraduates, Finley takes unabashed delight in describing the advantages of an earlier time, the time of which his entire manner is a gracious remnant. "In my day," he says, "college was like a dirt country road with grass growing in the middle. Now it is like Route 128, and graduate school is like a turnpike. But what if you don't want to go to Albany...