I was reading the latest The Core magazine, which is included with my University of Chicago Magazine, and I saw the feature on U of C faculty members who, over the years, have won the Quantrell teaching award.
The first faculty member featured was my old teacher Jamie Redfield of the Department of Classics and the Committee on Social Thought. I studied Greek with Redfield while earning my master's degree in history.
Redfield is an entertaining raconteur, and as a third-generation U of C faculty member, he has many stories to tell about the various personalities who have populated the university over the years. Serving on the Committee on Social Thought is reckoned an honor, but it struck me during my time in Chicago that a remarkable number of those on the committee were not particularly sociable.
Redfield is very much the exception, and I particularly enjoyed that the editors included the following Redfield story in the feature:
He once considered dedicating a book on Homer "To Saul Bellow, without whose unremitting hostility this book would never have been written."