1982 - alvin w. gouldner. genesis & growth of a friendship

Alvin W. Gouldner: Genesis &Growth of a FriendshipAuthor(s): Robert K. MertonSource: Theory and Society, Vol. 11, No. 6, Special Issue in Memory of Alvin W. Gouldner(Nov., 1982), pp. 915-938Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/657199 .

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915

ALVIN W. GOULDNER

GENESIS & GROWTH OF A FRIENDSHIP

ROBERT K. MERTON

To say a public farewell to a friend is no easy thing as all of us here have cause to know. It is all the more difficult when one is an unexpected survivor. After all, it is absurd that I should be bearing witness to Al rather than he to me. And so when Jan Gouldner asked me to say a few words about Alvin Gouldner, we thought at first it might ease the pain if I were simply to read the notice which Charles Lemert and I had written for Footnotes. Later, Jan and I mused about what Al might have preferred to have me do or say. We decided that he would not have wanted a formal eulogy or retrospective plau- dits from me but, rather, something that would tell of our years of close, jointly treasured, and enduring friendship, of a depth and reach that, Jan tells me, was not suspected even by Al's other close friends. It occurred to us that a sense of that friendship might best be conveyed during these few moments, not by thoughts that have come to mind since his death, but rather by direct expression of a complex relationship as reflected in an intermittent correspondence that lasted almost four decades. That this might be so was suggested by Al's own evident pleasure in hearing a few extracts from our earliest exchange of letters which were read when he was being introduced to a Columbia University audience before giving his brilliant lecture on "Marx and Bakunin," just twelve days before his death. And so I shall not try to speak about Alvin Gouldner as I remember him and surely not about Alvin W. Gouldner, the scholar. Instead, after reading the opening paragraph of that formal death notice by Charles Lemert and myself, I shall only read extracts from a great store of letters to and from Al which accumulated over the years. This, then, is the paragraph from our formal remembrance:

While on his way to dinner with his wife Janet and several friends, Alvin Gouldner died of a heart attack on December 15, 1980 in Madrid. Those who knew Alvin, whether friend or foe, will recognize that these lean facts report his death in a manner consistent with the manner of his life. Himself a stern realist, critical of ideas, values, and people often to the point of abrasiveness, his death notice can contain no euphemism. An exacting editor, he would have seen to it that he was depicted in accord with Cromwell's

Department of Sociology, Columbia University Copyright ? 1982 by Robert K. Merton



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firm injunction to the portraitist Peter Lely: "Use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me, and do not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughnesses, pimples, warts and everything as you see me, otherwise, I never will pay a farthing for it."

Save for the seventeenth-century turns of phrase, that might have been Al

speaking. Not liking those warts and all to be there, or to have them singled out, but insisting nevertheless that we remember him in all his agonistic com-

plexity. Much of Al's deep ambivalence toward life derived, I think, from that

complexity in which combative insistence on certain values and ideas was often at war with his affections and other values.

Almost 40 years have raced by since I first set eyes on the lanky, sandy- haired, ruddy, intense, eager, determined, inquisitive, urgent, and demanding

young scholar who was to become one of the prime sociological theorists of

his generation. I say '"young scholar" rather than "student" because when Al

first set foot on Morningside Heights, he had already adopted the stance of a

critical scholar. I begin with the beginning evidence of this and turn to the first

letter I received from Al, this in November 1943. That I should still have this

letter is itself something of a prognostic indicator. After all, one does not

ordinarily retain letters and notes from beginning students; that I should have

done so with Al's letter, destined to be the first of a very long line of letters, testifies to the impression he made upon me. Plainly, he was a student to be

taken seriously. Only now, in long retrospect, do I see that in doing so, I was

perhaps linking the young Alvin Gouldner with Talcott Parsons by engaging,

quite unwittingly, in the behavior pattern identified in Harriet Zuckerman's

Scientific Elite as "role-reenactment." In this pattern, behavior and attitudes

toward students of one time-apprentices-become-mentors reproduce what

they had themselves experienced as fortunate students. So, in taking Al seri-

ously from the very start, I was perhaps reenacting the behavior pattern which

I found myself describing at a memorial service for Talcott: "Because our

teacher, as a reference figure, accorded us intellectual respect, because he took

us seriously, we, in strict accord with Meadian theory, came to take ourselves

seriously."

Academic generations, at least in twentieth-century American sociology, seem to emerge every 10 (+2) years or so, this being typically, not always, reflected in the relative ages of teachers and students. Thus, Talcott Parsons was about a decade older than I and others in his first cohort of students, just as, in turn, I was a decade older than Al. And a decade after he had begun his

graduate studies, Al was to encourage his own first batch of prize students -

amongst them, Maurice Stein and Richard Maisel - to do their graduate work at Columbia. Be all that as it may, here, in the necessary abbreviation, is part



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of that first letter from Al. He begins by asking for a copy of a paper on the

sociology of knowledge I had published in Isis and then proceeds to say, in

language and tone that signal what would become a lifelong theoretical commitment and critical curiosity:

In your discussion of Mannheim's concepts and Schelting's refutation of them, you point out something of the greatest pertinence for any discipline interested in operating with the concepts of The Sociology of Knowl- edge, e.g., Literary criticism. You write . . . that "The fact that one's interests and consequent definition and limitation of the problem are related to class affiliation is at times unwarrantably assumed to imply that judg- ments within this sphere are necessarily incorrect." Why do I find this so interesting?

The question is plainly not a rhetorical one for he goes on to explain:

Because the Soviet Marxian Sociologists have developed exactly the same thesis, as a consequence of their being confronted with practical problems of their country's cultural policies. Insofar as your article is concerned, the significant thing is of course, that this development was made by employing a Marxist theoretical orientation, and not in spite of it.

The letter goes on at length, quoting from Mikhail Lifshitz and Mark

Rosenthal, and closes in the vein of a fellow scholar addressing serious subjects in a serious manner.

Jan and I decided that I must be prepared to quote shamelessly from my own letters, and from Al's often magnified opinions about me, if this account is to be faithful to the years of Al's and my friendship. And so I read from the almost immediate response to this intense twenty-three-year-old; I, being then all of thirty-three, defined of course and defining myself as a middle-

aged teacher. And so in tones of mingled respect and appreciation, I respond:

Dear Mr. Gouldner, I was very happy to receive your letter if only because it indicates the existence of students who are actually concerned with intellectual problems. I had begun to think that that represented a contra- diction in terms. But no - apparently one can be a "student" and still have intellectual curiosity....

As you will see from [another paper in the sociology of knowledge which I had just written], I think it misleading to claim that Marxism provides either a valid or an invalid approach to problems in this field. I have long since abandoned the struggle to determine what "Marxism" is or is not. Instead, I have taken all that I find good in Marxian thought - and that is a considerable amount - and neglected conceptions which do not seem to me to meet tests of validity. For that reason I am in thorough agreement



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with your distinction between Marxism and Marxists. By the way, I am interested in your excerpts from Russian sources and would like to have the actual citations if you have these at hand.

One can see who was educating whom.

A year or so after this first exchange of letters, I am recommending Al on behalf of Paul Lazarsfeld and myself for a post in community research as

One of our most mature students. He has an incisive mind which cuts through externals to get to the heart of things, and in the research which he has been doing under our supervision, he exhibits an uncanny sense for discriminating between the significant and the irrelevant. All of this is only a backhanded way of saying that he has a superior intelligence. His "social philosophy" seems to be left-of-center, and I know that he would have a very strong motivation for taking part in a research program oriented toward action in the field of ethnic relations.

Al did go on to work in what he describes as "the ambience of the Frankfurt

School," since this recommendation led to his working on the famous Studies in Prejudice which, among other things, gave rise to the concept of "the authoritarian personality." Indeed, Al worked directly under the direction of Marie Jahoda who was at one time the wife of Paul Lazarsfeld, while Paul and I were advisors to Max Horkheimer and the others of the "Frankfurt group" at work on those studies. As you see, it all had a somewhat incestuous character. Then, in 1947, Al is off to teach at the University of Buffalo. In spite of my compact with Jan that I quote without restraint, I do not read a gra- cious letter from him which emphasizes our teacher-student friendship. Here,

however, is my reply, which tells something of my growing expectations of

this young scholar:

As you probably have been discovering, it isn't often that a teacher has any occasion to feel that he leaves much residue in the minds of the unfortu- nates who sit before him. I should be swimming in pathos and unbearable sentiment if I were to tell you how moved I was by your note. Of course, you realize that I have a heavy stake in your work. The next three or five years must demonstrate that I erred only in underestimating your capacity.

For a time, Al is reasonably happy at Buffalo. He completes the editing of the

beautiful collection of papers, Studies in Leadership, but has not quite settled

on the subject of his dissertation. As you might suppose, letters, outlines,

manuscripts, critiques, and sentiments in abundance are being exchanged between us. All this is not easily conveyed by short extracts but here is a small

sampling. From me to him, in September 1948:



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... I found this an exceptionally good preliminary account and the study as a whole, potentially one of the first useful empirical treatments of bureau- cratic elements in industry. (I hope you will follow your intention of obtaining more materials, and of developing this into a book and, inciden- tally, into a dissertation. It would then become one of the empirical build- ing blocks for the sociological analysis of bureaucracy: Selznick's book on the TVA being another, and a study by Peter Blau of a public and a private bureaucracy being a third. If these three products of Morningside Heights - note the academic chauvinism - appear within the next two or three years, we will have moved from programmatic to viable knowledge of bureaucracy for inevitably, these will set a pattern which will be followed elsewhere.)

Al digs further into the fieldwork for his dissertation while doing much else, and by the new year of 1951, sends along the section dealing with the Wildcat Strike.

.. .It is a first draft. On the basis of your recommendations, I hope to be able to salvage from this section enough material and analysis for 2-3 chapters in the final dissertation.... As I see it, there must be some sort of decent dissertation - one that will disgrace none of the parties to the situation - which can be worked up from the 7,000-8,000 pages [!] of raw data that I've accumulated ...

Frankly, as I turn this manuscript over to you my feelings of anxiety are somewhat less pronounced than they usually are in such a situation. This, possibly because I feel that I have done an "honest" job in terms of the better standards of our craft. On the other hand, and precisely because this was intended to be a pretty serious effort, representing about a 75% use of my skills - the reserves to be thrown into the final draft - I will certainly be something less than perfectly cool as I await your judgment.

My superego says: "I'm fairly well satisfied; you didn't kid around."

But my ego enjoins: "Nice to know we've kept you happy, but you're not the only one in the world, you know. Besides, even you wouldn't be satisfied with an 'A' for effort.". ..

The thought of your reading this stuff at bedtime is disquieting, to say the least. Frankly, after one a.m., I prefer Anthony Boucher or the S-F man, Bradbury; they taste better than the ordinary sedatives and make for more colorful nightmares. I do appreciate that I've placed an extra burden on a person who is already working at full capacity and can only hope that the work justifies the demands which it makes upon you. Your kind words about your feelings toward me tempt me almost, as the Bible says, to the sin of pride. [And then this Simmelian remark:] As you know, it is easier to express warm, appreciative feelings "downwards," than it is for them to be transmitted "upwards" - one's peers have nasty words for the latter pattern.

At just this time, things begin to get rough at Buffalo; five members of the



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department have been dropped and there is a good chance that Al himself will be let go. Studies in Leadership having been edited and published, the dissertation becomes an urgent necessity. Nevertheless, Al will not rush matters for the sake of expediency. He sends me a published copy of the Studies and a

preliminary, partial manuscript based on his study of a gypsum plant near

Buffalo. Here, in part, is my response:

I was moved by your remarks in the preface [to the Studies]. I shall not soon forget them. For me, this belongs in the category of cardinal deeds.

But now to the business of the day. As you will see from my many mar- ginal notes, I have read the 200 pages with great interest and great care. (The device of having this typed out as 100 single-spaced pages did not fool me for a moment.)....

My major suggestions are these:

1. That you reach out for the level of clarity and intelligibility of writing which you achieved in your editorial pages in SIL [Studies in Leader-

ship]. (I realize that the present ms. is merely a rough draft and that you use shorthand expressions, whenever possible. But I would be sensitive to this matter of intelligibility in your next and, I hope, final draft.)

2. I agree with your own judgment that you should make much more use of your protocols (both interviews and direct observation). There are

long stretches at present which give the impression of being an elaborate chain of inferences, with many of the links undocumented.

3. And this is by all odds the most important, I think you do your material and analysis an injustice by periodically moving out into problems tan-

gential to your study. The occasional "psychoanalytic" discussions seem to me to weaken your analysis considerably, particularly since, in the nature of the case, you don't have the kinds of materials adequate for formal psychoanalytic interpretations.

4. And this is really another aspect of what precedes, your notes are ... repetitious. This comes about, I believe, because you attempt to analyze each minute facet of your core problem in great detail....

I suggest that you look over my annotations and write me an itemized letter indicating the points at which you believe definite decisions have to be made....

As you see from my periodic spurts of enthusiasm, I have no doubt that there is a hard core in the thesis that represents a basic contribution. The essential point is not to get entangled in all the numerous derivative problems and associations which your material suggests to your fertile mind. You have to guard against allowing the book [n.b.] to become a sprawl, rather than a coherent, focused discussion. You ought to feel pleased and optimistic with [sic] the entire enterprise. The thing to do now is to push for a final draft.



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Here in miniature is Al's craftsmanlike response, within a week, to these notes on his developing manuscript:

This is a preliminary note written, in part, to express my real appreciation for the fine job of constructive criticism, which you let loose [the emphasis is mine] on my manuscript.

On the question of my style: it was putrid.

It is obscure, ungrammatical, turgid, repetitious, pedantic, badly organized, and could not possibly be understood by more than thirty people in the world. I know it. I knew it before "you let me have it." (I could actually see you throwing up your hands in disgust at a number of points!) To make it all the more perplexing, I can, as I think SIL indicates, write with a fair degree of intelligibility. Moreover, I'm not especially "anal," or desirous of concealing my wisdom in esoteric jargon, for fear that others may plagia- rize it. Again, I feel fairly secure while writing it, and the obscurity is not, in this instance, a Veblenian defensiveness against hostile criticisms - academic or lay. To make matters all the more incomprehensible, I have given a surprising amount of thought to problems of style in social science writing. What's the answer then? I'm not sure but here's a stab at one.

Al then proceeds to a perceptive self-diagnosis, couched in terms of his antic-

ipatory responses to diverse audiences:

The problem in some way rests with my picture of the larger audience for whom I'm writing. My deepest inclination, always, is to communicate with laymen. And I think I know what it takes to communicate with them effectively. That ill-starred adventure, Ideas for Action, had at one point a reprint circulation of near a million! But, today, when I find myself oriented to such an audience I fear that I will become sloppy, inaccurate, and above all polemical. (You may recall, that the one part of the manuscript in which you said I was communicating effectively, I was also writing affec- tively and polemically. This is no accident.) Noticing this, my budding academic conscience begins to wag its finger at me. It would be horrible if this academic conscience of mine ever actually found out how deeply I am interested in plain talk and plain people. To conceal this, I lean over back- wards and set up a barrage of bigtalk that makes Parsons look like John Gunther.

Another problem with regard to the audience: When I wrote my stuffy*

* Sensitive to the unwitting meanings of such slips of the pen, Al encircles the word "stuffy" and writes in the margin: "N.B.! Apparently I think that could also stand improvement." In nearly self-exemplifying, stuffy style (I believe Al would have enjoyed this), I now add that in my course of lectures, Analysis of Social Structures, which Al faithfully and articulately attended, I made much of the implications of Freud's distinctive use of such parapraxes (= Fehlleistungen) for theorizing of every kind, including sociological theorizing. The practical or historical importance of research data, or their apparent triviality, does not determine their value as strategic



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for SIL [Studies in Leadership] I knew pretty clearly to whom I wanted to talk, and I knew, also, that it would reach an audience. But while preparing this manuscript my picture was still very hazy. If I had definitely obtained a publisher for the thing, while I was writing it, I believe that it would have been much different.

All this is by way of explanation, perhaps apology, but certainly not justification. I am now preparing and hope to be finished with the section con- trasting mine and surface workers by the time the present term is over. You can expect to receive it sometime in May. [Al then goes on to ask:] Do you honestly feel that the dissertation would make a worthwhile book?

Al takes up an associate professorship at Antioch after two productive, but

increasingly disaffected, years at Buffalo and by the close of 1952, he presents his altogether brilliant dissertation (albeit in the form of two books, juxtaposed into a seeming one). As executive officer of the Department, I write on

behalf of the examining committee, which includes Paul Lazarsfeld and

Seymour Martin Lipset as the other departmental readers:

Dear Al, (or since this is in the nature of an official letter, perhaps I should say, Dr. Gouldner),

I want to tell you how impressed we all were both by your dissertation and by your "defense.". . . As several members of the group remarked while we were closeted for our deliberations, it was a distinct pleasure to read a dissertation which was a work of original research and scholarship ....

In point of fact, as you may have gathered from the report I was asked to make to you, it is our belief that you have actually written two books, not one. With but few changes, the first half of your dissertation can stand alone as a book in its own right. Once this has been published, it should be no great chore for you to amplify the second part and to publish this as a sequel. In short, the two studies are closely related but it is also true that each of them is virtually a self-contained book.

You have done a distinguished piece of work - something in which all of us in the department take great pride.

Started at Buffalo, then, the dissertation and its rewriting for publication

were completed at Antioch, where Al spent two, largely unhappy years. Just

as the dissertation had provided both a cognitive and interpersonal linkage

between us, so did its intensive rewriting - first, as a corrected dissertation

research materials. What matters is their potential for advancing theoretical knowledge. What could be more seemingly trivial than slips of the tongue or the pen? Yet we all know what Freud made of these seeming trivia in the deeply penetrating Chapters 5 and 6 of his Psychopathology of Everyday Life. As a student, Al took evident delight in such observations on the art and craft of theorizing.



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and then, in the form of two books. Within a week of that official letter, Al tells that he is hard at work writing:

Though I do have confidence that I have gotten the feeling for what you would like done, I would appreciate it if you could send me your detailed corrections of the remaining chapters in the section, "Types of bureaucracy," as well as of the final chapter....

Al then goes on to recognize the multiple meanings and functions of the dissertation for his lifelong intellectual development, for his professional career and for our evolving friendship:

I hope that someday soon you will get a change to sit back and dictate your eagle's eye view of where I have taken this dissertation, and where it has taken me. For example, what in broad outline do you think are the more valuable aspects of the work, the things that ought to be pursued, developed further and experimented around with. In short: what now? I need hardly say that I presently feel that, with the imminent conclusion of the dissertation, I have approached the watershed. I have begun to formulate fairly tangible plans of something large enough to become my "life's work," but want to whip them into better shape before I burden you with them. In the meanwhile, I'd like to hear your views. You know me profes- sionally better than anyone else, with a sensitivity [to] my weaknesses and strengths which I could never attain. I can think of no one by whom I would be better advised.

In reply, I suggest that "we get together" to do "the general stock-taking in some detail" and I then turn to the immediacies of Al's final redoing of the dissertation. Along with specifications of "the theory of bureaucracy," the

sociological prose still apparently remains something of a problem:

Of course, I vote for your suggestion that you move ahead with rewriting along the lines we have discussed. Do remember that purple passages belong in purple books and whenever you find an irresistible phrase growing on you, be doubly suspicious of it before you permit it to enter.

In less than three months, Al is able to report that

Today I bade Godspeed to the three revised copies of the dissertation;they should materialize out of postal "hyperspace" and be in your office shortly after this letter arrives.

He goes on to reflect further on the composite cognitive and stylistic values of the dissertation:

When we last spoke, you stressed that a careful reworking of the dissertation would not only be good for it, but for me; that it would temper my



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professional superego and stabilize an adequate literary style. I must confess that at that time I was somewhat sceptical, and tended to feel that style was largely a matter of momentary inspiration, while only content was a question of sweat. Having sweated through the style these last several months, I now know, in more than cerebral ways, that you knew whereof you spoke.

By November 1953, just about a year after the acceptance of the dissertation, I am writing Al a note which extends the symbolic ties between us. Here it is in its entirety:

The enclosures speak for themselves [but not, alas, to me now; I have no record of them]. How are the books progressing? Do you mind my telling you that I feel a little like a grandfather who is expecting twins? - Twin grandchildren, that is.

As we all have cause to know, Al did redo the manuscript and, to the endur-

ing benefit of the discipline, published both Patterns ofIndustrial Bureaucracy and Wildcat Strike in 1954. To this moment, I treasure the reminiscent

inscription in my copy of Wildcat Strike: "To Bob, with affection and respect for 'the grandfather of twins."' Meanwhile, the unhappiness at Antioch grows and in March of 1954, I receive a letter which begins:

Good, good news - I got the job at Illinois. Hulett wrote the other day offering me an associate professorship, at $6500. My main responsibilities will be as departmental "theorist," working almost entirely on the graduate school level.... I daresay that if I were to ask you if you had any advice for a newborn "theorist," you would answer, "Keep on doing what you have been doing in the past, only better."

My response, a few days later, reads almost in its entirety thus:

What can one say: Nothing, except glory to the All High, when reward is proportioned to merit. .. I have believed in you for years and I see no reason to give up my belief now. It is all little enough.

What neither of us says is that, in effect, Al had become the successor to Florian Znaniecki at Illinois.

It turns out that Al and I shared a certain propensity for illness, though I

gather from our fragmentary letters on the subject that I was rather better at

achieving an impressive roster of ailments. Note: I refer to a propensity for

illness, not hypochondria. After all, to catalogue the ills of only one of us, sprue, Meniere's syndrome, Dupuytren's contracture, a gangrened appendix, various pneumonias, cancer, and the usual assortment of other diseases don't



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exactly suggest an abnormal anxiety about health; just troublesome living. I rather like the note, back in 1954, in which Al commiserates with me about one of my early bouts of surgery and then goes on to describe his own pattern of getting sick:

We were terribly sorry to hear about your operation and very glad that your recovery is now well along. I somehow get the impression that the summertime is your "dangerous period," or perhaps I am attributing my own breakdown pattern to you. I've long noticed that I rarely take ill during the school year, when I can suffer all kinds of fatigues without blanching; comes the summer and I am liable to catch pneumonia while watering the lawn. I think this all comes under the heading of "Our responsibilities keep us alive and well," a distressing idea which places me in the company of the mystics rather than the behaviorists. In any event, I was sure that nothing good could come from your eating hot dogs.

Another, much later surgical bout of mine inflicts a vicarious trauma on Al and leads him to further reflections on human relationships in general and ours in particular:

Some things are, as you know, easier said than written, but let me try. I heard about your operation from Lew Coser, who was visiting here briefly. To say that I was stunned when I heard about it would not be strictly correct; for somehow my response was located in my stomach and what they call the cardio-vascular system; everything choked up and constricted.

What it boils down to is this: we live through other people and what happens to them really happens to us. We are, all of us, terribly mixed up with one another and in one another's beings.... As I get older, I discover that that is much more important to me than it once was. Perhaps I am not the only one.

The best part, of course, was to learn from Harriet that your doctors have extirpated the damn thing and that we may all look forward to having you actively in our midst soon again. A thing like this, particularly with its benign outcome, is almost a form of a rebirth. Have you yet decided what you will be reborn as?

Al then tells how this episode led to an epiphany illuminating our decades- long friendship:

A final personal note about the intertwining of lives. Six days after I heard about your illness, I woke up one morning telling myself, 'Well, . . . let's see if I can give up smoking.' I've not smoked for nine days now. And who knows? But the really curious thing about the whole matter was that I did not know, when I first urged this on myself, and did not know for six or seven days thereafter, what had initially prompted or at least crystallized this decision. Then bam! just the other day I realized the connection between your illness and my not smoking.



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The mind can be wondrously dense, forgiving and giving - if only one leaves it alone a bit instead of flagellating it all the time.

As I reread the letters, Al's declaration of almost twenty years before emerges as context: "I have come to look upon our relationship as a kind of 'fusion of destinies.' "

Five complex years at Urbana and in 1959, Al moves to St. Louis to chair the department at Washington University. I soon have occasion to write him there that that sparkling gem of functional analysis, his manuscript "on reciprocity is perhaps the best analytical piece you've ever done (and you know that, in my opinion, this takes in a lot of territory)." Al responds: "How

deeply moved I am by your prompt and encouraging comments. Can you manage to send your critical suggestions?" All this will not of course be taken to mean that everything proceeded smoothly between us over the years. Our

friendship had its share of ambivalence, of both the psychological and socio-

logical kind, with both intensified by its being a relationship between a one- time mentor and student. I cannot now recall the event which led to the fol-

lowing paragraph in an otherwise wholly amiable letter from Al soon after he went to Washington University; indeed, there may have been no precipitating event:

There are some human relations that seem doomed to misfire when the parties face each other and can, somehow, lurch into life only through the mediation of typewriters and secretaries. It grieves me that such is ours. As I get greyer, fatter, and balder, all of which is happening with horrifying rapidity, I get ephemeral glimpses as to why this is so in our case. Though no masochist, I know that I make my contribution to the strangled quality of our bond. Perhaps the trouble is that one feels terribly close to those who have given us much; but we forget that being helped and being the helper evoke very different feelings in people and we are unprepared for the emotional asymmetry of the relationship. But there are some things that had best be taken as they are, so I will talk of St. Louis.

The other component of the ambivalence finds expression, a year or so later, soon after one of our infrequent - once-or-twice-a-year - meetings. The first of the two paragraphs composing the letter says much in little:

Dear Robert:

First off, about the "Robert." I find that I now relate to you better or at least more lucidly calling you this rather than "Bob." It signifies, I think, that there has been some kind of healthful transition in our relationship. Calling you "Bob" was always somewhat ritualistic, insinuating a claim to closeness which, however, pleasing to a former student, is necessarily more



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deceptive than real and which I had in any case neither truly earned nor deserved. Calling you "Robert" somehow feels more honest; for all its gravity, it expresses an individuated sense of closeness that is genuine. So, unless you object strenuously, or feel about Robert as I do about Alvin, henceforth you shall be Robert to me.

Knowing of his, to me unexplained, aversion for "Alvin," I did not seize the

occasion, in my reply, to confess that I had always found "Al" a graceless contraction, altogether inappropriate for the man I knew and treasured. Since he plainly preferred "Al," I called him so. This practice of mine was no doubt a case of pure cowardice. In his second paragraph, Alvin speaks to what some

might describe as the psychodynamics of that meeting and of our friendship:

I should like to tell you how exceptionally gratified I was by our talk at that cocktail party last week here in Palo Alto. [He was spending a conse- quential year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.] All of which goes to prove that at least once in a million swallows, cocktail parties need not be eternally damned .... [W]e talked freely and openly. Both of us. I have waited a long time for such a talk between us, and I don't mind telling you now, sometimes despaired of its happening. Uneventful though it may have seemed to you I have never had a more crucial talk with you, at least insofar as its effect upon our relationship was concerned. In part, I suppose this is because it came at precisely the right time in my own developing feelings. Among other things, I learned that younger people have no monopoly on growth....

From my reply:

I too appreciated every moment with you while we were surrounded by others who listened but did not hear, and fully as much, I take joy in your note.

During his stay at the Center, Alvin wrote the first draft of his major work in the historical sociology of knowledge, Enter Plato. About three years later, I

receive a letter which reflects both his ambivalent sensitivities and the com-

plexity of our friendship:

I had long since intended to dedicate my forthcoming book on Plato and Greece to you, as one trivial token of the warmth and esteem I feel for all I have learned from you. Until your comments, about the quotation on the questionnaire.

This is an allusion to what I thought was my mild demurral at Alvin's having quoted an (attributed) paragraph of mine on the face sheet of a widely cir- culated questionnaire, thus possibly giving the impression that the ongoing study was mine, not his. To me, this was another instance of Alvin's self-



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instituted troubles with people he loved and who loved him, a pattern of his

which will be familiar to many of us here. Often, he cared so much that he didn't hear, read, or understand what was being said by those closest to him.

I confess that it never occurred to me for a moment to mention this prior to presenting you with a copy of the published book. Without deliberate reflection, I had always tacitly assumed that such a dedication was in the nature of - if you will forgive me - a "gift" which, like any other, one does not discuss in advance with the recipient. Yet your comments about the questionnaire quotation have made me examine the matter more closely, and I now remember and see the implications of the "rule" which says that, while there is some impulsion to accept a proffered gift, there is also the tacit understanding that the recipient may and can refuse it. Once published, however, a dedication is a gift that cannot be refused except in a manner that is extremely disagreeable to all concerned. Naturally, I would not wish to put either of us in such a position.

So I am now at last to the position, which while mildly disagreeable is still far less unpleasant than one of the possible alternatives, of asking you explicitly whether this dedication is acceptable to you. Obviously, you are being asked to accept a "gift" sight unseen and, of course, this is as it must be; for I know that you would not dream of making your acceptance con- tingent upon a prior judgment of the manuscript. In lieu of this, I must tell you frankly that my book on Plato is, on the one hand, by no means a conventional work, as either sociologists or classicists would view it - it is an intensely personal piece of work which is precisely why I wish to dedicate it to you - and, on the other hand, it is in my judgment the work which I love the most and believe to be the best of all that I have ever done. Do let me know your reactions.

I reply, of course, at once. It now becomes apparent to me that I continue to attribute to us both what emerges, in this long correspondence, as primarily

my own difficulty in accepting strong expressions of sentiment. I cope with

my overwhelming response to this beautiful gift by a brevity since grown familiar from other occasions when I was the recipient rather than the donor

of a gift of such symbolic magnitude:

I am honored and deeply moved by your thought of dedicating your book to me. I remember very well your deep involvement with the book while you were at the Center and so treasure all the more your having thought of linking me with the book that is closest to your heart.

What else can I say? If I were to go on, this note would become an embar- rassment to both you and me since both of us [sic] are made uncomfort- able by sentimentality. In any case, you know that I will be among your more avid readers.

With high hopes for the book.



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Alvin's sociological metaphor of the dedication as gift leads me now, as I relive those years, to see in our friendship a Marcel Mauss-like pattern of gift exchange, with its normatively obligatory components of "giving, receiving, and repaying." Evidently, too, Alvin and I were living up to the "norm of reciprocity" as well as recognizing "the importance of something for nothing" (to adopt the thesis and title of a chapter in Alvin's For Sociology). In this retrospect, I see that Al had conceived of our relationship from the time he came to Columbia as one in which he had been the recipient of "gifts" from me of a kind and magnitude he could never repay. (Recall his earlier letter: "Perhaps the trouble is that one feels terribly close to those who have given us much; but we forget that being helped and being the helper evoke very different feelings in people and we are unprepared for the emotional asymmetry of the relationship.") So it was that Alvin repeatedly searched for symbolic reciprocities, which sometimes had their pragmatic aspects as well. So, first, the dedication of Enter Plato and then, in September 1973, the following programmatic announcement and invitation:

Randy Collins and I will be editing a new magazine to be called Theory and Society: Renewal and Critique in Social Theory. It will be interna- tional in scope although written in English and published by Elsevier's, one of Europe's largest publishers here in Amsterdam. It is to be primarily a journal devoted to the fostering of community and dialogue among the theoretical standpoints emerging today. Naturally I much want you associ- ated with the magazine and in any capacity that you wish. But I have heard from Derek [Phillips] that you are disengaging yourself from an already crushing workload. So I will simply say this: write your own ticket. Tell me the capacity in which you wish to be related to the magazine and it is of course yours.

Then an afterthought in which the gift becomes specific:

As I conclude this letter a thought about your possible role in the magazine surged into my mind. Could we conceivably list you not just as one other editor nor as an editor of any kind but in the uniquely titled capacity as Robert K. Merton, Special Advisor. I would propose to list you in exactly that way and at a point on the masthead appropriate to that unique billing. How about it?

Evidently, I do not respond promptly enough for two weeks later I receive this cable with its reverberating echo of Jesus, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons:

IT IS WRITTEN BUT I SAY UNTO YOU COME BE A SPECIAL ADVISOR STOP BROCHURE AWAITING YOUR CABLE



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My return cable of acceptance sets a minor condition:

YOUR YOKE IS EASY AND YOUR BURDEN LIGHT. I GLADLY ACCEPT BUT PLEASE DESIGNATE POSITION AS SPECIAL ADVISORY EDITOR TO AVOID OVERTONES OF KISSINGERISM.

In the letter that follows, I am again reiterating, for the nth time, my embar- rassment over this latest gift and again managing to attribute a like response to Alvin as well: "It would probably embarrass us both [sic] if I were to tell

you how moved I am by the thought that led to the invitation. Some day I shall." In his next letter, Alvin goes on to remark:

Doubtless there are some who wondered why our names should have been joined together in our new magazine. The answer, of course, is simple: partly it is because of our complexly shared past, but it is also because of our truly connected present. I am more than pleased to see the initiatives you have taken on behalf of our joint venture, in support and in protection of it, but I am not one bit surprised.

Here, Alvin refers, in particular, to my effort to have Imre Lakatos contribute

to Theory and Society. Imre had first visited Columbia in 1971, writing on

his return to London that

I do think that I am very much moving toward your field of interests and I have no doubt that we are very much on the same side of the fence as far as the main problems are concerned, in spite of the different backgrounds from which we are approaching them.

Later, in 1973, soon after I had accepted Alvin's invitation to join the staff of

Theory and Society, Imre visited the Center for Advanced Study during my

fellowship year there. After some days of intensive talk, we agreed that he

would come to the Center the following Spring so that several of us might work together to identify interesting links connecting the philosophy, history, and sociology of science. Having neglected to mention Theory and Society to him, I write to Imre in London:

[As you see from] this newly acquired stationery, I have agreed to do what I can to help this new journal into being. Toward that end, Alvin Gouldner has invented a newly designated post: a sort of global editor without port- folio. Designed to encourage dialogue among those with "divergent research programs," this journal would be especially suited to publish any paper of

yours that you would consider apt. It occurs to me, naturally enough, that it would be just the place for you to publish, say, "Thoughts on the Com-

mingling of the Philosophy and Sociology of Science."



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Imre's reply to it and to another, long letter sketching out points of agreement between us despite transparent clashes of opinion, reached me only after his death. In it, he writes:

It is quite clear that we are completely on one wave length on essentials. I always suspected that much and now I am completely reassured. Inciden- tally I usually describe in the very first lecture of my course in Scientific Method my position as 'Militant Positivism'. Of course one can define positivism in many different ways and I am a materialist in Lenin's usage of the word rather than a 'positivist,' again in his usage of the word. On the other hand I am a 'positivist' in the sense that I think that objective support to conjectures can only be given by facts. It cannot be given for instance by psychological influence or 'understanding'. ... In my paper against Toulmin and Kuhn, which unfortunately I cannot finish until the end of March, I am trying to show the possibly catastrophic consequences of what you call 'erasing the boundaries between the philosophy and the sociology of science'. However I do not see how to avoid this catastrophe. If it is unavoidable we have to choose the least disastrous way. As you see, on this particular issue we may not see completely eye to eye, but I should like to add that I do not see eye to eye with myself either....

I need not say that if we could arrive at some common platform we may perhaps strengthen our joint intellectual influence. I still believe in the psychological power of valid arguments.

PS I should also like to thank you for your letter in your capacity as Special Advisory Editor of Theory and Society. Perhaps we might come back to your suggestion later.

Early in February 1974, I write Alvin:

Though we had come to know Imre only during the last three or four years, Harriet and I had come to admire and love him. He had come by for a short visit in December and, as you see from his enclosed letter, hoped to return for an extended stay in the Spring. Our talks during his visit persuaded us both that in spite of some obvious and superficial differences, we were much of a mind on basic issues in the sociology and philosophy of science. Despite his characteristic use of strong language to formulate issues - to erase the boundaries between the fields would be a "catastrophe" - it is evident from our conversations that he was ready to back away from positions once persuaded that they were distortive rather than "progressive." That is what lies behind his Imrian remark that he and I do not see "completely eye to eye" on particular issues but that this is not as bad as it seems since "I do not see eye to eye with myself either." And now, this dear friend is gone and with him, the best hope for a progressive interaction between a thinking philosopher of science and some of us sociologists of science.

As you see from Imre's postscript, I had been urging him to do a piece for Theory and Society.



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Alvin responds at once to my suggestion that, after checking with Imre's "immediate circle," he consider devoting a memorial issue to Imre:

Your last note was indeed a bit of a shocker. For although I am just across the Channel I had not heard a word about Imre's death. It is a dreadful blow, of course, to those personally close to him, but also a very heavy blow to those of us who had come to rely upon him for guidance and clues in the new crisis of the logic of science.

Certainly, a Festschrift in honor of him would be more than appropriate to Theory and Society. I shall certainly recommend it to Bourdieu and Collins if there is some specific commitment in that direction.

In the event, nothing came of this, as other memorial volumes were being

planned. I suppose I dwell upon Imre Lakatos for at least two distinct reasons:

one, because this exchange of letters provided occasion for reactivating Alvin's

sense of a reconvergence of intellectual interests between us and, two, because

Alvin and Imre were much the same kind of spiky characters. Something can

be said about each supposition. Alvin's letter continues:

Both the letters your sent me, yours and Imre's, clearly suggest your own readiness to re-explore the relationship between modern sociology and modern philosophy. This of course is exactly where all of us here [Theory and Society] stand four square. Our own feeling is that we ought especially to attempt some assimilation of those philosophers who are not logicians of science, because we were all brought up on the logic of science and continue reading it, including Imre and company, as a kind of second nature. So we have been making a special effort to reach out to philosophers whom some sociologists might find less familiar; for example, Merleau Ponty; Gadamer; Heidegger; Husserl; even Sartre!

The marvellous thing that I discover in your letters is how truly parallel and increasingly close our perspectives and programs are. If you will allow me to say so, I take a very personal and great pride in the way in which you continue to grow and grow; it is clear that you are not just acquainted with but deeply into the most searching intellectual issues of our time.

All this, I now find, was echoing an exchange of letters between us precisely a

year before in which we had come full circle to the beginnings of our common

past, 30 years before. Alvin is writing from the University of Amsterdam where he has taken up a post as "regular professor of sociology (gewoon hoogleraar)." I quote at length this paragraph from what is plainly a mood-

letter;

Dear Bob [Alvin having settled back comfortably to this form of address after several years of "Robert"]:

I am sitting here in a sparse, book disordered, unfinished third-floor room,



933

heater going full blast to keep out the North Sea moist, having just finished writing a long-winded discussion, for my files and eyes only, of a tightly argued and saturated piece of scholarship written, or at least published: "Winter 1941," by you. I still read the piece in the original reprint you gave me, when I started as a student at Columbia, just about 1945. The article, of course, "Karl Mannheim and the Sociology of Knowledge," is now falling apart, and I have had to staple its loose pages together, and it is water-marked; and on the upper left hand corner, I had many years past scribbled my name in pencil, and it is clear from that archaic signature, familiar to me but not "mine," that that person is gone. Yet its contents have somehow become very much alive for me, once again. In my now filed-away notes about it, I argue that the piece was one of the turning points in the intellectual development of RKM, and if not likewise a turning point in the historical development of American sociology, then, at least, an indicator of the turning it was then in the process of making. The key decision, I now think, was your tendency to relegate the epistemological issues of the sociology of knowledge, to summarize the difficulties to which we had been led in that connection, and thus to move us along to the empirical tasks. Essentially, I would argue that that was a correct decision, then, and I would defend it in an essentially Hegelian way: what the times would allow .... especially in the light of Naziism, and the epistemological corner this drove us all into. I now suspect that a return to these epistemological issues, via a reanalysis of that "dead horse," the problem of ideology, may be feasible in the present historical juncture. I write this note only to tell you, once again, how nice it was to encounter your mind, clear as ever despite the yellowing sheets, and contentedly to confess, in gratitude, how very much I continue, at this late date, to learn from you. I do wonder, naturally, what your present thinking is on these protean matters, and, especially, whether you have ever laid your thinking, in that "Winter 1941" piece, alongside of Kuhn's evolving defense of his position, and Feyerabend's arguments on his left, and Lakatos's on his right? If you have written anything that keeps us abreast of your own developing thoughts on these matters, those of us, like myself, who think them matters of urgent intellectual concern, would be pleased to read them.

After a boring explanation of the month's delay in my response, I go on to say:

I was moved to write you the moment I read your letter in which the piece on KM & the Sociology of Knowledge serves as a connecting thread in our common past. You ask whether I've returned to the issues examined there and the answer is, I suppose, an unequivocal yes-and-no. Yes, since for three or four years now, I've engaged in my favorite form of publication of work in progress: oral publication. In lectures and seminars, I've been returning with a difference to questions of social epistemology, with and without benefit of the current array of shall-we-say prolific exponents of this or that claim to The Answer: from the comparatively restrained Tom K to Popper, Imre L., Feyerabend, Agassi, and all the rest. I'd like nothing better, one of these days, than to talk with you about the always energetic and often noisy conversations on these matters now taking place in print.



934

As a hint of where I come out and only a hint, I report having had occasion to scan my own writings through the years to identify and collate and think about the stated social-epistemological assumptions and the often only implied framework of assumptions which I adopted from a prevailing intellectual climate. What I find there, treated as a matter of course (and therefore, no doubt needing much questioning, and extension), on such subjects as "science-as-public-not-private-knowledge," "controversy and conflict as functional and dysfunctional in intellectual discourse" under stated and statable conditions; contexts of "discovery and justification"; "paradigms," "conceptual schemes" and "theoretical orientations"; &c., and so on through much of the catalogue of the now lengthily argued issues, persuades me that the lines of continuity are there in abundance. [And to think that a writer capable of dashing off this "sentence" had taken it on himself to teach the young Alvin Gouldner something about writing sociological prose!]

Alvin and I never got round to that conversation. But as late as 1980, we were still discovering a shared interest in selected problems of the sociology of

science. Thus, Alvin writes that until

. . . rereading your work ..., I had not fully realized the extent to which your various papers really deal with the question of cultural products as intellectual property. Most especially, I am terribly chagrined at my failure to note and refer to them properly in my last book on the two Marxisms, and in particular, in the chapter on Engels which deals with the question of authorship as property. There is no question that there are important differences in emphasis and focus manifested by each of us, yet there is also no question that I would have gained much in my own treatment had I gone back to and refamiliarized myself with the details of your work on intellectual property. I have subsequently wondered why the "discontinu- ity." In some part, I think it was because it never occurred to me that work on the sociology of hard sciences might have such rich application to the history of a social theory such as Marxism. In another part, I think it was because I was just drawn into the vortex of this immensely specialized literature which requires one to have two seeing-eye dogs and a radar unit at work at all times so as not to stumble, thus leaving one somewhat iso- lated from adjacent fields that might be helpful.

My reply in part:

I'm delighted to hear that you are at work on the sociologically under- explored subject of intellectual property. I hope that you'll keep me in touch as you move ahead. A foretaste is there in your chapter on Engels in The Two Marxisms (that book which held my interest from beginning to end, no less when it posed a question than when it proposed an answer). The Marx-Engels conceptions of intellectual property evidently have still to be deeply examined. After all, that was the one form of private property which Marx held sacrosanct, as we can infer from his vituperations



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levelled against plagiarists and plagiarism. And again, his own citation [better: referencing] behavior reflected his scrupulous regard for others' intellectual property (cf. the few enclosed pages providing a proto-citation- analysis of the monumental Chapter XV of the first volume of Capital, with its more than 200 notes).

As I've said, the letters from and about Imre Lakatos helped Alvin and me to

recognize our intellectual reconvergence just as they lead me now to see a

resemblance in Alvin's and Imre's personal and cognitive styles. They were both spiky in much the same way and, I think, for much the same reasons.

They were rather like porcupines, bristling much of the time. They obeyed their demons, driving them to find new roads to truth and to take dead aim

on the benighted souls who would not travel these roads with them. Without

pressing their similarities of style, I add only that for those of us who knew them well and loved them (though for some, they were not at all lovable), they were both gentle, concerned about their friends, and more given to sen-

timental, though not mawkish, relations than they pretended or would publicly admit. But enough of such comparisons. Alvin recognized that he, and others, paid a price for his personal style. In one of a good many letters attesting this

self-knowledge, he says something about us both, soon after a ceremonial occasion at a meeting of the American Sociological Association in San Francisco:

I was very gratified that we could have dinner together, not only for myself, but also so that Jan could continue to do a bit of catching up with and about the people who have mattered to me most in my past and who continue to do so. Unfortunately, this "catching up" process with old friends does not impose too much of a burden on Jan since their number is not exactly legion.

We both much enjoyed your informal role as toastmaster with its exactly right combination of commemorative remembrance and studied anti-senti- mental sentimentality. [So Alvin was aware ....] Probably each one of us took to heart your Hegelian observation to the effect that we have each had to live with others whose virtues have not been without costs, to themselves as well as others. One can hope that your readiness to say this aloud may imply that the cost side of the equation is producing somewhat slightly less of a deficit than it once might have, or at least a greater hope that this will be the case in the future. Naturally, I am not only speaking for but of myself, having grown increasingly mindful, as the years spin along, of my own capacity not simply to hurt others but, far more seriously, sometimes to do so precisely to those whom I love most.

Alvin's virtues saw to it, I believe, that he would find adversity in every academic post he held. For, in part, this came about because he demanded as much of his microenvironments as he demanded of himself. For much of his

life, he looked at the world about him as though it did not measure up to his



936

test of quality. And, almost inevitably, this was more than some of his peers could tolerate. His powerful need to grow could not be easily contained and so he eventually became estranged from every department of sociology he

joined: at Buffalo and Antioch, Illinois, Washington University where he fash- ioned a department of consequence, Amsterdam, and then, as he mellowed, least so after his return to Washington. All the while, he was working at his

sociological trade - intensely, critically, originally.

Alvin's spiky character also cost him merited public recognition by his organized peers - or so I believe. It is no great credit to the American sociological guild that the author of

Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy, Wildcat Strike, Notes on Technology and the Moral Order, Modern Sociology, Enter Plato: Classical Greece and the Origins of Western Social Theory, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, For Sociology: Renewal & Critique in Sociology Today, Dialectic of Ideology and Technology, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class, The Two Marxisms: Contradictions and Anomalies in the Development of Theory, and Against Fragmentation: The Origins of Marxism and the Sociology of Intel-

lectuals

was never elected president of our national learned-and-professional society. I doubt that Alvin spent sleepless nights fretting over this omission. (He was

not speaking of this conspicuous neglect nor was he speaking figuratively rather than literally, when, in the last decade of his life, he had occasion to write me: "The worst thing, of course, was the disappointment of a legitimate

hope. My hope for a 'place in the sun' which I both need and which I think

I've earned.") With regard to the American Sociological Association, he might have said of himself what the redoubtable Salmon Chase once said of himself: "I would rather that the people should wonder why I wasn't President than

why I am." While rereading the letters, I gained the impression that even

when most unhappy with his surroundings, Alvin was reasonably happy in his

work. In that regard, he was a more deserving and luckier man than he knew.

He could remain a prodigious worker to the end.

His was a brilliant intelligence which could be counted on to shine with a

special luminosity when properly disciplined and applied to the clarification



937

of a major sociological problem. This was obvious to all who met him. It required no great sensibility in a first encounter with Alvin to discover that sociological intelligence. Especially, if one allowed him to talk for a while. And that, of course, took no great doing. As we all know, he loved to talk. He was for me continuing proof of E. M. Forster's aphorism: "How do I know what I think until I see what I say?"

And now, one last theme, emerging with unexpected clarity throughout our letters, which takes us back full circle to Alvin Gouldner's student days. Three episodes, in particular, fully embody the theme. The first is the only time during our forty years of friendship that Alvin asked me for a public comment on a forthcoming book. Of course, I agreed at once. In September 1973, Alvin replies from Amsterdam:

.... the real point of this letter is to express my warmest personal appreciation to you for agreeing to write a blurb for For Sociology. Please have no hesitations about referring to my academic origins, as well as the book itself, for my feeling concerning these origins has never, ever, been anything than pride and gratitude.

I reply in a matter of days:

Here it is:

"An important collection of analytical and synthesizing sociological papers, most of them absolutely first class, including such watershed papers as 'The Two Marxisms.' What is more, they are written with clarity and distinction. Parochial pride or not, we sociologists at Columbia have cause for pleasure in this latest book by one of our own."

If the blurb suits, you may want to send it to the publishers. ... As you see, I have taken you at your word and included a not-so-oblique reference to the days of your academic youth.

Alvin's response is immediate:

The really important thing in your "blurb," and you may find it difficult to believe this, is not your reference to me, but your reference to me and Columbia.

In the horseworld, which I have come to know a bit in the last years from the distaff side, "claiming" is a very special and quasi-sacred act. (There are, you know, "claiming" races.)

Talking about being touched, you will never know how deeply moved I was by your willingness to claim me publicly. It is a bond to which even Scandinavian blood brotherhood must in my mind take second place. And I realize, with full clarity, that this is no less true of your readiness to be Theory and Society's Special Advisory Editor.



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And how can one end a letter like this.. . ?

The Columbia memorial service for Paul Lazarsfeld, held in 1976, provided a second occasion for expression of the Columbia theme:

Dear Al,

Only now, almost three months after your generous letter about Paul, am I able to write you and a few others of the many who wanted to tell of the personal meaning Paul had for them. You conjecture that he probably never thought "much or even of" you but I can testify that you are mis- taken on both counts. On many an occasion over the years when Paul and I talked about our former students - as we did far more often than anyone might have supposed - he would single out a handful of students he declared to be primarily "mine," express something close to envy of my good fortune and take vicarious pleasure in it. You were invariably among those he most admired.

And then, the final moment, 12 days before Alvin's death, during Jan's and

his visit to our house, where he inscribed my copy of For Sociology:

Bob -

Thanking him for claiming this wayward soul as "Columbia's own" Al Gouldner

3 December 1980

Theory and Society 11 (1982) 915-938 Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Amsterdam - Printed in The Netherlands



1982 - alvin w. gouldner. genesis & growth of a friendship

Documents

alvin gouldner

conditions915 alvin

memory of alvin

gouldner genesis growth

jstor terms

jstor archive

formal death notice

terms conditions of