I was always a little more cynical about what he had to say. I mean it’s maybe my nature, and also probably not as bright as those other guys too. But I’m basically cynical about hero worship. I mean, it’s something I find personally uncomfortable and I found it uncomfortable in my friends. In other […]

I think what people love about Gaudino, you know, people love themselves, and thus they mostly loved Gaudino because he asked you questions about yourself, which is very different than suggesting who you should be or whatever. He reminds me of Mahatma Gandhi in terms of how we read about him, because when Gaudino was […]

He was a little kooky but it was within the realm of operationally OK. I had to run a department. Bob was a fine member. Bob was teaching things within political theory I considered semi-fringy at that time. A lot of students who took his courses and became like devotees of it would somehow look […]

Bob never gave an answer to his students. He threw out questions at them year after year, but would never give a conclusion that students could take home with them.

I’m not sure he was particularly humble. I think he knew very well how brilliant he was. I remember the Vietnam War talks he gave, in what was the old student center, Baxter Hall, there was a huge crowd, and there was this podium Gaudino with this wisped frame and people were screaming “Speak up! […]

To me he was always a teacher and not really a friend. I really cared for him. I think he did for me. But there wasn’t that connection for me, anyhow, with him and probably most students didn’t have it either. He was the teacher. The very few, the ones perhaps who took care of […]

Bob Gaudino was never fully revealed.

I remember him making a joke one time about Eduardo Cianelli playing the guru in Gunga Din and that must have amused him that an Italian actor was playing an Indian guru. I do remember hearing him referred to sort of despairingly as a guru but I don’t remember feeling overwhelmed by him. I remember […]

I think a lot of his colleagues completely misunderstood him. When they say “charismatic” they immediately thought that Bob was turning his students into acolytes. Because typically, that’s what charismatic people do, right? They’re so overpowering that you become acolytes. Now I just talked recently with John Chandler and both of us observed the same […]

We certainly were still friends and some of it may have been my misunderstanding, but I had a problem with his guru role. I was challenging everything I saw and I hated how a lot of students became these disciplines and clones. After a while, the students around Gaudino would have long late discussions at […]

CHAPTERS

Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Final Note