You are here: Home » People » Paul Lieberman

Paul Lieberman

“

Dear Friends, Take off your shoes, come inside and meet Mr. Gaudino. He was a California boy from an immigrant family who somehow landed at remote Williams College, in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, where he died in 1974, far too young. He taught for less than two decades, but in that time he influenced legions […]
“

Another vexing question: Could our hero really have been beaten out for the presidency of the UCLA student body by a cheerleader?  To find out, you’ll have to go back to his early years on the outskirts of L.A., where papa Gaudino collected bags of cash and his grand-folk poured wine over their cereal.  Read […]
“

It is hard to equal such escapades inside the classroom, but perhaps we’ll tease a few of you there nonetheless. One of our oral historians notes the sad fact that for all the time we spend in class, and all the money parents pay for those hours, the classroom memories abandon us first. Jon Kravetz […]
“

I took Gaudino’s class in a little meeting room in Greylock, an afternoon class. The class was meant to be an hour and a half, or an hour and a quarter, and it went on three hours, up until dinner time. I came out of it shaking. It was one of the first times I […]
“

It’s like the theater performer who does something on stage that you want to run home and tell others about. But talking about it never does it justice. You have to be there and see it and experience it. It’s in the air.
“

I remember him questioning us about drivers and when you were in a different country what happened. If you came to a red light would people obey the red light, just stop, if there was no traffic coming along? And I think the French would go right through the light. This was about your attitudes […]
“

One of the films he used was “Lonely Are the Brave,” which starred Kirk Douglas as a cowboy out of place in a West being modernized. And at the end he’s struck while riding his horse by a truck carrying bathroom fixtures, toilets. Gaudino loved that ending, cackled in glee at it, the death by […]
“

People often say a Gaudino class had an air of mystery. But if you look back at the syllabus for most any of his courses you realize there was no great secret. He told you exactly what was going to happen. He’d list “Purposes” of the course and the first two would be brutally substantive: […]
“

Well, there was the start of the debates about the Vietnam War. And I remember going to one meeting and it was just the start of the split between Old Left and New Left. Old Left being heavily intellectualized, where people would sit around and debate and you sort of make the case. And the […]
“

He had gotten this small house on campus. And there would be discussions there. Or gatherings after showings of films, for which he’d bring together students, townspeople and faculty. Often there would be other locations as well, but the favorite place was in his house at night. As you probably have heard, everyone would take […]
Next »

CHAPTERS

Introduction
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Final Note
credits