Henry Boker

I nearly called this blog "Henboker" because no one in the world knows who Henry Boker is--or ever was. That's why I chose him for my dissertation topic. As a young Turk at BYU trying to do an MA, I thought I was smart enough to do something significant about someone significant. When Robert Thomas said there were more than 2,000 articles on Herman Melville back in 1959, I began to wonder. Later, at the University of Oregon, the only school that liked me, I reached for the academic stars. Nothing. When time came to write a dissertation, I decided to try and write something insignificant about someone insignificant. The fact that my user name has been Henboker for five years with conflict or questions proves my graduate school dodge: I found one small tree in the middle of an endless Gobi desert. I remain alone, Jonah-like, without a gourd, without any bitterness towards Ninevah. I shared an exciting academic life with fellow faculty members and thousands of students at Ricks College and BYU over  37 years. There must be a moral here. My mother-in-law, enraged that I still hadn't learned or cared how to fold a wet umbrella the "correct" way, said "there are only two classes of people: slobs and those who do things "correct." My mind floated back to my neglected Charles Boker. My work was in neither class: slob-like or "correct." It was a mediocre job about a mediocre man. The blessing in my life is Herculean curiosity--a deep heart-felt  and cerebral desire to know things. No polyglot here, just  a man who arises each morning anxious about--let's see--my battered copy of Spanish for Dummies, or a rereading of The Bridge of San Luis Rey.