Marvin Klotz was the high point of my college career, or at least the daylight portions of my college career.
I approached college with no expectations. And those non-expectations were richly fulfilled by the majority of classes I attended. There were a few gleaming exceptions, but none gleamed as brightly as Marvin. The energy and enthusiasm he towed into the classroom brought to life books I had no chance of enjoying otherwise. And, of course, it didn’t hurt that he was funny, charismatic, and sympathetic, and that he could have held us spellbound reading aloud from the collected legislative testimony of Alan Greenspan.
Over the course of a couple of years, Marvin changed my life. I was already a reader, but I was an unfocused reader who never even asked himself what it was he liked or disliked about the books he read. Marvin opened up to me a world in which you could care passionately about what you read — and identify the things you loved or loathed most. He gave me an entry point into literature that I’ve been grateful for ever since.
Without that experience and the insight that came with it, I might never have tried to synthesize the books I liked best; I might never have become a writer. (My acknowledgment to him a the end of my novel The Fourth Watcher has now been translated into six languages.) So when I say he changed my life, it’s not cloud-speak.
And all the things that were true of him then — all the adjectives above — are true of him now. And he’s also blossoming as a poet.
I’ll be forever grateful to him.
Tim Hallinan (February, 2011)
Timothy Hallinan’s tenth novel, The Queen of Patpong (2010), has been nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel.
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Well, Marvin. We’ve made it into our 9th decade, more than half our lives as office mates and collaborators, and above all, friends. A half century of kids and wives, teaching, talking, and travelling, ending up near neighbors at the edge of the ocean. Now, retired but never threadbare, you have your new career as marvintax (I one of your grateful clients) and, most recently, as marvinpoet.
You have inspired me, Marv, to take a trip inside your poetic brain to see what the future might hold. Here is the result:
Marvin Klotz Considers His Poetic Oeuvre and Contemplates New Directions
My output is fairly diverse,
But perhaps I’ve been overly-terse.
I have mastered the sonnet,
But I think, doggone it,
I need to move on to free verse.
Dick Abcarian (February, 2011)
Richard Abcarian is co-editor, with Marvin Klotz, of Literature: The Human Experience, now in its Tenth Edition.