How Berkeley Made the Old Testament New

Until I arrived in Berkeley in 1967, I had spent my whole life in the Northeast, apart from one student year abroad. I grew up in Albany, New York, got a BA in English at Columbia University in the era of Lionel Trilling (and just at the end of the era of Mark Van Doren), completed graduate studies in comparative literature at Harvard, and then returned to Columbia to teach in the English department. At that early moment of my professional life, I imagined becoming part of the next generation of New York intellectuals. But then, as cultural conditions changed, the next generation never really emerged. When Berkeley made me an offer I couldn’t refuse—promotion to tenure and a 50 percent increase in salary—I had never been west of Chicago.