In the warmth of his childhood home, Dr. Wayne C. Booth developed a fascination with discussion and the written word that later radiated through the country as he became one of America’s most preeminent literary critics.
Nurtured by parents who were educators, Dr. Booth also was schooled by a grandfather who enjoyed a good argument. He was equally inspired by a strong-minded grandmother with an ardor for politics and reading who gave him a blank journal to write down his thoughts and feelings.
Dr. Booth, 84, was the author of “The Rhetoric of Fiction” and “The Company We Keep” among other works, and the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service in English Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. He died of a blood infection and respiratory failure Monday, Oct. 10, in his Chicago home.
“Wayne was an extraordinary critic and one of the most influential American literary critics in the second half of the 20th Century, if not the entire century,” said Bill Brown, chairman of U. of C.’s English department.
“He also was an extraordinary colleague who was eager to cut through pontification and poising. He loved to argue and at the root of all of this was a conviction about the seriousness of the act of reading and the analysis of literary text.”
Dr. Booth, who began his teaching career at the university in 1947 as an instructor of English, published “The Rhetoric of Fiction” 14 years later while head of the English department at Earlham College in Richmond, Ind. The book has since been translated into seven languages.
He returned to the university in 1962 and retired in 1999, although he continued to teach classes–his first love–until this summer.
“The big news that `Rhetoric’ made was really to insist that narratives were not just artistic objects but persuasive text, that the author or implied author was trying to convince us of things that could change our character or soul, ” Brown said.
“What was dominant at the time was what was called New Criticism, a great belief of treating things as artistic objects, that they were autonomous, isolated, that they were not trying to do anything to change the world or you.”
Dr. Booth is considered one of the university’s most famous critics and distinguished scholars. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, and served on several national boards. He continued to write while teaching at the university.
In 1988, he published a book on the ethics of fiction, “The Company We Keep,” that again stirred the literary world.
” `Rhetoric’ was the most important book he wrote and is still taught in universities across the country, but `The Company We Keep’ really became a touchstone for the re-emergence of ethical criticism within literature studies,” Brown said.
Born and raised in American Fork, Utah, Dr. Booth was 6 years old when his father died.
When he was older, Dr. Booth served on a mission for his Mormon Church and, upon his return, fell in love with Phyllis Barnes, a viola player.
“We did a lot of dating in the two or three months that he had before he joined the Army,” his wife said. “I remember it was wintertime with a lot of snow, and we would go for walks. I had slippery boots and kept falling down and he kept picking me up. I think he thought I was just trying to fall for him,” she said.
They married in 1946, two weeks after his discharge from the Army. Dr. Booth received a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University in Utah, and a master’s and doctorate degree in English from the University of Chicago.
His son, John Richard, died in an automobile accident in 1969.
Other survivors include two daughters, Katherine Booth Stevens and Alison; and three grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 10:30 a.m. Saturday in the First Unitarian Church, 5650 S Woodlawn Ave., Chicago. The university is planning a separate memorial for next year.
