9 December 1931, from Dr Gerhardt Laves of Chicago to Raymond
Firth
in Sydney
[Talks about Radcliffe-Brown’s lectures and his discovery that
Functionalism was not unknown in Chicago, ‘a let down to find
himself
no longer the centre of interest’. ‘Beneath all his lordly bearing
and
social polish there runs a naďf undercurrent that seems to have no
place here…’]
Re Miss McConnel who came on the boat to USA with him: ‘I
followed
Hogbin’s counsel and limited our conversations to one half-hour,
it
taking about that long for her to develop her argumentative
bull-dog
grip.’
[With thanks to Peter Sutton and Michael Young]
© 2008
URL: http://www0.anu.edu.au/linguistics/nash/aust/laves/rwf.html