'Tis a thing not to be

Here's a  description that makes me think, "Wow, this sure would be an interesting guy to have dinner with," only then to realize I wouldn't know what the hell to say:

A brilliant, endearing presence on the Homewood campus for more than 60 years, Richard Macksey, A&S ’53, ’53 (MA), ’57 (PhD), approaches knowledge the way a foodie looks at nature: There’s potentially something tasty everywhere, and seemingly disparate things can complement each other. In 2005, Macksey wrote the preface to the second edition of The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, a more than 1,000-page reference doorstop first published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1994. He begins this historical overview of literary criticism with a brief tale of 18th-century British historian Edward Gibbon, “fresh from his Calvinist cure in Lausanne.” Conversations with Macksey refreshingly wander as memories and ideas open narrative trapdoors, fitting for a man who chose Proust for his dissertation. These digressions can venture into intellectual life’s lesser-known nooks, such as indelible eccentrics who were unable to fit into the academy’s square pegs.