Washington Irving Society

Wednesday, September 24, 2025

BY TRACY HOFFMAN

I’m writing this blog, or starting this blog—in my garage, right before pulling away for the two-hour commute to Baylor. I’ll pick up the writing again at red lights, and then finish up at some point this evening after my classes finish at 5:15.

Yesterday, I had high hopes of getting ahead of this Washington Irving Wednesday. But alas! It was 90 degrees in my office, up five degrees from the usual setting. After chatting with a student around 5 p.m., I put a “gone fishing” sign on the door, packed my bags, and headed home—to work. But alas! Yet again, it wasn’t meant to be.

After cruising the I-35 corridor for about 45 minutes, the freeway was shut down by some reason I never discovered, perhaps an accident or a construction-related matter. Anyhow, I graded two batches of quizzes while stopped, and I also learned through texts and phone calls my sister was in the hospital. After the 30-minute delay of sitting on the freeway, and after visiting my sister at the hospital, who will hopefully be home soon, it was 9:15 by the time I finally got home. I needed a shower after sweating through my clothes at the office and after collecting a variety of germs at the hospital. I needed dinner. I needed to work on my blog. But sadly, no work was done.

Fortunately, though, storms woke me around 4 a.m., so I went ahead and got up for coffee and Washington Irving. I decided to read the texts I had assigned from The Sketch Book: “The Wife,” “A Broken Heart,” “Account of the Author,” and “To the Public.” It’s Sentimental Irving Day in my Washington Irving class, and I was ready to chat about our occasionally sentimental “man of letters.”

On Monday, our class tackled satire and persona as I guided them through pedagogy genre. After sharing definitions for satire and persona, we created Billy Bob “Bubba” Cowboy Jones to tell our satirical History of Texas. Personally, I think Cowboys owner Jerry Jones should be honored that Gen Z students think him comparable to Diedrich Knickerbocker. Perhaps one day we’ll have a Texas team called the Jerrys or the Joneses, like New Yorkers have Knickerbockers.

In our conversations about Diedrich Knickerbocker, the passages comparing him to a teacher jumped out to me. For instance, Seth Handaside in the “Account of the Author“ first describes Knickerbocker as: “a small brisk looking old gentleman, dressed in a rusty black coat, a pair of olive velvet breeches, and a small cocked hat. He had a few grey hairs plaited and clubbed behind, and his beard seemed to be of some four and twenty hairs growth. The only piece of finery which he bore about him, was a bright pair of square silver shoe buckles, and all his baggage was contained in a pair of saddle bags which he carried under his arm. His whole appearance was something out of the common run, and my wife, who is a very shrewd body, at once set him down for some eminent country school-master” (373).

The first description we ever see of Diedrich Knickerbocker suggests a teacher. We learn five paragraphs later, in an effort to help Knickerbocker pay his bills, Mrs. Handaside suggests he “teach the children their letters” while she offers “to try her best and get the neighbours to send their children also” (375). However, Knickerbocker “took it in such dudgeon, and seemed so affronted at being taken for a school-master, that she never dared speak on the subject again” (375).*

In class, we spent a little time comparing Diedrich Knickerbocker to Ichabod Crane, and as I’m digging into genre pedagogy and new ways of considering Ichabod, this comparison seems worth pursuing. We watched film clips of both Ichabod and Diedrich, and Irving clearly overlaps physical qualities and character descriptions.

Today, we built upon our conversation from Monday about persona and satire, by adding a sentimental spin to our recent development, Billy Bob “Bubba” Cowboy Jones. We decided his lady should be a New Yorker, so we went with Eugenia, since that’s the name of Jerry Jones’ wife. Bubba falls for Eugenia Knickerbocker, an outsider visiting Texas. She is bitten by a rattlesnake and smitten by Bubba, when he rescues her from the rattler’s venom.

My students also spun yarns about their own research projects, and I look forward to sharing their ARGs (alternative reality games) with you, later this semester.

As this semester progresses, please know we have much going on behind the scenes, beyond my daily angst with commutes and temperature. Cheryl Weaver, who teaches in New York, is working with me on Washington Irving Wednesdays as an unofficial secretary to the Washington Irving Society. Of course, we’ll make it official when we vote for officers at our next 2026 business meeting in Chicago. Cheryl and I met in Boston at the 2025 ALA conference.

Along with Vice-President Sean Keck, Cheryl and I will be putting together our 2026 call for papers. You can probably guess we plan to have two panels on teaching Washington Irving, tentatively titled Pedagogy and Washington Irving Panel One and Pedagogy and Washington Irving Panel Two.

Please watch for the CFPs and also some blogs from Cheryl.

This is Tracy Hoffman, president of the Washington Irving society, signing off until next Wednesday.

*Irving, Washington. History, Tales and Sketches. Library of America. 1983.