This interview first appeared in CounterPunch magazine on March 24, 2024.
Interview with Bev Boisseau Stohl: Chomsky and Me
By John Kendall Hawkins
Bev Stohl ran the MIT office of the renowned linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky for nearly two and a half decades. This is her account of those years, working next to a man described by the New York Times as "arguably the most important intellectual alive today." [book blurb]
Stohl's memoir, Chomsky and Me [OR Books, 2023]is casually anti-intellectual - not out to Tell All about the inner workings of Noam's genius -- and intentionally sets out, through anecdotes and descriptions of their everyday doings at the office, and on overseas trips, to present human beings at work in activities they hope will make the world a little better by their doings. There is no hero worship, but solid, honest observations of a lifestyle nestled in the embrace of integrity and care.
Hawkins: A memoir is often fraught with difficult writerly choices -- what to put in and what to leave out. Chomsky and Me is both protective of Chomsky and illuminating about you. What was your motivation for writing this memoir? And what are some of the choices you had to make?
Stohl: A memoir, like any book, can be written a million different ways. It feels to me that I wrote seven hundred versions of Chomsky & Me, asking myself in each chapter and each paragraph, in each iteration, is this the story I want to tell? Is this the most important detail? My motivation for writing this memoir was simple. I see the world through a writer's lens, so within months of taking the job as Chomsky's assistant I saw what was going on in our office, what kind of man he was, what types of people met with him or invited him to lecture. I noticed small quirks about his work style, and larger characteristics of his personality, his interaction with all kinds of visitors, talk organizers, colleagues, students, staff. I worried that the details of our daily lives might be lost, so I assigned myself to be note keeper, writing pages of essays and scribbling on sticky note pads.
In 2012, after traveling with Noam and my partner Laura to Pavia, Italy, I began posting stories on my blog, "Bev Stohl's Stata Confusion". An unintended outcome of this was the comments from activists telling me that seeing Noam as a human being rather than the deity many worshipped -- a man who spent time with family, friends, in his garden or on the pond --gave them permission to bring more balance to their own lives. I made an intentional choice to shine the light on the human side of Noam and others like him, because activists are historically plagued by burnout. The blog eventually grew into a book. I wanted to title it, Chomsky and Me: Our World Through Progressive Lenses, but the publisher nixed it.
I wrote about how he handled adversity, and welcomed diversity, and my joy at the sense of playfulness and humanity he shared with me, and with his linguistics and social justice contemporaries. I noticed their ability to move from dark to light, from hopelessness to hope, in looping cycles. This was something I hadn't seen as much in other MIT departments.
I continued to write, edit and re-edit as I developed a wider scope of understanding, and over a decade the focus of my writing changed and refocused. It took years to pare down my writings and find the most salient stories. So many were left out - Kathleen Cleaver's work with the Black Panthers, how Noam was affected by the poor people knocking on his parent's door selling rags. Deleting 14,000 words from my final transcript felt like killing off my best friends, but as I took out more personal facts, I saw the emergence of the story I wanted to tell. And my friends are safely tucked away for another story.
Hawkins: Chomsky has put out to the world over the years that the three main crises humanity should be worried about at this stage are Climate Change, Nukes, and the end of Democracy -- all interconnected. Would you agree with this? What might you add?
Stohl: I do agree, but I would also add that there's a loss of human connection. Noam and I are the kinds of people who talk to strangers on elevators. Kindness, empathy, and connection, all characteristics of our office atmosphere -- aren't these at the core of everything that offers hope in the world? The atmosphere grew organically, no only because of who we were individually, and who we were together, but because of the people whose energy filled our suite. If these were the predominant principles of life, we wouldn't have any of the other greed-driven issues. Democracy and truth would be a natural state, and the word "gaslighting" wouldn't be so much a part of the public dialogue.
Hawkins: How did your Catholicism and Noam's Jewishness meld? Catholics often aim for forgiveness and preparation, while persistence seems fairly characteristic of the Jewish worldview. Your description to Noam of The Act of Contrition was funny and quaint. How did your differences in approaches play out in your relationship with Noam? And who would single out in the public for needing an act of contrition?
One of the things Noam and I disagreed on was which was worse, his mother's infliction of Jewish guilt or my mother's infliction of Catholic guilt. We dueled back and forth, upping the ante with each story. In the end we called it a draw. To answer your question, Noam is quite persistent and I can be as well, so we were a match there, although his persistence far outweighed mine. I was more likely to take a break for a walk, where he had to be reminded to take care of himself, then re-reminded, then forced. We were, though, a hopeless pair when it came to being too compassionate and letting people in who maybe should have been more closely vetted. Carol Chomsky once became frustrated with us, insisting that a duck could get an appointment with Noam. We countered that we took people at their word when they asked for an appointment. Catholics aim at preparation? I more fly by the seat of my pants, so this doesn't fit me. Of course we both had to prepare for his trips, our visitors, his local lectures, but I'm not sure that's a religious thing as much as a survival necessity. Or are you talking about preparation for the afterlife? Religion wasn't a leading issue at MIT, so there wasn't a lot of discussion. I did have a strange experience after my mother died, which I hesitated to put in the book for fear people would find me an untrustworthy narrator. Noam had a moving experience in a Colombian forest dedicated to his late wife, Carol, and I think comparing those two experiences was the only time we talked for more than ten seconds about spirituality.
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