Bliss Carnochan
Dec. 20, 1930-Jan. 24, 2022
Portola Valley, California

Bliss Carnochan, Richard W. Lyman Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at Stanford University, died of congestive heart failure on January 24th at his home in Portola Valley, CA.

Bliss grew up in Manhattan, where he went to Buckley School and then entered St. Paul’s school in Concord, NH. He lived for the summers, which he spent at his grandparents’ farm in Bernardsville, New Jersey. There he loved to roam the property, climb its many trees, and help to bring in the hay—as well as read books.

He went on to Harvard, as his grandfather, father, and brother had done. There he earned his BA, MA, and PhD degrees. After his BA he “passed an idle year at New College, Oxford, where I spent much of my time rowing on the college crew, not because I had a special aptitude but because a 6’2” American had an initial advantage that reality never quite dissipated.”

He was a young man from the East Coast with roots deep in American history. His family traced its life in America to Colonial times, and it included Gouverneur Morris, who had written the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Bliss wrote that his family had prospered in the 19th century and had managed to keep some “though by no means all” of its wealth in the Great Depression. He counted the deaths of his father and older brother in WWII as “an unlucky beginning,” but noted that it was followed by “a run of good luck” during a lifetime he said he sometimes found hard to believe.

That “good luck” certainly included his move in 1960 to Stanford as an assistant professor, in his first time west of Pittsburgh. As an academic, he focused his teaching and writing on the literature of the British eighteenth century, with the work of Jonathan Swift at its center. Not very fond of lecturing, he preferred the seminar format and the give-and-take of a lively discussion. He also served as Chairman of the English Department; Dean of Graduate Studies and Vice-Provost of the university. He considered 1986-1991 as the most personally rewarding years of his academic career, when he served as the second Director of The Stanford Humanities Center—having helped to conceive the idea of the Center itself. There, he modestly said, he learned a great deal from the Center’s community of intellectually engaged scholars.

Bliss Carnochan’s publications include some twenty books, among them Lemuel Gulliver’s Mirror for Man, Confinement and Flight, Gibbon’s Solitude, and The Battleground of the Curriculum; dozens of articles and monographs; and scores of reviews. After his retirement, he turned to address contemporary issues. “The Death Penalty and Prison Reform” was the product of several visits to the Louisiana State Prison at Angola and a years-long correspondence with the editor of “The Angolite,” the inmate publication. His books about African explorers were written after visits to Tanzania looking for elusive traces of his uncle, who had studied zoology at Harvard and then collected snakes for the Washington Zoo, spending the better part of a decade in what was then the colony of Tanganyika as chief assistant to Kalola, head of the powerful snake guild.

An abiding interest in education and society produced other thoughtful essays, among them “On the ‘Purposes’ of Liberal Education”; “Where Did Great Books Come From, Anyway?”; “The English Curriculum: Past and Present”; and “English at Stanford, 1891-2000: A Brief History.”

“Art, Constraint and Memory: Egon Schiele in Prison” married two of his deep interests, as did “Art, Transgression, Shock and the First Amendment.” The latter, written with wit and insight, showed a non-academic familiarity with popular figures such as Ice-T and Jenny Holzer as he probed the challenges of our rapidly changing society.

A trustee of Mills College and the Berkeley Art Museum, he chaired the board of the Athenian School in Danville. He also served on the Overseers Committee to Visit Harvard College.

After retirement, when he relished being freed from the “tedium of the footnote,” he wrote a modest but engaging memoir, Momentary Bliss. In Confessions of a Dodger Fan he described the mixed blessings of being passionate about baseball; and, with his own Scottish origins keenly in mind, he wrote Scotland the Brave, about Scotland’s national identity and some of its manifestations in America.

Bliss Carnochan’s always lively and intimate sense of our national past helped to create the core of who he was as a scholar, writer, husband, father, friend, and man of broad interests. Those interests included expertly collecting memorable American folk art, riding horses (whether in the eastern Sierra or in Ireland, Spain, and France), and playing tennis (mostly doubles) with Stanford colleagues. As a fan, he attended the French, British, and US Open tournaments. As a transplant to California he remained a Dodger fan and also became a Sharks and a Warriors fan. His children remember he was a lover of Bob Marley’s music, which once led him to sweep up the entire family for a trip to San Diego to hear Marley in concert. For about 20 years from the early 80s Bliss and Brigitte spent much of their summers in Martha’s Vineyard, where they built a house, made friends, and enjoyed their children and grandchildren on the Vineyard’s beautiful South Beach.

Essential to his character and personality was Bliss’ sense that moving to California proved to be a “liberation” of sorts. Never one to trade on lineage, his view of his distinguished ancestry was one of slight bemusement. Gouverneur Morris was a family name preserved through the generations—but one which Bliss also bestowed on his last and beloved Labrador, who answered happily to “Morris” and lounged at his feet as he wrote in his study.

Late in life, Bliss wrote, “It has been not just a fortunate life, but a rich one.” His friends remember many things: his generosity, wit, erudition, wide-ranging conversation, and humility, as well as his deep, rich, contagious laughter. His children remember that he was present: every graduation, athletic event, birthday party, grandparents day or theater performance: He Showed Up.

He leaves behind his beloved wife of forty-two years, Brigitte Carnochan; four children from his first marriage to Nancy Carter Edebo: Lisa Carnochan (Frank Yu), Sarah Carnochan (Michael Myers), Gouverneur Morris Peter Carnochan, Sibyll Carnochan Catalan (Rodrigo Catalan), a step-daughter, Erika Jurney (the late Craig Jurney), and seven grandchildren (Kate Carroll, Patrick Carroll, Anna Myers, Gouverneur Morris Bodhi Carnochan, Nicholas Catalan, Sophia Catalan, Thomas Catalan), and three step-grandchildren (Henry Jurney, Edward Jurney, Charlie Jurney).

Tags: teacher/educator