Up Close and Personal: An Odyssey Times Interview With Eugene Meltsner
By Campbell Freed
| Times Correspondent
 In keeping with this column's
goal of talking to the influential people of Odyssey, the Times
caught up with Eugene Meltsner, another mainstay and "resident genius" of
Whit's End. Those who know him appreciate his love of learning, his natural
exuberance and his exhausting vocabulary. For the latter reason, this
interview with Eugene has been edited for space and translated by three
professors of linguistics at the Campbell County College.
Eugene: I'm
appreciative of this opportunity to participate in this dialogue and wax
philosophically within the pages of your daily literary dispatch.
[Translation: Thank you for interviewing me in your newspaper.]
Times: You're welcome.
Can you give our readers a little bit of your background?
Eugene: I am not
terribly inclined to relinquish personal information about my history or
that of my family, of which I am the last. However, I would be most
gratified to discuss any other topic you might wish to pursue. [Translation:
I'd rather not talk about myself. I'd rather talk about other things.]
Times: Are you really a
genius?
Eugene: That, of
course, depends entirely on how one defines such a word. And once it has
been defined, if that definition is indeed an accurate measure of one's
intelligence. Is intelligence measurable at all and, if so, is it measured
against a quantitative norm or measured in and of itself, which of course,
raises the question, of how valid such measurements might be?
[Translation: That depends on your point of view.]
Times: Do you like
working at Whit's End?
Eugene: I find my
involvement at Whit's End to be satisfying in both an academic sense and in
the sense that it allows me to fulfill basic needs for companionship and
perhaps, to help me expand beyond a strictly intellectual or logical point
of view into more, shall we say, mundane responsibilities and activities.
[Translation: Yes.]
Times: No other
questions, Eugene. Thanks for talking to us.
This
article originally appeared in "The Odyssey Times," a
special fictional newspaper produced by Focus on the Family to promote
Adventures in Odyssey.
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