Student riots have ravaged the distinguished New York City university where Kate Fansler teaches. In the ensuing disarray, the survival of the university's plebeian stepchild, University College, seems doubtful. President Jeremiah Cudlipp is snobbishly determined to ax it; and as sycophantic professors fall in line behind him, the rally of Kate and few rebellious colleagues seems doomed. It is a fight to the death, and only a miracle--or perhaps a murder--can save their beloved institution. . . .
Release date:
July 27, 2011
Publisher:
Fawcett
Print pages:
224
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Though mild clear weather Smile again on the shire of your esteem And its colors come back, the storm has changed you: You will not forget, ever, The darkness blotting out hope, the gale Prophesying your downfall.
One That classes at the University began, as they were scheduled to, on September 17, was a matter of considerable astonishment to everyone. There was not a great deal to be said for revolutions--not, at any rate, in Kate's opinion--but they did accustom one to boredom in the face of extraordinary events, and a pleasant sense of breathless surprise at the calm occurrence of the expected. Kate said as much to Professor Castleman as they waited for the elevator in Lowell Hall.
"Well," he answered, "I might have found myself even more overcome with amazement if they had not managed to put my course in historical methods, which never has less than a hundred and fifty students, into a classroom designed to hold ninety only if the students sit two in a chair, which, these days, they probably prefer to do. Though come to think of it," he added as the elevator, empty, went heedlessly past, apparently on some mysterious mission of its own, "I don't know why students should expect seats at lectures, since audiences can no longer expect them at the theater. We went to a play last night--I use the word 'play,' you understand, to describe what we expected to see, not what we saw--and not only were there no seats, the entertainment principally consisted of the members of the cast removing their clothes and urging, gently of course, that the audience do likewise. My wife and I, fully clothed, felt rather like missionaries to Africa insufficiently indoctrinated into the antics of the aborigines. Shall we walk down? One thing at least has not changed in this university: the elevators. They have never worked, they do not now work, and though an historian should never speak with assurance of the future, I am willing to wager that they never will. Where are you off to? Don't tell me, I know. A meeting. What's more, I can tell you what you are going to discuss: relevance."
"That," said Kate, "would be the expected. As a matter of fact, I have a doctoral examination: the poetry of W. H. Auden. He wrote a good bit of clever poetry to your muse."
"Mine? Gracious, have I got a muse? Just what I've needed all these years. Do you think I could trade her in for a cleaning woman, three days a week with only occasional ironing? My wife would be prostrate with gratitude."
"Trade Clio in? Impossible. It is she into whose eyes 'we look for recognition after we have been found out.' "
"Did Auden write that? Obviously he's never been married. That's a description of any wife. I thought you were in the Victorian period."
"I am, I am. Auden was born in 1907. He only missed Victoria by six years. And don't be so frivolous about Clio. Auden called her 'Madonna of silences, to whom we turn When we have lost control.' "
"Well, get hold of her," Professor Castleman said. "I'm ready to turn."
The dissertation examination was not, in fact, scheduled for another hour. Kate wandered back toward her office, not hurrying, because no sooner would she reach Baldwin Hall, in which building dwelt the Graduate English Department, than she would be immediately accosted, put on five more committees, asked to examine some aspect of the curriculum about which she knew nothing (like the language requirement for medieval studies) and to settle the problems of endlessly waiting students concerning, likely as not, questions not only of poetry and political polarization, but of pot and the pill as well. Kate strolled along in the sort of trance to which she had by now grown accustomed. It was the result of fatigue, mental indigestion, a sense of insecurity which resembled being tossed constantly in a blanket as much as it resembled anything, and, strangest of all, a love for the University which was as irrational as it was unrewarded.
She would have been hard put to say, she thought looking about her, what it was she loved. Certainly not the administration (had there been one, which, since they had resigned one by one like the ten little Indians, there wasn't). Not the Board of Governors, a body of tired, ultraconservative businessmen who could not understand why a university should not be run like a business or a country club. The students, the faculty, the place? It was inexplicable. The love one shares with a city is often a secret love, Camus had said; the love for a university was apparently no less so.
"Kate Fansler!" a voice said. "How very, very nice. 'I must telephone Kate,' I have said to Winthrop again and again, 'we must have lunch, we must have dinner, we must meet.' And now, you see, we have."
Kate paused on the steps of Baldwin Hall and smiled at the sight of Polly Spence. Talk of the unexpected! Polly Spence belonged to the world of Kate's family--she had actually been, years ago, a protegee of Kate's mother's--and there emanated from her the aura of St. Bernard's--where her sons had gone to school--and Milton Academy, the Knickerbocker dancing classes and cotillions.
"I know," Polly Spence said, "my instincts tell me that if I wait here patiently you will say something, perhaps even something profound, like 'Hello.' "
"It's good to see you, Polly," Kate said. "I don't know what's become of me. I feel like the heroine of that Beckett play who is buried up to her neck and spends every waking moment rummaging around in a large, unorganized handbag. Come to see the action, as the young say?"
"Action? Profanity, more likely. Four-letter-word-bathroom, four-letter-word-sex, and really too tiresome, when I think that my own two poor lambs were positively glared at if they said 'damn.' It's not an easy world to keep up with."
"But if I know you, you're keeping up all the same."
"Of course I am. I'm taking a doctorate. In fact, I've almost got it. Now what do you think of that? I'm writing a dissertation for the Linguistics Department on the history of Verner's Law. Please look impressed. The Linguistics Department is overjoyed, because the darlings didn't know there was anything new to say about Verner's Law until I told them, and they've been taking it like perfect angels."
Kate smiled. "I always suspected an extraordinary brain operating behind all your committee-woman talents, but whatever made you decide to get a Ph.D.?"
"Grandchildren," Polly said. "Three chuckling little boys, one gurgling little girl, all under three. It was either hours and hours of baby-sitting, to say nothing of having the little darlings cavalierly dumped upon us at the slightest excuse, or I had to get a job that would be absolutely respected. Winthrop has encouraged me. 'Polly,' he said, 'if we are not to find ourselves changing diapers every blessed weekend, you had better find something demanding to say you're doing.' The children, of course, are furious, but I am now a teaching assistant, very, very busy, thank you, and only condescending to rally round at Christmas and Easter. Summers I dash off to do research and Winthrop joins me when he can. But you look tired, and here I am chatting away. Let's have lunch one day at the Cosmopolitan Club."
"I'm not a member."
"Of course not, dear, though I never understood why. Why are you looking so tired?"
"Meetings. Meetings and meetings. We are all trying, as you must have heard, to restructure the University, another way of saying that we, like the chap in the animated cartoons, have looked down to discover we are not standing on anything. Then, of course, we fall."
"But everybody's resigned. The President. The Vice-President. We've got an Acting President, we're getting a Faculty Senate, surely everything's looking up."
"Perhaps. But the English Department has discovered there is no real reason for most of the things they have been happily doing for years. And the teaching assistants--where, by the way, are you being a teaching assistant? Don't tell me the College has reformed itself sufficiently to be hiring female, no-longer-young ladies, however talented . . ."
"Not them; not bloody likely. I'm at the University College. Very exciting. Really, Kate, you have no idea."
Kate, looking blank, realized she hadn't.
"Really," Polly Spence said, "the snobbery of you people in the graduate school! We're doing splendid work over there . . ."
"Didn't the University College used to be the extension school? Odd courses for people at loose ends like members of labor unions who only work twenty hours a week and housewives whose children are . . . ?"
"That was a hundred years ago. There are no more courses in basket-weaving. We give a degree, we have a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, and our students are very intelligent people who simply don't want to play football or have a posture picture taken."
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