34. The next time I saw Julia. . .
The next time I saw Julia, I asked if she could run the tape machine while I ran my spiel. She agreed on the condition that I come to her parents’ house on some unspecified Friday night for dinner. I told her it sounded like a deal to me, and began working on my presentation in earnest. Other chickens were coming home to roost--papers due in my other classes, research-paper blues among my Comp babies--so I was busy as a centipede with fleas, but I still managed to press forward. When I saw Leonard, he asked me how my project was coming along.
“Not bad,” I told him. “I’ve abandoned credibility in favor of entertainment, and now it looks like it’s actually coming together. I surprise myself sometimes.”
He returned a mildly nettled look. “Entertainment? Look, Smith, I don’t want you making a mockery of this assignment. What you did to McKinley may or may not have been deliberate--”
“Did to him?” I interrupted. “I did nothing to him; you think I sat on his chest and spooned sauerkraut down his throat?”
Leonard waved his hand. “--such competitive maneuvers were not unknown at Cornell. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. But if such clownishness occurs again, well--”
“I think I see what you’re saying,” I told him. “When I used the word ‘entertainment,’ I didn’t mean to suggest I wouldn’t be serious. It’s just--” I stopped; I wanted to say that criticism didn’t have to be boring, but I couldn’t find inoffensive words.
“In any case,” Leonard said dismissively, “good luck to you. I’m glad you’ve taken an interest in your relative position in the class, even if it was at poor Mr. McKinley’s expense.”
I stopped L. D. Langdon in the hallway of Andrews. “What’s old Leonard mean by ‘relative position’?” I asked her.
“Didn’t you know?” she replied. “The man believes that grades should be mathematically distributed: so many A’s, so many B’s, so many C’s. Lucky for the rest of us there are generous types like you who just don’t give a fuck.” She smirked up into my untidy dumfounded face.
“But I do give a fuck,” I said angrily. “Why do you think that class gives me such a headache?”
“How can you get a headache,” she replied, “when you either sneak out during break, or else fall asleep? Maybe you dreamed you were getting a headache.”
“Hey, I try,” I said, “I really do. What happened with McKinley after I left, by the way? Did he go ahead and give his thing?”
L. D. grinned. “Yeah, he gave it,” she said. “Leonard practically had to prop him up with a stick; he was white as a sheet. He only burped twice, though.”
“That dweeb,” I said. “Can you believe it, Leonard thinks I got him to eat Polish sausages on purpose.”
“Don’t be modest, Jonas,” L. D. said. “It was hilarious. Julia and I were rolling on the floor, afterward.”
“Shit,” I said. “Do you suppose he’ll take revenge?”
“I don’t know,” L. D. said. “But if I were you I’d X-ray my packages this Christmas.”
McKinley I also saw in the hallway, but when I attempted to greet him he turned his back to me. Upstairs, my studious office-mate Shemansky vibrated like a teakettle, hissing words like “scum!” and “despicable!” under his breath. I didn’t enjoy his nastiness, but I had other things to think about. Besides, it was like the white rabbit who belonged to some friends of mine once: however much he might dislike you, you knew he couldn’t kick very high, and he wasn’t likely to bite.
What I’d blurted to Leonard about abandoning credibility became my inspiration. Critics had to be boring writers because they must always be climbing the careful stiles of proof. But the things that could be shown were larger than the things that could be proven, and funnier. If I attacked Eliot directly, I would hardly be successful, since better minds than mine must have despised him; on the other hand, mere ridicule would simply reflect back on me. Still, there was something bathetic, some comic flaw in his thinking. If Agamemnon was shat upon by nightingales, who in all of literature more richly deserved it? One difference between Agamemnon and Sweeney was that Sweeney could probably read. We should get out of the business, I thought, of lip-polishing the asses of the cold patinaed statues of kings.
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