Engleby Read Online Free PDF Page B

in their own small changes, like people in psychoanalysis. About once a year a rumour runs round that an important announcement is about to go out: Dr R— has moved position. There is a flutter in the faculty. After months of wakeful nights and self-questioning, after re-reading the key texts, Dr R— has made all the intellectual reconciliations necessary; he is ready to declare that he is now definitely a . . . Maoist. His students nod their heads. Mao. Of course. Some of the girls will want to sleep with Dr R—, to experience such rigour at first hand. By day, the Hist dons teach the dictatorship of the proletariat, and at night they read the Sits Vac column in the education supplements and apply to other universities where there’s a better chance of tenure.
    Yet from what I know of Mao he doesn’t sound like a nice man at all. Doesn’t that count for anything?
    Incidentally, no one seems to mind my turning up to lectures with Jennifer, even though I’m reading Natural Sciences.
    I should have mentioned that I switched out of English at the end of the first year. I went to see my Director of Studies to tell him and he spoke to his equivalent in Nat Sci, who then called me in to his rooms in New Court (which is the oldest court, but called new because it was once new, compared to the ruined priory in which the college was first incorporated by seven Puritan divines in 1662).
    The Sci don, whose name is Waynflete, made me do a catch-up exam of his own devising, but allowed me the summer vacation to prepare. It wasn’t very difficult – rudiments of cell biology, physiology (including some neuroscience), biology of organisms, much of which I remembered from school – and he was then obliged to accept me. For the second year, or Part One B exams, I’ll tackle animal and plant biology and biochemistry. I fancy genetics as a Part Two option. Although there was a bit of evolution in biology of organisms, I look for the human angle – the big picture rather than the molecular stuff – in Arch and Anth lectures given by a bearded Fellow from Melbourne known as the Australopithecine.
    I don’t miss English at all. No one explained what we were meant to do. They leave you to work it out for yourself. This is done in the name of respect for you; they call you Mr or Miss and treat you as equals, so it would be impertinent of them to tell you how to go about your studies. It may be a coincidence that this not-giving-guidance also gives them time to spend on their own work. Woodrow, the big schoolmasterly one, for instance, is writing a book on German engraving from Dürer to the Present Day (he doesn’t seem to teach English at all), and the younger one, Dr Gerald Stanley, is writing a novel, I believe, set in a Cornish tin mine but written in the style of Firbank. (Can’t wait.)
    I did ask him – Stanley – once what the purpose of our work was.
    ‘Are we meant to offer new insights into these books or what?’
    He looked appalled.
    I went on: ‘I mean, it’s unlikely that I’ll find something in Urn Burial or Bartholomew Fair that people before me haven’t seen.’
    ‘Yes, Mr Engleby. Very unlikely.’
    ‘Or should we be trying to find out more about the life of the author or how the times in which he lived affected his work?’
    ‘Good God, no. That’s journalism.’
    ‘So what are we doing?’
    ‘Studying the text and reading round it.’
    ‘To what end?’
    ‘Scholarship.’
    I felt: a) that he had outflanked me there; b) not really satisfied. Perhaps it was the old logic/truth separation again.
    In fact, I did briefly see a way in which English could be studied. This was what they called ‘Practical Criticism’. They gave you unidentified bits of poetry or prose and you had to deduce from the words alone when they had been written and by whom; then give reasons for your conclusions and a critical commentary. This was easy, but enjoyable; and it had a purpose – to demonstrate the range of your