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literature to this point doesn’t limit you to one century’s compass. It’s clear to me you can wander wherever you choose.”
    All this time I had been worrying his whale-tooth menagerie in one palm and now I took a moment to set the pieces on the desktop in order to conceal my pleasure at his compliment. “I don’t think you have much of a basis on which to credit me with exceptional intelligence,” I said. The more seriously we spoke, it seemed, the more flirtatious we were.
    â€œPlease don’t impugn
my
intelligence.” Then as if he knew this was too much he added, “I was on the admissions committee. So I’ve read your transcripts and yes, they don’t suggest much knowledge of my subject, or any subject, perhaps, dating from prior to the First World War.”
    â€œMore like the Vietnam War,” I put in heartily, to cover how his observation chagrined me.
    â€œBut I’ve also read your essays,” he went on, cutting short my disparagement, “and they have all the scope that your transcript might lack. They’re terrific.”
    â€œThank you,” I managed at last.
    â€œDon’t take this question as a chiding at all. Take it just at face value. Given that it’s far from entry-level, and far from what seem like your realms of interest, what were you hoping to get, signing up for my class?”
    I couldn’t say “you” or “a moment like this,” gather my things, and depart, though that would have been elegant. It also would have saved me much subsequent grief. Instead I heard myself saying, “In college I never read any of the classics, because everyone else that I met had read them in high school, in their elite private high schools, and dismissed them as very uncool. So I dismissed them also, although where I went to high school none of that was assigned and so I never learned it. Which meant that in college as well I never learned it, because I wanted to seem like I already knew it. It’s like studying art—you have to do life drawing first before you get to ditch that and just do abstraction. I went straight to abstraction and I’ve been faking the rest ever since. I’ve never even read Dickens, or Austen, or Brontë.”
    â€œThe fun stuff.”
    â€œI’ve started to think that it would have been fun. I pretend that I’ve read them. I fake it.”
    â€œWhat
did
you read?”
    â€œA lot of psychoanalytic and poststructuralist theory.”
    â€œOh, God! And you understood that?”
    I laughed. “I thought so, but maybe all that was faking as well.”
    My confessions seemed to fill him with admiration. “I always envied and feared such as you in my own school days. Those with nothing but brilliance. Could land on their feet anywhere. I was one of those others you might have envied, if wrongly. Elite private schools, private tutors, and an old-fashioned whack on the ass when you made a mistake. All I had on my side was a tendency toward fearful obedience and a trainable memory. Not like you. Waltzing out of college summa cum laude—remember, I’ve read your transcript—and as yet you’ve read practically nothing. I’m terrified what you’ll become once you’ve actually stuck your nose into the books.”
    â€œIt’s nice of you to call my ignorance an asset.”
    â€œFalse modesty doesn’t become you. Nor does hyperbole. You’re hardly ignorant, you’re just not well read. I can help you with that, and in turn you can do me the much greater favor. How’s your Chaucer?”
    â€œNonexistent.”
    â€œPerfect. Unimagined delight awaits you. I don’t suppose you know Sasha Weill? She was supposed to have been my other Chaucer TA but her plans unexpectedly changed. You’ll have four sections, one meeting of each every week, and an avalanche of papers at the end, but I’ll teach you the secret