Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Novel); decent, too, in his disapproval of anything written after 1700 (which is, and I quote, “so much gah-gah”). These days he teaches only one seminar, thinly attended by undergraduates who emerge from the three-hour sessions glassy-eyed. Conversation with Paleozoic has a surreal quality. Learning I’ve just come from the library, he’ll begin with a reference to the stacks, segue to Dante’s circles of hell, and somehow, several minutes later, alight on Hemingway. Regarding Hemingway (good bloke, shame the way it ended), he will become animated. “Have you ever been to Morocco?” His shaggy eyebrows rise and stay aloft, awaiting my reply.
    I have not.
    The eyebrows drop. He struggles for another metaphor to illustrate his sentiment about Hemingway. “Have you ever been sailing?” Up with the brows. “On a blustery day?”
    â€œYes.”
    A smile expands across his face. “Enough said.” Patting me on the shoulder, he departs with hushed tread.
    At three P.M . our two senior gentlemen take their tea. Whichever is last to reach the faculty lounge discovers his waiting companion with a cry of “Aha!”; the one already seated in the lounge replies in kind, and once this attendance has been taken they settle down to business in earnest. In the sanctum of the lounge, beneath a large NO SMOKING sign (relic of the days before smoking was prohibited in all university buildings), Paleozoic strikes a match and lights his pipe, and the two commence a tranquil hour’s throat clearing while the rest of us make ourselves scarce.
    The Bitching Hour now convened, Jeff opens the lounge’s single window. I flap a manila folder to clear the remaining smoke.
    â€œWord is Dean Hopkins has a crush on Faulkner,” says Jeff. “He’s hinting about pushing for a more contemporary curriculum, presumably expanding our twentieth-century offerings. Look who’s going to win the tenure jackpot.”
    â€œWouldn’t it be nice. But I’m not counting on it.”
    Jeff is my “tenure-shepherd.” It’s his job to advise me on tenure-packet preparation. It’s my job to fish for reassurance.
    â€œOf course you’re not,” he says approvingly. “Still, it looks good for you. Despite your rosy youth.”
    â€œHa.”
    â€œWell you have to admit it’s not every day profs come up for tenure at twelve.”
    â€œI’m thirty-three. And—”
    â€œWhat I’m saying”—he cuts me off—“is that beside your standout record, you’ve got a bulletproof specialty. I expect to see you crowned in the next few months. Then maybe once your job is secure you’ll admit how much you despise undergrads.”
    I grin. “You’re projecting.”
    â€œYou hate teaching too, you just can’t admit it because you’re still an idealist. At least I’m honest about the spoiled buggers. Once you’re tenured you’ll tell the truth too.”
    I try again. Maintaining my students’ posture in their creakywooden seats is an unsung art, one I undertake with zest. “I like my students,” I say. Even if the endearing thing about them is how dumb they think we are. Even if they toss thin excuses at our feet: lazy dares. Undergraduates find their professors’ infatuations unfathomable . . . except when a book has gotten to them. Then they queue up cross-legged on the speckled floor outside my office, radiant with the need to have a thorny passage explained, or some bracing moral challenge resolved. The trust they’re willing to place in my hands, then, is stunning.
    Jeff smiles with one corner of his mouth, telling me no argument I can summon will be worth the effort. “Why the tie?” I ask instead. “Black turtlenecks not good enough for you anymore?”
    â€œThe Emory chairman’s in town. I’m going to attend his lecture on the