photo and credentials. It looked like a medieval bestiary:
skipjacks, groutnolls, hysterical-looking circumferentors, frumps
and filiopietistic longheads, micelings, whipsnades, and many
another whose eyes showed a very short limit of accommodation.
Several had actually taken no college degrees. Others were
part-time evangelists, ex-army colonels, and car salesmen. And the
various titles of their scholarly publications—books, articles,
monographs, etc.—were scarcely believable: “English Nose
Literature”;
Stephen Duck: More Rhyme Than Reason
; “The
American Disgrace: Overabuse of the Verb ‘To Get’“; “Fundavit
Stones in Crozet, Va.”;
Much Ado About Mothing
; “The
Psychopathological Connection Between Liquid Natural Gas and
Agraphia”;
The Story of Windmill Technology
; “The
Significance of Head Motions in Peking Ducks”; “Infusions as
Drinks”; “Abraham Lincoln, Quadroon?” and several other inventions,
thought Darconville, of which necessity was hardly the mother.
Finally, the Great Consult began. They discussed
tenure procedure. They revised policy on sabbaticals. They
rehearsed, to palsied lengths, curriculum changes,
cross-registration, crises in enrollment. It suddenly became a
great din of objections, fierce denials, and loud peevishness all
expressed in noises like the farting of laurel in flames with
everybody going at it head to head as if they were all trying right
then and there to solve the problem of circular shot, perpetual
motion, and abiogenesis!
Staring in disbelief, Darconville looked on in a
kind of autoscopic hallucination as each of the faculty members
rose in turn to make a point that never seemed to have an acute
end. It was all queer, makeshift, and unpindownable, for all the
cube-duplicators, angle-trisectors, and circle-squarers seemed to
keep busy avoiding any question that hadn’t sufficient strength to
throw doubt on whatever answer couldn’t have been offered anyway
lest an inefficacious solution only prove to muddle a problem that
couldn’t be raised in the first place. The discussion, rarely
deviating into sense, grew round with resolutions and amendments as
they sacrificed the necessary to acquire the superfluous and did
everything twice by halves, for, like Noah, they had two of
everything—two, it might be said, they didn’t need so much as one
of: two policies, two excuses, two faces and, always, forty-eleven
reasons to prop up both.
There was, for instance, Miss Shepe the witty, Miss
Ghote the wise —educatresses both, departments sociology and art
education respectively—who fell swiftly to reviewing the college
motto: should it be “We Preach to Teach” or “We Teach to Preach”?—a
rabid grace/ free-will discussion growing out of their sudden but
sustained failure to settle on the primacy of one over the other.
They squared off, adjusting their plackets and glaring into each
other’s pinched and penny-saving faces. “I’m for less grapes and
more fox,” exclaimed Miss Shepe, confusing everybody. Furious, Miss
Ghote—
brekekekekek
!— snapped her pencil in two.
“So much for your deduction,” said Miss Ghote.
“I deduce nothing,” sniffed Miss Shepe. “You’ve
simply induced that yourself.”
“Induced, yes, what you’d implied.”
“You dare,” snapped Miss Shepe, twisting her
cramp-ring, “you dare infer I’ve implied what you yourself have
induced, Miss Ghote?”
“Put it this way,” replied Miss Ghote with an
icy-sweet smile, “you’ve only surmised I infer what you’ve implied
I induced—and I do believe your bra strap’s showing.”
Miss Shepe banged down her heel. “Then you conclude
wrongly, Miss Nothing-in-the-World-Could-Make-Me-Care-Less, that I
surmised you infer what you think I’ve implied you’ve induced!”
“But you only assume that I conclude wrongly that
you’ve surmised what—”
“
Elephant balls
!” howled President
Greatracks, the fat in
skipjacks, groutnolls, hysterical-looking circumferentors, frumps
and filiopietistic longheads, micelings, whipsnades, and many
another whose eyes showed a very short limit of accommodation.
Several had actually taken no college degrees. Others were
part-time evangelists, ex-army colonels, and car salesmen. And the
various titles of their scholarly publications—books, articles,
monographs, etc.—were scarcely believable: “English Nose
Literature”;
Stephen Duck: More Rhyme Than Reason
; “The
American Disgrace: Overabuse of the Verb ‘To Get’“; “Fundavit
Stones in Crozet, Va.”;
Much Ado About Mothing
; “The
Psychopathological Connection Between Liquid Natural Gas and
Agraphia”;
The Story of Windmill Technology
; “The
Significance of Head Motions in Peking Ducks”; “Infusions as
Drinks”; “Abraham Lincoln, Quadroon?” and several other inventions,
thought Darconville, of which necessity was hardly the mother.
Finally, the Great Consult began. They discussed
tenure procedure. They revised policy on sabbaticals. They
rehearsed, to palsied lengths, curriculum changes,
cross-registration, crises in enrollment. It suddenly became a
great din of objections, fierce denials, and loud peevishness all
expressed in noises like the farting of laurel in flames with
everybody going at it head to head as if they were all trying right
then and there to solve the problem of circular shot, perpetual
motion, and abiogenesis!
Staring in disbelief, Darconville looked on in a
kind of autoscopic hallucination as each of the faculty members
rose in turn to make a point that never seemed to have an acute
end. It was all queer, makeshift, and unpindownable, for all the
cube-duplicators, angle-trisectors, and circle-squarers seemed to
keep busy avoiding any question that hadn’t sufficient strength to
throw doubt on whatever answer couldn’t have been offered anyway
lest an inefficacious solution only prove to muddle a problem that
couldn’t be raised in the first place. The discussion, rarely
deviating into sense, grew round with resolutions and amendments as
they sacrificed the necessary to acquire the superfluous and did
everything twice by halves, for, like Noah, they had two of
everything—two, it might be said, they didn’t need so much as one
of: two policies, two excuses, two faces and, always, forty-eleven
reasons to prop up both.
There was, for instance, Miss Shepe the witty, Miss
Ghote the wise —educatresses both, departments sociology and art
education respectively—who fell swiftly to reviewing the college
motto: should it be “We Preach to Teach” or “We Teach to Preach”?—a
rabid grace/ free-will discussion growing out of their sudden but
sustained failure to settle on the primacy of one over the other.
They squared off, adjusting their plackets and glaring into each
other’s pinched and penny-saving faces. “I’m for less grapes and
more fox,” exclaimed Miss Shepe, confusing everybody. Furious, Miss
Ghote—
brekekekekek
!— snapped her pencil in two.
“So much for your deduction,” said Miss Ghote.
“I deduce nothing,” sniffed Miss Shepe. “You’ve
simply induced that yourself.”
“Induced, yes, what you’d implied.”
“You dare,” snapped Miss Shepe, twisting her
cramp-ring, “you dare infer I’ve implied what you yourself have
induced, Miss Ghote?”
“Put it this way,” replied Miss Ghote with an
icy-sweet smile, “you’ve only surmised I infer what you’ve implied
I induced—and I do believe your bra strap’s showing.”
Miss Shepe banged down her heel. “Then you conclude
wrongly, Miss Nothing-in-the-World-Could-Make-Me-Care-Less, that I
surmised you infer what you think I’ve implied you’ve induced!”
“But you only assume that I conclude wrongly that
you’ve surmised what—”
“
Elephant balls
!” howled President
Greatracks, the fat in
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