change
schools and go somewhere else, far away from Los Angeles.
Before I undertook a change of that magnitude, I wanted to test the
waters, so to speak. I enrolled in a full summer load of
classes at a school in another city. The most important course,for
me, was a class in anthropology taught by a foremost authority on the Indians
of the Andean region. It was my belief that if I focused my
studies on an area that was emotionally accessible to
me I would have a better opportunity to do anthropological field-work in a
serious manner when the time came. I conceived of any knowledge of
South America as giving me a better entree into any given Indian society
there.
At the same time that I registered for school, I got a job as a
research assistant to a psychiatrist who was the older brother of one
of my friends. He wanted to do a content analysis of excerpts from
some innocuous tapes of question-and-answer sessions with young men and women
about their problems arising from overwork in school,
unfulfilled expectations, not being understood at home,
frustrating love affairs, etc. The tapes were over five years old and were
going to be destroyed, but before they were, random numbers were
allotted to each reel, and following a table of random
numbers, reels were picked by the psychiatrist and his research assistants and
scanned for excerpts that could be analyzed.
On the first day of class in the new school, the anthropology professor
talked about his academic bona fides and dazzled his students with
the scope of his knowledge and his publications. He was a tall,
slender man in his mid-forties, with shifty blue eyes. What struck me the
most about his physical appearance was that his eyes were rendered enormous
behind glasses for correcting far-sightedness, and each of his
eyes gave the impression that it was rotating in an opposite
direction from the other when he moved his head as he spoke. I knew that that
couldn't be true; it was, however, a very disconcerting image. He
was extremely well dressed for an anthropologist, who in my day were famous for
their super-casual attire. Archaeologists, for example, were
described by their students as creatures lost in carbon-14 dating who never
took a bath.
However, for reasons unbeknownst to me, what really set him apart wasn't
his physical appearance, or his erudition, but his speech pattern. He
pronounced every word as clearly as anyone I had ever heard, and
emphasized certain words by elongating them- He had a markedly foreign
intonation, but I knew that it was an affectation. He pronounced certain
phrases like an Englishman and others like a revivalist preacher.
He fascinated me from the start despite his enormous pomposity. His
self-importance was so blatant that it ceased to be an issue
after the first five minutes of his class, which were always bombastic
displays of knowledge cushioned in wild assertions about himself. His command
of the audience was sensational. None of the students I
talked to felt anything but supreme admiration for this
extraordinary man. I earnestly thought that everything was moving along nicely,
and that this move to another school in another city was going to be easy and
uneventful, but thoroughly positive. I liked my new surroundings.
At my job, I became completely engrossed in listening to the tapes, to
the point where I would sneak into the office and listen not to
excerpts, but to entire tapes. What fascinated me beyond measure,
at first, was the fact that I heard myself speaking in every one of those
tapes. As the weeks went by and I heard more tapes, my fascination
turned to sheer horror. Every line that was spoken, including
the psychiatrist's questions, was mine. Those people were speaking from the
depths of my own being. The revulsion that I experienced was something unique
for me. Never had I dreamed that I could be repeated endlessly in
every man or woman I heard speaking on the tapes. My
sense of individuality, which had been ingrained in me
schools and go somewhere else, far away from Los Angeles.
Before I undertook a change of that magnitude, I wanted to test the
waters, so to speak. I enrolled in a full summer load of
classes at a school in another city. The most important course,for
me, was a class in anthropology taught by a foremost authority on the Indians
of the Andean region. It was my belief that if I focused my
studies on an area that was emotionally accessible to
me I would have a better opportunity to do anthropological field-work in a
serious manner when the time came. I conceived of any knowledge of
South America as giving me a better entree into any given Indian society
there.
At the same time that I registered for school, I got a job as a
research assistant to a psychiatrist who was the older brother of one
of my friends. He wanted to do a content analysis of excerpts from
some innocuous tapes of question-and-answer sessions with young men and women
about their problems arising from overwork in school,
unfulfilled expectations, not being understood at home,
frustrating love affairs, etc. The tapes were over five years old and were
going to be destroyed, but before they were, random numbers were
allotted to each reel, and following a table of random
numbers, reels were picked by the psychiatrist and his research assistants and
scanned for excerpts that could be analyzed.
On the first day of class in the new school, the anthropology professor
talked about his academic bona fides and dazzled his students with
the scope of his knowledge and his publications. He was a tall,
slender man in his mid-forties, with shifty blue eyes. What struck me the
most about his physical appearance was that his eyes were rendered enormous
behind glasses for correcting far-sightedness, and each of his
eyes gave the impression that it was rotating in an opposite
direction from the other when he moved his head as he spoke. I knew that that
couldn't be true; it was, however, a very disconcerting image. He
was extremely well dressed for an anthropologist, who in my day were famous for
their super-casual attire. Archaeologists, for example, were
described by their students as creatures lost in carbon-14 dating who never
took a bath.
However, for reasons unbeknownst to me, what really set him apart wasn't
his physical appearance, or his erudition, but his speech pattern. He
pronounced every word as clearly as anyone I had ever heard, and
emphasized certain words by elongating them- He had a markedly foreign
intonation, but I knew that it was an affectation. He pronounced certain
phrases like an Englishman and others like a revivalist preacher.
He fascinated me from the start despite his enormous pomposity. His
self-importance was so blatant that it ceased to be an issue
after the first five minutes of his class, which were always bombastic
displays of knowledge cushioned in wild assertions about himself. His command
of the audience was sensational. None of the students I
talked to felt anything but supreme admiration for this
extraordinary man. I earnestly thought that everything was moving along nicely,
and that this move to another school in another city was going to be easy and
uneventful, but thoroughly positive. I liked my new surroundings.
At my job, I became completely engrossed in listening to the tapes, to
the point where I would sneak into the office and listen not to
excerpts, but to entire tapes. What fascinated me beyond measure,
at first, was the fact that I heard myself speaking in every one of those
tapes. As the weeks went by and I heard more tapes, my fascination
turned to sheer horror. Every line that was spoken, including
the psychiatrist's questions, was mine. Those people were speaking from the
depths of my own being. The revulsion that I experienced was something unique
for me. Never had I dreamed that I could be repeated endlessly in
every man or woman I heard speaking on the tapes. My
sense of individuality, which had been ingrained in me
Similar Books
