January 6, 2007: Saturday Story: The Passive Voice--Part Two
In Part One Lloyd finds himself living life in the passive voice. Which means that the focus shifts to where the objects of Lloyd’s actions became more important than its performer—Lloyd himself. Thus, he is discovered by us to be on the faculty at Queens College after it had been suggested to him by the administration at Brooklyn College that he seek affiliation elsewhere after one of his students was arrested for various forms of DUI. At Queens he pays attention to his teaching, gets divorced from Lydia, keeps the zipper zipped, and tries to find his way, all the while watched and judged, while commuting, along the Long Island Expressway by Gatsby’s Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.
In Part Two, Lloyd will find himself . . .
Before Lloyd knew it, it was May. Barely four weeks remained in the semester and he had nearly 200 papers to grade. No one could say that at $12,500 per year he was being overpaid. But he did have plans he was hardly looking forward to for the long summer—he needed to get something published if he was ever to get shifted onto the tenure track. Unless that were to occur, he would be doomed to a nomadic life of adjunct teaching, wandering among the colleges of the City University of New York, from Queens to the Bronx, but not of course back to Brooklyn, in search of a course here and a course there. In this way eking out a measly living. If you could even call it that.
That was a life that might even cause him to regret he had abandoned his plans to go to med school. He was reminded of this potential life of regret every time he saw his mother who would invariably take his hands in hers and, while stroking them gently and adoringly peering at them as if they were sacred objects, would say, “It’s not too late for medical school darling. You have surgeon’s hands.”
But instead, he vowed he would drag himself each day to the library up at Columbia and attempt to crank out a publishable paper for the Modern Language Association on, of course, the Prophetic Works of William Blake. If he could get enough of the latest hermeneutics worked into it or figure out how to approach the poems through a “gender lens,” he felt certain the readers, the referees, would find value there and agree to publish it, thus assuring that he would leapfrog over his junior colleagues who were still struggling to recover from the various traumas and humiliations associated with completing their doctoral dissertations.
So it was with these expectations, complicated and contradicted by feelings of an impending fate hanging over him that would upset them all, that Lloyd Zazlo found himself slouching in his tweeds (though it was May he had nothing more appropriate to wear that was of lighter weight), alone in the last row, at the final meeting of the year of the college’s nationally-ranked English Department. He sat there bathed in the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the streaky windows, as if illuminated by deep musical chords, in a minor key made visible.
This was the meeting at which the faculty traditionally debated and theoretically voted on changes in the curriculum (theoretically since that hadn’t happened in at least a decade); and, more commonly, they discussed and voted upon the creation of individual new courses. In truth this latter exercise was a virtual academic bazaar with the senior men (and men they were) shamelessly trading votes—I’ll approve your new elective on Pound if you’ll vote for mine on Milton. This was not something in which those not on a track toward tenure dared to participate. That was certain to prove fatal. So all Lloyd was expected to do, needed to do was be there as yet another way of showing deference, and to be sure not to fall asleep in the over-heated room.
In a halo of hair, professor and department chairman Hiram Greef taped the lecture table with his gavel and all conversation ceased as
if a shot had been fired. “We will begin,” he intoned because he always intoned even during casual conversations, “as we always do at this last meeting of the academic year with remembrances of colleagues who are no longer with us.” Lloyd wondered if at this very moment he was being remembered as no longer with them at Brooklyn College’s English Department’s equivalent final gathering. “Louis Steely,” Professor Greef continued, “our beloved Chaucerian passed in April, how appropriately the spring--Wham that April, with his shoures soote/ The droghte March hath perced to the roote. He will be remembered for his gentlemanly grace by all assembled here and by countless scholars trained by him who are tenured at prestigious colleges and universities, dare I say, throughout the entire English-speaking world, including Australia.
“And of course there is young Chauncey Edistow to remember and mourn, a scholar of great promise, our Wordsworthian, struck down literally before his time on a byway by a speeding motor car while undertaking, during his sabbatical, an important study of the relationship between the design of Wordsworth’s beloved garden at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, and the stanzaic structure of The Prelude--What dwelling shall receive me, in what vale/ Shall be my harbour, underneath what grove. He is now but a spot of time.
“And finally,” Dr. Greef proclaimed, signaling that he was reaching his peroration, a proclamation which also signaled to Lloyd that is was time for him to button his jacket and sit up straight, “we have one more member to recall.” In spite of himself, Lloyd had to admit that he was fascinated by these mini- quote-ladened eulogies while at the same time he wondered why he wanted to be tenured in a department where the mortality rate appeared to hover at about 15 percent per year--he had no idea sabbaticals could be so dangerous.
Dr. Greef pressed on, “We take a moment to recall [not “remember” Lloyd disrespectfully thought—he knew Professor Greef always chose his words with care and was taking great pains to distinguish between remembering and merely recalling] our talented [just talented? This promised to be interesting] Morris Lichtenstein, trained in Jerusalem [Ah yes, Lichtenstein from Israel] who was known for his idiosyncratic approach to Medieval texts. Controversial though this was, as was his life, we recall him fondly and regret his death.”
Two recalls, Zazlo noted, now wide awake, though old Professor Baliban was snoring away in the next row. And what was that about Lichtenstein’s idiosyncratic or controversial life? This was the English Department after all with enough idiosyncratic to share! All poor Lichtenstein got for his send off was unaccommodated death—not even a passing? And just a regret sans mourning? Further, why was not there not at least half a line, a phrase of text to recall him? Perhaps something from his beloved Middle English period—from, say, Everyman:
Our lyues and endynge shewes
How transytory we be all daye
This mater is wonders precyous
But the entent of it is more gracyous
And swete to bere awaye
That would work. But in the meantime, Zazlo, vowed to learn more about this seemingly intriguing Semite, whom he had never met. Perhaps he had died just before Lloyd was hired. To, maybe, keep things in balance? It was that kind of department.
To be continued . . .
In Part Two, Lloyd will find himself . . .
Before Lloyd knew it, it was May. Barely four weeks remained in the semester and he had nearly 200 papers to grade. No one could say that at $12,500 per year he was being overpaid. But he did have plans he was hardly looking forward to for the long summer—he needed to get something published if he was ever to get shifted onto the tenure track. Unless that were to occur, he would be doomed to a nomadic life of adjunct teaching, wandering among the colleges of the City University of New York, from Queens to the Bronx, but not of course back to Brooklyn, in search of a course here and a course there. In this way eking out a measly living. If you could even call it that.
That was a life that might even cause him to regret he had abandoned his plans to go to med school. He was reminded of this potential life of regret every time he saw his mother who would invariably take his hands in hers and, while stroking them gently and adoringly peering at them as if they were sacred objects, would say, “It’s not too late for medical school darling. You have surgeon’s hands.”
But instead, he vowed he would drag himself each day to the library up at Columbia and attempt to crank out a publishable paper for the Modern Language Association on, of course, the Prophetic Works of William Blake. If he could get enough of the latest hermeneutics worked into it or figure out how to approach the poems through a “gender lens,” he felt certain the readers, the referees, would find value there and agree to publish it, thus assuring that he would leapfrog over his junior colleagues who were still struggling to recover from the various traumas and humiliations associated with completing their doctoral dissertations.
So it was with these expectations, complicated and contradicted by feelings of an impending fate hanging over him that would upset them all, that Lloyd Zazlo found himself slouching in his tweeds (though it was May he had nothing more appropriate to wear that was of lighter weight), alone in the last row, at the final meeting of the year of the college’s nationally-ranked English Department. He sat there bathed in the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the streaky windows, as if illuminated by deep musical chords, in a minor key made visible.
This was the meeting at which the faculty traditionally debated and theoretically voted on changes in the curriculum (theoretically since that hadn’t happened in at least a decade); and, more commonly, they discussed and voted upon the creation of individual new courses. In truth this latter exercise was a virtual academic bazaar with the senior men (and men they were) shamelessly trading votes—I’ll approve your new elective on Pound if you’ll vote for mine on Milton. This was not something in which those not on a track toward tenure dared to participate. That was certain to prove fatal. So all Lloyd was expected to do, needed to do was be there as yet another way of showing deference, and to be sure not to fall asleep in the over-heated room.
In a halo of hair, professor and department chairman Hiram Greef taped the lecture table with his gavel and all conversation ceased as
if a shot had been fired. “We will begin,” he intoned because he always intoned even during casual conversations, “as we always do at this last meeting of the academic year with remembrances of colleagues who are no longer with us.” Lloyd wondered if at this very moment he was being remembered as no longer with them at Brooklyn College’s English Department’s equivalent final gathering. “Louis Steely,” Professor Greef continued, “our beloved Chaucerian passed in April, how appropriately the spring--Wham that April, with his shoures soote/ The droghte March hath perced to the roote. He will be remembered for his gentlemanly grace by all assembled here and by countless scholars trained by him who are tenured at prestigious colleges and universities, dare I say, throughout the entire English-speaking world, including Australia.
“And of course there is young Chauncey Edistow to remember and mourn, a scholar of great promise, our Wordsworthian, struck down literally before his time on a byway by a speeding motor car while undertaking, during his sabbatical, an important study of the relationship between the design of Wordsworth’s beloved garden at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, and the stanzaic structure of The Prelude--What dwelling shall receive me, in what vale/ Shall be my harbour, underneath what grove. He is now but a spot of time.
“And finally,” Dr. Greef proclaimed, signaling that he was reaching his peroration, a proclamation which also signaled to Lloyd that is was time for him to button his jacket and sit up straight, “we have one more member to recall.” In spite of himself, Lloyd had to admit that he was fascinated by these mini- quote-ladened eulogies while at the same time he wondered why he wanted to be tenured in a department where the mortality rate appeared to hover at about 15 percent per year--he had no idea sabbaticals could be so dangerous.
Dr. Greef pressed on, “We take a moment to recall [not “remember” Lloyd disrespectfully thought—he knew Professor Greef always chose his words with care and was taking great pains to distinguish between remembering and merely recalling] our talented [just talented? This promised to be interesting] Morris Lichtenstein, trained in Jerusalem [Ah yes, Lichtenstein from Israel] who was known for his idiosyncratic approach to Medieval texts. Controversial though this was, as was his life, we recall him fondly and regret his death.”
Two recalls, Zazlo noted, now wide awake, though old Professor Baliban was snoring away in the next row. And what was that about Lichtenstein’s idiosyncratic or controversial life? This was the English Department after all with enough idiosyncratic to share! All poor Lichtenstein got for his send off was unaccommodated death—not even a passing? And just a regret sans mourning? Further, why was not there not at least half a line, a phrase of text to recall him? Perhaps something from his beloved Middle English period—from, say, Everyman:
Our lyues and endynge shewes
How transytory we be all daye
This mater is wonders precyous
But the entent of it is more gracyous
And swete to bere awaye
That would work. But in the meantime, Zazlo, vowed to learn more about this seemingly intriguing Semite, whom he had never met. Perhaps he had died just before Lloyd was hired. To, maybe, keep things in balance? It was that kind of department.
To be continued . . .
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:49 AM
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