by Erich Segal
ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY
September 22, 1954
Yesterday we had the stupid Harvard Step Test. Being in reasonable shape for soccer, I passed it with no sweat. (Or to be more accurate, a lot of sweat, but very little effort.) The only trouble came when “Colonel” Jackson made us reach over to feel the neck artery of the guy next to you, my neighbor was so slippery with perspiration that I couldn’t find his pulse. So when that Fascist character came by to write it down, I just made up a number that popped into my head.
When we got back to the dorm, the three of us reviewed this fairly degrading experience. We all agreed that the most undignified and unnecessary aspect was the damn posture picture just before the Step Test. Imagine, now Harvard has a personal file of everyone—or perhaps more accurately, every member of The Class—standing naked in front of the camera, ostensibly to test our posture. But probably so that when one of us becomes President of the United States, the phys. ed. department can pull out his picture and see what the leader of the greatest nation in the world looks like in the raw.
What really bugged Wiggles worth was that some thief could break into the LAB, filch our photographs, and sell them for a fortune.
“To whom?” I asked. “Who’d pay to see the pictures of a thousand naked Harvard freshmen?”
This gave him pause for thought. Who indeed would treasure such a portrait gallery? Some horny Wellesley girls, perhaps. Then something else occurred to me: do Cliffies have to take these pictures too?
Newall thought they did. And I conceived this great idea of sneaking into the Radcliffe gym to steal their pictures. What a show! Then we’d know what girls to concentrate our efforts on.
At first they really liked my plan. But then their courage sort of evanesced. And Newall argued that a “real man” should be able to find out empirically.
So much for bravery. I would have liked that midnight raid.
I think.
Study cards were due in at 5:00 P.M. on Thursday. This gave The Class of ’58 a little time to shop around and choose a balanced program. They’d need courses for their majors, some for distribution, and some perhaps for cultural enrichment. And, most important, a gut. At least one really easy course was absolutely necessary for those who were either preppies or pre-med.
For Ted Lambros, who was certain he’d be majoring in classics, the selection was fairly straightforward: Latin 2A, Horace and Catullus, and Nat. Sci. 4 with the pyrotechnic L. K. Nash, who regularly blew himself up several times a year.
Both as a gut and a requirement, he took Greek A, an introduction to the classical version of the language he had used since birth. After two semesters he would be able to read Homer in the original. And in the meantime, as a fourth course, he would read the famous epics in translation with John Finley, the legendary Eliot Professor of Greek Literature. “Hum 2,” as it was affectionately known, would provide stimulation, information, and, as everyone at Harvard knew, an easy grade.
Danny Rossi had already planned his schedule during his cross-country trek. Music 51, Analysis of Form, an unavoidable requirement for every major. But the rest would be pure joy. A survey of orchestral music from Haydn to Hindemith. Then, beginning German, to prepare him to conduct the Wagner operas. (He’d start Italian and French later.) And, of course, the college’s most popular and inspirational free ride—Hum 2.
He had wanted to take Walter Piston’s Composition Seminar, and had assumed that the great man would admit him even though Danny was a freshman and the class had mostly graduates. But Piston turned him down “for his own good.”
“Look,” the composer had explained, “the piece you handed in was charming. And I really didn’t have to see it. Gustave Landau’s letter was enough for me. But if I take you now, you might be in the paradoxical position of—how can I put it?—being able to sprint and not to walk. If it’s any consolation, when Leonard Bernstein was here we forced him to do his basic music ‘calisthenics’ just like you.”
“Okay,” Danny said with polite resignation. And as he left thought, I guess that was his way of saying my piece is pretty juvenile.
Freshmen who are preppies have a great advantage. Through their network of old graduates familiar with the Cambridge scene, they learn precisely what the courses are to take and which ones to avoid.
The Harris Tweed underground imparts to them the secret word that is the key to making good at Harvard: bullshit. The greater the opportunity for tossing the verbiage like so much salad (unimpeded by the need for such trivia as facts), the more likely the course would be a snap.
They also arrived at college well versed in the techniques of the essay question, and could pad their paragraphs with such useful phrases as “from a theoretical point of view,” or “upon first inspection we may seem to discern a certain attitude which may well survive even closer scrutiny,” and so forth. This sort of wind can sail you halfway through an hour test before you have to lay a single fact on paper.
But you can’t do that in math. So for God’s sake, man, stay away from science. Even though there’s a Nat. Sci. requirement for course distribution, take it in your sophomore year. By then you’ll have perfected your prose style so that you might even be able to argue that, from a certain point of view, two and two might just possibly equal five.
The program Andrew Eliot selected was a preppies dream. First, Soc. Rel. 1, because the name—Social Relations—was itself an invitation to throw bull. Then English 10, a survey from Chaucer to his cousin Tom. It was fairly rigorous but he’d read most of the stuff (at least in Hymarx outlines) in senior year at prep school.
His choice of Fine Arts 13 also showed astuteness. Not much reading, little taking down of notes. For it meant mostly watching slides. Moreover, the noon hour of its meeting and the semidarkness of its atmosphere were most conducive if one needed a short nap before lunch. Also, Newall pointed out, “As soon as we find girlfriends at the Cliffe, that auditorium will be the perfect spot for making out.”
There was no problem about his final course. It had to be Hum 2. In addition to its many other attractions, since the instructor held the chair endowed by Andrew’s ancestors, he looked upon Professor Finley as a sort of family retainer.
The night they handed in their study cards, Andrew, Wig, and Newell had a gin-and-tonic party to honor their official course commitment to self-betterment.
“So, Andy,” Dickie asked after his fourth, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
And Andrew answered, only half in jest, “Frankly, I don’t think I really want to grow up.”
ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY
October 5, 1954
The occasions that we thousand-odd will meet together as a class in our entire lifetime are extremely rare.
We gather three times while we are in college. First at the Freshman Convocation—sober, serious, and boring. Then at the notoriously gross Freshman Smoker—just the opposite. And, finally, after jumping all the necessary hurdles, one June morning four years hence when we’ll receive diplomas.
Otherwise, we go through Harvard on our own. They say our most important meeting is a quarter-century after we all graduate. That would be 1983—impossible to think that far away.
They also say that when we come back for our Twenty-fifth Reunion we’ll be feeling something vaguely like fraternity and solidarity. But for now, we’re much more like the animals on Noah’s Ark. I mean, I don’t think the lions had too much to chat about with the lambs. Or with the mice. That’s just about the way me and my roommates feel about some of the creatures that are on board with us for this four-year voyage. We live in different cabins and sit on different decks.
Anyway, we gathered all together as The Class of ’58 tonight in Sanders Theater. And it was pretty solemn.
I know Dr. Pusey isn’t everybody’s hero nowadays, but when he talked tonight about the university’s tradition of defending academic freedom, it was kind of moving.
He chose as an example A. Lawrence
Lowell, who at the beginning of this century succeeded my great-granddad as President of Harvard, Apparently, right after World War I, a lot of guys in Cambridge had flirtations with the Socialists and Communists—then preaching hot, new stuff. Lowell was under tremendous pressure to dismiss the lefties from the faculty.
Now, even guys as dim as I caught Pusey’s tacit parallel with Senator McCarthy’s unrelenting war on him when he quoted Lowell’s great defense of professors in the classroom being absolutely free to teach “the truth as they see it.”
You have to hand it to him. He’s demonstrated courage as Hemingway defined it, “grace under pressure.” And yet The Class of ’58 did not give him a standing ovation.
But something tells me that when we’re older and have seen more of the world, we’ll feel ashamed that we didn’t acknowledge Pusey’s bravery tonight.
“Where you going, Gilbert?”
“Where does it look like, D.D.? To breakfast, obviously.”
“Today?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Come on, Gilbert, you should know better. Don’t you realize it’s Yom Kippur?
“So?”
“Well, don’t you know what it is?”
“Of course, the Day of Atonement for Jews.”
“Gilbert, you should be fasting today,” his roommate admonished. “You talk as if you’re not Jewish.”
“Well, D.D., as a matter of fact, I’m not.”
“Don’t give me that. You’re as Jewish as I am.”
“On what evidence do you base that categorical statement?” Jason said good-humoredly.
“Well, to begin with, haven’t you noticed that Harvard always assigns Jews to the same rooms? Why else do you think they put you with me?”
“I wish I knew,” Jason said jocularly.
“Gilbert,” D.D persisted, “do you actually stand there and deny that you are of the Jewish faith?”
“Look, I know my grandfather was a Jew. But as far as faith is concerned, we belong to the local Unitarian church.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing,” D.D. retorted. “If Hitler were alive he’d still consider you a Jew.”
“Listen, David,” Jason answered, unperturbed, “in case you haven’t heard, that bastard’s been dead for several years now. Besides, this is America. You do recall that bit in the Bill of Rights about freedom of worship. In fact, the grandchild of a Jewish man can even have breakfast on Yom Kippur.”
But D.D. was far from conceding defeat.
“Gilbert, you should read Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay on Jewish identity. It would wake you up to your dilemma.”
“I didn’t realize that I had one, frankly.”
“Sartre says that someone’s Jewish if the world regards him a Jew. And that means, Jason, you can be a blond, eat bacon on Yom Kippur, wear your preppie clothes, play squash—it doesn’t change a thing. The world will still consider you a Jew.”
“Hey, look, so far, the only guy that’s ever given me grief on this whole business has been you, my friend.”
And yet Jason realized inwardly that what he’d just stated was not quite the truth. For had he not experienced a little “problem” vis-à-vis the Yale Admissions Office?
“Okay,” D.D. concluded as he buttoned up his coat, “if you want to go on living like an ostrich, it’s your privilege. But sooner or later you’ll learn.” And in parting, he added sarcastically, “Have a good breakfast.”
“Thanks,” Jason called cheerily, “and don’t forget to pray for me.”
The old man gazed at the wine-dark sea of students reverently awaiting his comments on Odysseus’ decision to sail homeward after ten years of breathless encounters with women, monsters, and monstrous women.
He was standing on the stage of Sanders Theater, the only Harvard building large enough—or indeed appropriate—to house the lectures of Professor John H. Finley, Jr., chosen by Olympus to convey the glory that was Greece to the hoi polloi of Cambridge. Indeed, such was his charismatic eloquence that many of the hundreds who entered Humanities 2 in September as philistines emerged by Christmas as passionate philhellenes.
Thus it was that on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 A M., fully one-quarter of the entire population of Harvard College gathered to hear the great man’s lectures on the Epic from Homer to Milton. Everyone seemed to have a favorite vantage point for viewing Finley. Andrew Eliot and Jason Gilbert preferred the balcony, Danny Rossi, killing two birds with one stone, would alter his position frequently since he wanted to master the acoustics of the hall, venue for Harvard’s major concerts and even the occasional visit by the Boston Symphony.
Ted Lambros always sat in the first row, lest he miss a single winged word. He had come to Harvard already wanting to major in Latin and Greek, but Finley’s survey endowed the prospect with mystical grandeur that filled him with euphoria as well as ethnic pride.
Today Finley was discussing Odysseus’ departure from the enchanted isle of the nymph Calypso, despite her passionate pleas and promises to grant him eternal life. “Imagine—” Finley breathed to his rapt auditors. He then paused while all wondered what he would ask them to conjure.
“Imagine our hero is offered an unending idyll with a nymph who will remain forever young. Yet, he forsakes it all to return to a poor island and a woman who, Calypso explicitly reminds him, is fast approaching middle age, which no cosmetic can embellish. A rare, tempting proposition, one cannot deny. But what is Odysseus’ reaction?”
He then paced back and forth, and recited without book, clearly translating from the Greek as he went along:
“Goddess, I know that everything you say is true and that clever Penelope is no match for your face and figure. But she is after all a mortal and you divine and ageless. Yet despite all this I yearn for home and for the day of my returning.”
He stopped pacing and walked slowly and deliberately to the edge of the stage.
“Here,” he said, at a whisper that was nonetheless audible in the farthest corner, “is the quintessential message of the Odyssey.…”
A thousand pencils poised in readiness to transcribe the crucial words to come.
“In, as it were, leaving an enchanted—and one must presume pleasantly tropical—isle to return to the cold winter winds of, shall we say, Brookline, Massachusetts, Odysseus forsakes immortality for—identity. In other words, the imperfections of the human state are outweighed by the glory of human love.”
There was a brief pause while the audience waited for Finley to draw breath before daring to do so themselves.
And then applause. Slowly the spell was broken as students marched out the various Sanders Theater exits. Ted Lambros was close to tears and felt he had to say something to the master. But it took him a few seconds to gather his courage. By this time, the nimble academic had donned his tan raincoat and fedora and had reached the tall arched gateway.
Ted approached him diffidently. As he did he was amazed that, on terra firma, this man of such great stature was actually of normal height.
“Sir, if you’ll permit me,” he began, “that was the most inspiring lecture I’ve ever heard. I mean, I’m just a freshman, but I’m going to major in classics, and I’ll bet you’ve made a thousand converts in there … uh, sir.”
He knew he was rambling gauchely, but Finley was accustomed to such reverential clumsiness. And in any case he was pleased.
“A freshman and already decided on the classics?” he inquired.
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your name?”
“Lambros, sir. Theodore Lambros, ’58.”
“Ah,” said Finley, “ ‘Theo-doros,’ gift of God, and ‘lampros’—a truly Pindaric name. One thinks of the famous verses in Phythian 8—Lampron phengos epestin andron, ‘radiant light that shines on men.’ Do come and see us for Wednesday tea at Eliot House, Mr. Lambros.”
Before Ted could even thank him, Finley turned on his heels and marched off into the October wind, reciting Pindar all the way.
He glanced quickly at his night table. It was just after 2:00 A M. From across the suite, he heard muffled sobbing and frightened cries of, “No, no!”
He leapt out of bed and rushed across to D.D.’s door, the source of all those tormented noises.
Knocking softly, Jason asked, “David, are you okay?”
The sobbing stopped abruptly and there was only silence. Jason knocked again and rephrased his question.
“Are you all right in there?”
Through the closed door came the curt response, “Go away, Gilbert. Leave me alone.” But it was in a strangely anguished tone of voice.
“Listen, D.D., if you don’t open up I’m going to break in.”
After a second he heard the scraping of a chair. A moment later the door opened a crack. And his roommate peeked out nervously. Jason could perceive that he had been at his desk studying.
“What do you want?” snapped D.D.
“I heard noises,” Jason replied. “I thought you were in some kind of pain.”
“I just fell asleep for a minute and had a sort of nightmare. It’s nothing. And I’d be grateful if you’d let me study.” He closed the door again.
Jason still would not retreat.
“Hey, listen, D.D., you don’t have to be pre-med to know that people can go nuts from not sleeping. Haven’t you studied enough for one night?”
The door opened again.
“Gilbert, I couldn’t possibly go to bed if I thought any of my competition were still awake studying. Chem. Twenty is the survival of the fittest.”
“I still think a little rest would make you fitter, David,” Jason said softly. “What was your nightmare, by the way?”
“You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“It’s silly,” D.D. laughed nervously, “but I dreamed that they handed out the bluebooks—and I didn’t understand the questions. Stupid, ha? Anyway, you can go to bed now, Jason. I’m perfectly okay.”