by David Lodge
Philip Swallow seems to go into shock after this episode. As the party boards the bus to return home he complains in Rodney Wainwright’s hearing of feeling feverish, and spends the entire journey with his eyes closed and an expression of suffering on his face, but Joy is silent and unsympathetic, sitting beside him with her own eyes inscrutable behind dark glasses. In the evening Philip does not come down to join the others, who, showered and changed into clean clothes, are gathering in the lobby to go off to a barbecue in Sam Singerman’s garden. Rodney hears Joy telling Morris Zapp that Philip has a temperature. “Heat stroke, I wouldn’t be surprised,” he says, “It sure was hot as hell out there. Too bad he’ll miss the barbecue. You wanna come on your own?” “Why not?” says Joy. Morris Zapp catches Rodney Wainwright’s eye as he hovers a few yards away. “You coming, Wainwright?” Rodney gives a sickly grin: “No, I think I’ll stay in and look over my paper for tomorrow.”
All two and three-quarter pages of it, he thinks bitterly, going off to the elevator, Schadenfreude at Philip Swallow’s discomfiture and indisposition overshadowed by his own approaching ordeal. Tonight is the night. Make or break. Finish the paper or bust. He lets himself into his room and turns on the desk lamp. He takes out his three dogeared, sweat-stained pages of typescript and reads them through for the ninety-fourth time. They are good pages. The prolegomena moves smoothly, confidently, to define the point at issue. “The question is, therefore, how can literary criticism…” Then there is nothing: blank page, white space—or a black hole which seems to have swallowed up his capacity for constructive thought.
The trouble is that Rodney Wainwright’s imaginative projection of himself stepping up to the lectern the next morning with only two and three-quarter pages of typescript to last him for fifty minutes, is so vivid, so particular in every psychosomatic symptom of terror, that it hypnotizes him, it paralyses thought, it renders him less capable than ever of continuing with the composition of his paper. He sees himself pausing at the end of his two and three-quarter pages, taking a sip of water, looking at his audience, their faces upturned patiently, expectantly, curiously, restlessly, impatiently, angrily, pityingly…
In desperation, he helps himself to an extravagantly priced miniature bottle of whisky from the refrigerator in his room, and thus stimulated, begins to write something, anything, using a blue ballpen and sheets of Hilton notepaper. Fuelled by more miniatures, of gin, vodka, and cognac, his hand flies across the page with a will of its own. He begins to feel more optimistic. He chuckles to himself, twisting the tops off miniatures of Benedictine, Cointreau, Drambuie, with one hand, while the other writes on. He hears Joy Simpson return from the barbecue and let herself into the nextdoor room. He breaks off from composition for a moment to press his ear against the party wall. Silence. “No shagging tonight, eh, sport?” he shouts hilariously at the wall, as he staggers back to his desk, and snatches up a fresh sheet of paper.
Rodney Wainwright wakes in the morning to find his throbbing head reposing on top of the desk amid a litter of empty miniatures and sheets of paper covered with illegible gibberish. He sweeps the bottles and the paper into the waste basket. He showers, shaves, and dresses carefully, in his lightweight suit, a clean shirt, and tie. Then he kneels down beside his bed and prays. It is the only resource left to him now. He needs a miracle: the inspiration to extemporize a lecture on the Future of Criticism for forty-five of the fifty minutes allocated to him. Rodney Wainwright, never a deeply religious man, who has not in fact raised his mind and heart to God since he was nine, kneels in the holy city of Jerusalem, and prays, diplomatically, to Jehovah, Allah and Jesus Christ, to save him from disgrace and ruin.
The lecture is due to begin at 9:30. At 9:25, Rodney presents himself in the conference room. Outwardly he appears calm. The only sign of the stress within is that he cannot stop smiling. People remark on how cheerful he looks. He shakes his head and smiles, smiles. His cheek muscles are aching from the strain, but he cannot relax them. Morris Zapp, who is to chair his lecture, is anxiously conferring with Joy Simpson. Philip Swallow is apparently worse—his temperature won’t go down, he has pains in his joints, and is gasping for breath. She has called a doctor to see him. Morris Zapp nods sympathetically, frowning, concerned. Rodney, overhearing this intelligence, beams at them both. They stare back at him. “I’m going back to our room to see if the doctor has come,” says Joy.
“Right, let’s get this show on the road,” says Morris to Rodney.
Rodney sits grinning at the audience while Morris Zapp introduces him. Still smiling broadly, he takes his three typewritten pages to the lectern, smooths them down and squares them off. With lips curled in an expression of barely suppressed mirth, he begins to speak. The audience, inferring from his countenance that his discourse is supposed to be witty, titter politely. Rodney turns over to page three, and glimpses the abyss of white space at the foot of it. His smile stretches a millimetre wider.
At that moment there is a disturbance at the back of the room. Rodney Wainwright glances up from his script: Joy Simpson has returned, and is in whispered consultation with Sam Singerman in the back row. Other heads in their vicinity are turned, and talking to each other, wearing worried expressions. Rodney Wainwright falters in his delivery, goes back to the beginning of the sentence—his last sentence. “The question is, therefore, how can literary criticism…” The hum of conversation in the audience swells. A few people are leaving the room. Rodney stops and looks enquiringly at Morris Zapp, who frowns and raps on the table with his pen.
“Could we please have some quiet in the audience so that Dr. Wainwright can continue with his paper?”
Sam Singerman stands up in the back row. “I’m sorry, Morris, but we’ve had some rather disturbing information. It seems that Philip Swallow has suspected Legionnaire’s Disease.”
Somewhere in the audience a woman screams and faints. Everyone else is on their feet, pale, aghast, tightlipped with fear, or shouting for attention. Legionnaire’s Disease! That dreaded and mysterious plague, still not fully understood by the medical profession, that struck down a congress of the American Legion at the Bellevue Stratford hotel in Philadelphia three years ago, killing one in six of its victims. It is what every conferee these days secretly fears, it is the VD of conference-going, the wages of sin, retribution for all that travelling away from home and duty, staying in swanky hotels, ego-tripping, partying, generally overindulging. Legionnaire’s Disease!
“I don’t know about anyone else,” says Howard Ringbaum, in the front row, “but I’m checking out of this hotel right now. Come on, Thelma.”
Thelma Ringbaum does not stir, but everybody else does—indeed there is something of a stampede to the exit. Morris turns to Rodney and spreads his hands apologetically. “It looks like we’ll have to abandon the lecture. I’m very sorry.”
“It can’t be helped,” says Rodney Wainwright, who has at last been able to stop smiling.
“It must be really disappointing, after all the work you’ve put into it.”
“Oh well,” says Rodney, with a philosophical shrug of his shoulders.
“We could try and fix another time later today,” says Morris Zapp, taking out a fat cigar and lighting it, “but somehow I think this is curtains for the conference.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” says Rodney, slipping his three typewritten sheets back into their file cover.
Thelma Ringbaum comes up to the platform. “Do you think it’s really Legionnaire’s Disease, Morris?” she asks anxiously.
“No, I think that it’s heat-stroke and the doctor’s being paid by the Sheraton,” says Morris Zapp. Thelma Ringbaum stares at him in wonder, then giggles. “Oh, Morris,” she says, “You make a joke of everything. But aren’t you a teeny bit worried?”
“A man who has been through what I’ve been through recently has no room left for fear,” says Morris Zapp, with a flourish of his cigar.
This doesn’t seem to be true of the rest of the conferees, ho
wever. Within an hour, most of them are in the hotel lobby with their bags packed, waiting for a bus that has been hired to take them to Tel Aviv, where they will catch their return flights. Rodney Wainwright mingles with the throng, receiving their condolences for having had his lecture interrupted. “Oh well,” he says, shrugging his shoulders philosophically. “What about Philip?” he overhears Morris Zapp asking Joy Simpson, who also has her bags packed. “Who’s going to look after him?”
“I can’t risk staying,” she says. “I have to think of my children.”
“You’re just abandoning him?” says Morris Zapp, his eyebrows arched above his cigar.
“No, I phoned his wife. She’s flying out by the next plane.”
Morris Zapp’s eyebrows arch even higher. “Hilary? Was that a good idea?”
“It was Philip’s idea,” says Joy Simpson. “He asked me to phone her. So I did.”
Morris Zapp carefully inspects the end of his cigar. “I see,” he says at length.
Immediately, there is another diversion (it is only eleven a.m., but already it is easily the most eventful day of Rodney Wainwright’s life). A tall, athletic young man, with a mop of red, curly hair, a round freckled face and a snub nose peeling from sunburn, wearing dusty blue jeans and carrying a canvas sports bag, comes into the Hilton lobby under the disapproving stare of the doorman, and greets Morris Zapp.
“Percy!” Morris exclaims, grasping the newcomer by his shoulders and giving him a welcoming shake. “How are you? What are you doing in Jerusalem? You’re just too late for the conference, Philip Swallow has caught the Black Death and we’re all running away.”
The young man looks round the lobby. “Is Angelica here?”
“Al Pabst? No, she isn’t. Why?”
The young man’s shoulders slump. “Oh, Jaysus, I was sure I’d find her here.”
“She never signed up for this conference, as far as I know.”
“It must be the only one, then,” says the young man bitterly. “I’ve pursued that girl around the world from one country to another. Europe, America, Asia. I’ve spent all my savings and had my American Express card withdrawn for non-payment of arrears. I had to work my passage from Hong Kong to Aden, and hitchhiked across the desert and nearly died of thirst. And never a sight nor sound of her have I had since she gave me the slip at Rummidge.”
Morris Zapp sucks on his cigar. “I didn’t realize you were so interested in the girl,” he says. “Why don’t you just write to her?”
“Because nobody knows where she lives! She’s always moving on from one conference to another.”
Morris Zapp ponders. “Don’t despair, Percy. I’ll tell you what to do: come to the next MLA. Anybody who’s a conference freak is sure to be at the MLA.”
“When is that?”
“December. In New York.”
“Jaysus,” wails the young man. “Must I wait that long?”
Rodney Wainwright leans forward and touches him on the arm. “Excuse me, young man,” he says, “but would you mind very much not taking the Lord’s name in vain?”
…
At the University of Darlington, it is deep summer vacation. The campus is largely deserted. The lecture rooms are silent save for the flies that buzz at the windows; the common rooms and corridors are empty and eerily clean. The rooms of the faculty are locked, and in the Departmental offices underemployed secretaries knit and gossip and bluetack to the walls brightly coloured picture postcards sent to them from Cornwall or Corfu by their more fortunate friends. Only in the Computer Centre has nothing changed since the summer term ended and the vacation began. There sit the two men in their familiar attitudes, like cat and mouse, spider and fly, the one crouched over his computer console, the other watching from his glass cubicle, his hand moving rhythmically from a bag of potato chips to his mouth and back again.
Robin Dempsey seems to have grown old in his swivel seat—Persse McGarrigle would scarcely recognize the thickset, broadshouldered, vigorous man who had accosted him at the Rummidge sherry party. These shoulders are hunched now, the blue suit hangs limply from them over a wasted torso, the jaw sags rather than thrusts, and the small eyes seem even smaller, set even closer together, than before. The atmosphere is charged. There is a tension in the room, like static electricity, a sense of things moving to a crisis. The only sounds are the tapping of Robin Dempsey’s fingers on the keyboard of his computer terminal, and the crunching of Josh Collins’s potato chips.
Josh Collins screws up the empty bag and tosses it into the waste basket, without taking his eyes off Robin Dempsey. Now there is only one sound in the room. Very quietly, stealthily, Josh Collins leaves his glass cubicle and tiptoes towards the hunched, frenziedly typing figure of Robin Dempsey. Robin Dempsey suddenly stops typing, and Josh Collins freezes in unison, but he is close enough to read what is printed on the screen:
I CAN’T GO ON LIKE THIS I’M OBSESSED WITH PHILIP SWALLOW MORNING NOON AND NIGHT ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT IS HIM GETTING THE UNESCO CHAIR I CAN’T BEAR THE THOUGHT OF IT BUT I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT THE WHOLE WORLD SEEMS TO CONSPIRE AGAINST ME IF I FORGET HIM FOR A MOMENT I’M SURE TO OPEN A JOURNAL AND SEE SOME SYCOPHANTIC REVIEW OF HIS BLOODY BOOK OR AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR IT FULL OF QUOTATIONS SAYING IT’S THE GREATEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD AND THIS MORNING I GOT A LETTER FROM MY SON DESMOND HE’S IN ISRAEL WORKING ON A KIBBUTZ HE SAID MATTHEW SWALLOW THAT’S SWALLOW’S BOY IS OUT HERE WITH ME YESTERDAY HE MET HIS DAD WITH HIS ARM ROUND A GOOD-LOOKING BLONDE BIRD HE WAS AT SOME CONFERENCE IN JERUSALEM AT LEAST THAT WAS HIS STORY YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN SWALLOW IS HAVING IT ALL WAYS SEX AND FAME AND FOREIGN TRAVEL ITS NOT FAIR I CAN’T STAND IT I’M GOING CRAZY WHAT SHALL I DO
Robin Dempsey pauses, hesitates for a moment, then presses the query key:
?
Instantly ELIZA replies:
SHOOT YOURSELF.
Robin Dempsey stares, gapes, trembles, whimpers, covers his face with his hands. Then he hears from behind him a snigger, a splutter of suppressed laughter, and swivels round on his seat to find Josh Collins grinning at him. Robin Dempsey looks from the grinning face to the computer’s screen, and back again.
“You—” he says in a choked voice.
“Just a little joke,” says Josh Collins, raising his hands in a pacifying gesture.
“You’ve been tampering with ELIZA,” says Robin Dempsey getting slowly to his feet.
“Now, now,” says Josh Collins, backing away. “Keep calm.”
“You made ELIZA say Swallow would get the UNESCO chair.”
“You provoked me,” says Josh Collins. “It’s your own fault.”
With a cry of rage, Robin Dempsey hurls himself upon Josh Collins. The two men grapple with each other, lurching round the room and banging into the equipment. They fall to the ground and roll across the floor, shouting and screaming abuse. One of the machines, jolted by a flying elbow or knee, stutters into life and begins to disgorge reams of printout which unfurls itself and becomes entangled in the wrestlers’ flailing limbs. The printout consists of one word, endlessly repeated:
ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR
PART V
1
The Modern Language Association of America is not, to British ears at any rate, a very appropriately named organization. It is as concerned with literature as with language, and with English as well as with those Continental European languages conventionally designated “modern.” Indeed, making up by far the largest single group in the membership of the MLA are teachers of English and American literature in colleges and universities. The MLA is a professional association, which has some influence over conditions of employment, recruitment, curriculum development, etc., in American higher education. It also publishes a fat quarterly, closely printed in double columns, devoted
to scholarly research, known as PMLA, and a widely-used annual bibliography of work published in book or periodical form in all of the many subject areas that come within its purview. But to its members the MLA is best known, and loved, or hated, for its annual convention. Indeed, if you pronounce the acronym “MLA” to an American academic, he will naturally assume that you are referring not to the Association as such, nor to its journal or its bibliography, but to its convention. This is always held over three days in the week between Christmas and New Year, either in New York or in some other big American city. The participants are mostly, but not exclusively American, since the Association has funds to bring distinguished foreign scholars and creative writers to take part, and less distinguished ones can sometimes persuade their own universities to pay their fares, or may be spending the year in the United States anyway. In recent years the average attendance at this event has been around ten thousand.
The MLA is the Big Daddy of conferences. A megaconference. A three-ring circus of the literary intelligentsia. This year it is meeting in New York, in two adjacent skyscraper hotels, the Hilton and the Americana, which, enormous as they are, cannot actually sleep all the delegates, who spill over into neighbouring hotels, or beg accommodation from their friends in the big city. Imagine ten thousand highly-educated, articulate, ambitious, competitive men and women converging on mid-Manhattan on the 27th of December, to meet and to lecture and to question and to discuss and to gossip and to plot and to philander and to party and to hire or be hired. For the MLA is a market as well as a circus, it is a place where young scholars fresh from graduate school look hopefully for their first jobs, and more seasoned academics sniff the air for better ones. The bedrooms of the Hilton and the Americana are the scene not only of rest and dalliance but of hard bargaining and rigorous interviewing, as chairmen of departments from every state in the Union, from Texas to Maine, from the Carolinas to California, strive to fill the vacancies on their faculty rolls with the best talent available. In the present acute job shortage, it’s a buyer’s market, and some of these chairmen have such long lists of candidates to interview that they never get outside their hotel rooms for the duration of the convention. For them and for the desperate candidates kicking their heels and smoking in the corridors, waiting their turn to be scrutinized, the MLA is no kind of fun; but for the rest of the members it’s a ball, especially if you like listening to lectures and panel discussions on every conceivable literary subject from “Readability and Reliability in the Epistolary Novel of England, France and Germany” to “Death, Resurrection and Redemption in the Works of Pirandello,” from “Old English Riddles” to “Faulkner Concordances,” from “Rationalismus und Irrationalismus im 18. Jahrhundert” to “Nueva Narrativa Hispanoamericana,” from “Lesbian-Feminist Teaching and Learning” to “Problems of Cultural Distortion in Translating Expletives in the work of Cortazar, Sender, Baudelaire and Flaubert.”