Taking an English Department course here at Dartmouth is always a source of joy and scholastic wonder for me. I come away each time with an augmented understanding of the universe, Roland Barthes, and -- yes, I will dare to say it, though with a tear in my eye -- myself. But I realized recently that many people do not know of these esoteric pleasures, having ceased their education in literature after English 5 (course title: "What is a Verb?"). Thus, what follows is an average lecture from an average English course. The professor is standing before an attentive audience of between 15 and 130 people, addressing the students with a professional air and chalk-stained clothing. The topic at hand is a famous or little-known piece of literature, postmodern or 19th century, pop trash or critically acclaimed. The professor has read it 71 times.
PROFESSOR: All right, is everyone settled? Before I begin today's lecture -- I'm sorry, discussion -- I'd like to mention how disappointed I am that no one took advantage of my office hours yesterday. I must have sat there for hours reading People magazine and occasionally being forced to talk to one of my colleagues who cannot figure out how to operate the copy machine. I'd like to reiterate to you that my office hours have specifically been set aside for you. I will do nothing else during those hours, you understand. By the way, your exams from last month have not yet been graded, but I should get to them soon.
In any case, to the work we're discussing. I hope you've gotten to the end by now, but if you haven't, the dog dies and he gets married. Let me tell you, I have read this book 71 times now, and each time that I read it I get something new out of the text. I think about this book late at night and I can't get to sleep. It's amazing, really, how this one book can mean so much on so many different levels. This book is so exquisitely wonderful that I'd like to tear it apart for you. I think you'll find it useful to deconstruct the text through both a Marxist and Fascist lens; you'll uncover interpretations that the author never even dreamed of. I want to start by asking you a question, though: is the protagonist God? Yes?
STUDENT 1: First, I'd like to question the validity of your question and challenge its pre-colonial precepts. If by "God" you mean in a broad sense Buddha, Mahomet, Zeus, Yahweh, Jehovah, God, maybe God and no God, then perhaps your question can begin to be answered. So I'd --
PROFESSOR: Thank you, that's an interesting way of looking at the issue. But what is the meaning behind the text? That's a rhetorical question. I'd like to move the discussion on to a different point. What we need to examine is this: is the text polyvalent? Does it contain, in a sense, polyvalence? When the book is examined polyvalently, are there polyvalent polyvalences that become polyvalent? I'd like to open this up to the floor.
STUDENT 2: In biology class today, we watched a video, and I saw a lady's boobies.
PROFESSOR: I think that points at an angle of this text that is often overlooked, and that is the area of neoclassicist feminist theory. Let me offer this query to the class. Does the protagonist work against social constraints and become an Everywoman, so to speak, a distaff-gendered Proteus? In fact, don't answer that. I don't think you'll know how. But I can tell you later, during office hours. See me.
Let's make a closer examination of the language of the piece. Oh, I can't begin to describe the linguistic gymnastics that the author has performed that you will never understand or appreciate. It reminds me of a trip I took to London in 1983 -- you've all been to London, haven't you? -- to the West End, when I personally saw the great Sir Siegfried Bumbershoot tread the boards in "The Importance of Acting Stuffy," when he uttered the closing line with a cadence I shall never forget. But, let us not stray from the issue at hand. Who can tell me what a signifying monkey is?
STUDENT WHO'S ALWAYS WRONG: Well, see, the protagonist is made to suffer inhuman conditions, almost treated like an animal, and so the protagonist signifies a regression in evolution to the monkey.
PROFESSOR: No, I'm sorry. Your viewpoint is completely valid, but it's wrong. There were many other points that I was going to touch on, including the importance of love and truth in the piece, but I'm not going to. In the interest of closing up the discussion of this text, we should be asking ourselves about a few basic issues, such as: what is the role of sex in this novel? Can the protagonist's promiscuous sex be representative of God? And is the sex polyvalent? Does my British accent alarm you?
It will be helpful to you, in writing your papers, to bear in mind Lessing's "The Four-Gated City" and Hawthorne's "Natty Bumppo Pisses on an Elm" and their major themes and how they relate marginally to this text. Are they universal? Can anything be universal, excluding the universe? And, in closing, I am not based on any professor or a composite of professors at Dartmouth College. Read my hardcover book before the next class.
