he had ever felt for his peers in the Senate. He became a vegetarian, grew a little beard, exchanged cap and gown for a wrapper of mohair, and lamented only that his years would not let him go on all fours. Though he never deigned to publish again in his life, his researches were at no time more bold and meticulous than during the first few years of this period. The goats, after all (to quote an entry from his diaries) “do not conceal in shame that aspect of their beauty I crave to fathom; serenely aware, after their fashion, that a perfect whole is the sum of perfect parts, they fly their flags high …” His one enemy among the bucks was an old brown Toggenburger called Freddie, tyrant of the herd, who, when he spied Max bent over to inspect any doe, would butt him, taking him for a rival. Max in turn was thus driven head-first against the subject of his examination, who thinking herself assaulted seldom felt again the same trust in her keeper. Such subversion of rapport between subject and investigator could not be permitted; just as vexing was the coincidence that the Chairman of New Tammany’s Speech Department, whose filibuster in the Senate had blocked passage of the Qualifying Anals bill and contributed to Spielman’s downfall, was named Fred. Max saw in this a sign, and took his vengeance. He dared not approach the Toggenburg openly, and so one October night when the bucks were bleating their lust as usual (none more loudly than treacherous Freddie), he arranged for a spry young nan to find her way into his enemy’s stall: some moments later, Max crept up behindwith a patent docker.
Zut
, the old rogue was clipped in mid-service, no joy in his windfall then! And all his fierceness withered; he grew fat and docile, never said a word when his keeper dehorned him a few weeks later. Of his trophies Max made the earlier into an amulet, of which more anon, the latter into a kind of shophars wherewith thenceforward he summoned the flock—and his studies proceeded without further trouble. Indeed, whether because they understood “after their fashion” that Freddie was undone and were grateful to his undoer, or because in goatdom the horn and testicle, irrespective of their bearer, command obeisance, the bucks gave place to Max ever after, and the does they capered to his tootle. The months that followed were perhaps his blissfullest: he founded the sciences of analogical proctoscopy and psychosymbolistic cosmography, developed the Rectimetric Index for “distinguishing, arithmetically and forever, the sheep from the goats,” and explored the faint initial insights of what was to become Spielman’s Law, his last and farthest-reaching contribution to man’s understanding of the University. That capstone on the temple of his genius, climax of his epic quest for Answers: how commonplace it sounds already, very nearly banal; and yet what dash, what vaulting insight! In three words Max Spielman synthesized all the fields which thitherto he’d browsed in brilliantly one by one—showed the “sphincter’s riddle” and the mystery of the University to be the same.
Ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny—
what is it but to say that proctoscopy repeats hagiography? That our Founder on Founder’s Hill and the rawest freshman on his first
mons veneris
are father and son? That my day, my year, my life, and the history of West Campus are wheels within wheels? “Ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny”—I cannot hear those words but in the gentle Moishian accents of my keeper. Well he knew, old Max, the fate of grand hypotheses, but hard experience had brought him unfairly to mistrust his colleagues’ wisdom, and his isolation kept him from final appreciation of WESCAC. For fifty years, he said, his theory of Cyclic Correspondence would be anathema on West Campus: not twenty had gone by before it was dogmatized by the Chancellor, taped by the Chief Programmer, and devoured by WESCAC.
He never could have prophesied his present
Zut
, the old rogue was clipped in mid-service, no joy in his windfall then! And all his fierceness withered; he grew fat and docile, never said a word when his keeper dehorned him a few weeks later. Of his trophies Max made the earlier into an amulet, of which more anon, the latter into a kind of shophars wherewith thenceforward he summoned the flock—and his studies proceeded without further trouble. Indeed, whether because they understood “after their fashion” that Freddie was undone and were grateful to his undoer, or because in goatdom the horn and testicle, irrespective of their bearer, command obeisance, the bucks gave place to Max ever after, and the does they capered to his tootle. The months that followed were perhaps his blissfullest: he founded the sciences of analogical proctoscopy and psychosymbolistic cosmography, developed the Rectimetric Index for “distinguishing, arithmetically and forever, the sheep from the goats,” and explored the faint initial insights of what was to become Spielman’s Law, his last and farthest-reaching contribution to man’s understanding of the University. That capstone on the temple of his genius, climax of his epic quest for Answers: how commonplace it sounds already, very nearly banal; and yet what dash, what vaulting insight! In three words Max Spielman synthesized all the fields which thitherto he’d browsed in brilliantly one by one—showed the “sphincter’s riddle” and the mystery of the University to be the same.
Ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny—
what is it but to say that proctoscopy repeats hagiography? That our Founder on Founder’s Hill and the rawest freshman on his first
mons veneris
are father and son? That my day, my year, my life, and the history of West Campus are wheels within wheels? “Ontogeny recapitulates cosmogeny”—I cannot hear those words but in the gentle Moishian accents of my keeper. Well he knew, old Max, the fate of grand hypotheses, but hard experience had brought him unfairly to mistrust his colleagues’ wisdom, and his isolation kept him from final appreciation of WESCAC. For fifty years, he said, his theory of Cyclic Correspondence would be anathema on West Campus: not twenty had gone by before it was dogmatized by the Chancellor, taped by the Chief Programmer, and devoured by WESCAC.
He never could have prophesied his present
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