The Green Revolution by Ralph McInerny Page A

discoursed on the book he was reading. “The oddest memoir by Saul Bellow’s longtime agent. No sense of language at all. I mean the agent.”
    â€œWhat prompted you to read it?”
    â€œI loved Herzog . And Mr. Sammler’s Planet. ”
    â€œWhich has lately brought a charge of racial prejudice.”
    â€œAh, the ironies of liberalism.”
    Suddenly a compact man with a trimmed beard and a fierce look stood beside their table. “I must speak with you. Both of you. Lipschutz.” He thrust out his hand like a holdup man. “May I join you?”
    It seemed a rhetorical question, He took the chair on which Debbie had sat.
    â€œI want to enlist your support for a crusade,” Lipschutz announced. “This university has arrived at an historic moment. Our precedent will be the University of Chicago.”
    â€œI went to school there,” Otto said.
    â€œDid they still play football when you were there?”
    â€œI didn’t.”
    â€œI mean the university. Did it still have a team?”
    â€œI wasn’t aware they ever had one.”
    â€œExactly. They regained their soul, and doubtless you were one of the beneficiaries.”
    Lipschutz laid out the crusade he was embarked upon. The current collapse of Notre Dame football provided their golden opportunity. Like Augustine, Notre Dame had had to wallow in sin before redemption came. The time had come to follow Chicago’s lead and abandon football. Let the intrahall games go on, that was fine with Lipschutz, but all the blather about excellence demanded a consistent policy. What a statement Notre Dame could make if it abandoned varsity football because it intended to take its claim to academic excellence seriously.
    â€œDo you think that is realistic?”
    â€œI think it is idealistic! What do you think?”
    â€œIt’s an interesting idea.”
    â€œDo I have your support?”
    Later, when his and Otto’s names appeared on the list appended to Lipschutz’s proposal, Roger was never sure that either he or Otto had actually signed on to the crusade.

9
    Ever since his wife left him, Iggie Willis had been trying to reconcile two warring descriptions of himself. Life on the domestic front, and in the office, too, was undergoing a rocky period, no doubt of that, but nonetheless Ignatius Stephen Willis stood craggy and unbowed above the tumbling tide. Much as he liked that picture of himself, there was something to be said for Miriam’s portrait of him, a portrait to which she had given a final flourishing touch in the note he found when he had come home to an empty house three months before. “You are a selfish, thoughtless, pompous little man, and if you were tall enough to see into the mirror, you would know that. Good-bye!”
    A low blow, that, but who but a wife could know how touchy he was about his height? Let’s face it, he was just below five seven, and that was wearing shoes, slightly elevated shoes. Nonetheless, he had always been attracted to taller women. Miriam hadn’t been able to wear heels since they were engaged, at least not when they were together. Even then, she looked down at him and, over the years, looked down at him in several senses. What is more perilous than a credit card bill, especially when scrutinized by a wife with the instincts of a CPA?
    â€œThere are some bad charges on this, Ig.”
    â€œLet me see.”
    She had checked the two motel charges and one from a florist she had never heard of. Iggie had shaken his head.
    â€œI’ll have Pearl take care of it.”
    â€œPearl?”
    â€œIt’s one of the things she’s very good at. Besides, all it takes is a phone call and off the charges come.”
    â€œThen why can’t you make the call?”
    â€œWhat am I paying Pearl for?”
    A wiser man would have known better than to send his wife flowers the day after that close call; only an idiot would have used