did.”
“How did you decide what to do?” I asked. “To go into academia.”
“How did I decide? Well, I was passionate about it.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t imagine anything else.”
“I don’t think I feel that way. About Orwell.”
He nodded and then gave me an odd look, half fond, half shrewd. There was a sheaf of papers on the table between us, and he picked it up. “I’m glad. If you seemed right I was going to suggest—I’m the chair of the committee for a fellowship Balliol disburses.”
I realized I had been tricked. Or that was too ungenerous a word—appraised. I think I blushed. “What fellowship?”
“Doesn’t matter. Take the papers, if you like, there’s a chance you’ll want to stay here for another four years, but don’t, don’t do it for a fellowship or out of lassitude. Stay here for a year, see Europe, get an honorable second. God, but I envy you.”
I took the papers. It was funny; I envied him. I had looked at his CV online, nine books, two of which were still widely taught, and he wrote now for The Observer and The Times Literary Supplement. He had been a visiting professor in New York, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Cape Town. He had obviously fucked about ten thousand women. His achievements were behind him. When you’re young, people keep telling you how lucky you are to have all of your choices in front of you. I don’t doubt I’ll feel that way one day, too, but it’s an old person’s dream.
In truth, I arrived at Oxford feeling half like a failure. It was 2005 already. I had been out of college for more than three years, and time seemed to be running out the way it only can when you’re twenty-five, and armed to the teeth with it. I woke up in the middle of the night with a hollow feeling in my chest, panicked about what I would become. I had a friend making three million dollars a year at a hedge fund and another friend who had just been elected to the Rhode Island Senate. All I had was the Kerry campaign—and Alison, I would tell myself in the middle of the night, at least I had Alison.
There were times when I wished I could be done with all of what I was good at, books, reading, writing, speaking, thinking. Too much analysis, too quick a brain. Too many words. It was a kind of fever. Sometimes I thought I had the temperament of a scientist, just not the intelligence. I wanted to be a scientist in the age when good birth, a knack for organization, and a pleasure in careful labeling were enough—when you could simply record the time of the sunset and the sunrise, measure how long it took different types of flowers to bud, dig up bones, and make wildly inadequate conjectures about their origin: the whole time of civilization when the imponderables of life were broader and softer, before polymers, before relativity. It’s the wish of a stupid mind.
Jarvis and I talked about all of this. I stayed for three hours, two hours longer than I should have, two and a half longer than I intended. I kept thinking about the fellowship.
“We’ll have to do this again,” he said when at last I was going. “I mean it.”
“Thank you for inviting me. It’s easy enough to feel lost here.”
He shook his head. “No, within a week you’ll be at home. When does Fleet have its first bop?”
“Third Week, I think.”
“I went to one, you know. Anything but clothes was the theme, meaning you had to dress up in anything but clothes. There was a young woman in a tinfoil bikini, and there were a great deal of poorly fastened socks. About ten years ago, this would have been.”
I laughed. “Did you have fun?”
He thought for a moment. “At my age the beauty of these young people, the women, is a personal affront. They’re so very lovely, and too stupid to know it.” He smiled and opened the door. “Have fun. Come see me again in a month or two.”
* * *
As I walked back across the fields toward college, I called Alison.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Will! Hey!
“How did you decide what to do?” I asked. “To go into academia.”
“How did I decide? Well, I was passionate about it.” He shrugged. “Couldn’t imagine anything else.”
“I don’t think I feel that way. About Orwell.”
He nodded and then gave me an odd look, half fond, half shrewd. There was a sheaf of papers on the table between us, and he picked it up. “I’m glad. If you seemed right I was going to suggest—I’m the chair of the committee for a fellowship Balliol disburses.”
I realized I had been tricked. Or that was too ungenerous a word—appraised. I think I blushed. “What fellowship?”
“Doesn’t matter. Take the papers, if you like, there’s a chance you’ll want to stay here for another four years, but don’t, don’t do it for a fellowship or out of lassitude. Stay here for a year, see Europe, get an honorable second. God, but I envy you.”
I took the papers. It was funny; I envied him. I had looked at his CV online, nine books, two of which were still widely taught, and he wrote now for The Observer and The Times Literary Supplement. He had been a visiting professor in New York, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Cape Town. He had obviously fucked about ten thousand women. His achievements were behind him. When you’re young, people keep telling you how lucky you are to have all of your choices in front of you. I don’t doubt I’ll feel that way one day, too, but it’s an old person’s dream.
In truth, I arrived at Oxford feeling half like a failure. It was 2005 already. I had been out of college for more than three years, and time seemed to be running out the way it only can when you’re twenty-five, and armed to the teeth with it. I woke up in the middle of the night with a hollow feeling in my chest, panicked about what I would become. I had a friend making three million dollars a year at a hedge fund and another friend who had just been elected to the Rhode Island Senate. All I had was the Kerry campaign—and Alison, I would tell myself in the middle of the night, at least I had Alison.
There were times when I wished I could be done with all of what I was good at, books, reading, writing, speaking, thinking. Too much analysis, too quick a brain. Too many words. It was a kind of fever. Sometimes I thought I had the temperament of a scientist, just not the intelligence. I wanted to be a scientist in the age when good birth, a knack for organization, and a pleasure in careful labeling were enough—when you could simply record the time of the sunset and the sunrise, measure how long it took different types of flowers to bud, dig up bones, and make wildly inadequate conjectures about their origin: the whole time of civilization when the imponderables of life were broader and softer, before polymers, before relativity. It’s the wish of a stupid mind.
Jarvis and I talked about all of this. I stayed for three hours, two hours longer than I should have, two and a half longer than I intended. I kept thinking about the fellowship.
“We’ll have to do this again,” he said when at last I was going. “I mean it.”
“Thank you for inviting me. It’s easy enough to feel lost here.”
He shook his head. “No, within a week you’ll be at home. When does Fleet have its first bop?”
“Third Week, I think.”
“I went to one, you know. Anything but clothes was the theme, meaning you had to dress up in anything but clothes. There was a young woman in a tinfoil bikini, and there were a great deal of poorly fastened socks. About ten years ago, this would have been.”
I laughed. “Did you have fun?”
He thought for a moment. “At my age the beauty of these young people, the women, is a personal affront. They’re so very lovely, and too stupid to know it.” He smiled and opened the door. “Have fun. Come see me again in a month or two.”
* * *
As I walked back across the fields toward college, I called Alison.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Will! Hey!
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