Stoner полностью

"Very well," Stoner said. "I shall continue. As I said at the beginning of this hour, one purpose of this course is to study certain works of the period roughly between twelve and fifteen hundred. Certain accidents of history will stand in our way; there will be linguistic difficulties as well as philosophical, social as well as religious, theoretical as well as practical. Indeed, all of our past education will in some ways hinder us; for our habits of thinking about the nature of experience have determined our own expectations as radically as the habits of medieval man determined his. As a preliminary, let us examine some of those habits of mind under which medieval man lived and thought and wrote . . ."

That first meeting he did not keep the students for the entire hour. After less than half the period he brought his preliminary discussion to a close and gave them a weekend assignment.

"I should like for each of you to write a brief essay, no more than three pages, upon Aristotle's conception of the topoi--or, in its rather crude English translation, topic. You will find an extended discussion of the 'topic' in Book Two of The Rhetoric of Aristotle, and in Lane Cooper's edition there is an introductory essay that you will find most helpful. The essay will be due on--Monday. And that, I think, will be all for today."

For a moment after he dismissed the class he gazed at the students, who did not move, with some concern. Then he nodded briefly to them and walked out of the classroom, the brown folder under his arm.

On Monday fewer than half the students had finished their papers; he dismissed those who handed their essays in and spent the rest of the hour with the remaining students, rehearsing the subject he had assigned, going over it again and again, until he was sure they had it and could complete the assigned essay by Wednesday.

On Tuesday he noticed in the corridors of Jesse Hall, outside Lomax's office, a group of students; he recognized them as members of his first class. As he passed, the students turned away from him and looked at the floor or the ceiling or at the door of Lomax's office. He smiled to himself and went to his office and waited for the telephone call that he knew would come.

It came at two o'clock that afternoon. He picked up the phone, answered, and heard the voice of Lomax's secretary, icy and polite. "Professor Stoner? Professor Lomax would like you to see Professor Ehrhardt this afternoon, as soon as possible. Professor Ehrhardt will be expecting you."

"Will Lomax be there?" Stoner asked.

There was a shocked pause. The voice said uncertainly, "I --believe not--a previous appointment. But Professor Ehrhardt is empowered to--"

"You tell Lomax he ought to be there. You tell him I'll be in Ehrhardts office in ten minutes."

Joel Ehrhardt was a balding young man in his early thirties. He had been brought into the department three years before by Lomax; and when it was discovered that he was a pleasant and serious young man with no special talent and no gift for teaching, he had been put in charge of the freshman English program. His office was in a small enclosure at the far end of the large common room where twenty-odd young instructors had their desks, and Stoner had to walk the length of the room to get there. As he made his way among the desks, some of the instructors looked up at him, grinned openly, and watched his progress across the room. Stoner opened the door without knocking, went into the office, and sat down in the chair opposite Ehrhardt's desk. Lomax was not there.

"You wanted to see me?" Stoner asked.

Ehrhardt, who had a very fair skin, blushed slightly. He fixed a smile on his face, said enthusiastically, "It's good of you to drop by, Bill," and fumbled for a moment with a match, trying to light his pipe. It wouldn't draw properly. "This damned humidity," he said morosely. "It keeps the tobacco too wet."

"Lomax won't be here, I take it," Stoner said.

"No," Ehrhardt said, putting the pipe on his desk. "Actually, though, it was Professor Lomax who asked me to talk to you, so in a way"--he laughed nervously--"I'm really sort of a messenger boy."

"What message were you asked to deliver?" Stoner asked dryly.

"Well, as I understand it, there have been a few complaints. Students--you know." He shook his head commiseratingly. "Some of them seem to think--well, they don't really seem to understand what's going on in your eight o'clock class. Professor Lomax thought--well, actually, I suppose he's questioning the wisdom of approaching the problems of freshman composition through the--the study of--"

"Medieval language and literature," Stoner said.

"Yes," Ehrhardt said. "Actually, I think I understand what you're trying to do--shock them a bit, shake them up, try a new approach, get them to thinking. Right?"

Stoner nodded gravely. "There has been a great deal of talk in our freshman comp meetings lately about new methods, experimentation."