IT WAS THE third week of classes, and Eph’s English 240 was well attended, maybe seventy students. Technically, his class was a lecture, but it was still small enough to allow for some give-and-take, which Eph valued. The students settled in, virtually all staring down at their phones.
Eph took a moment to mentally pinch himself. Devon days were long and languorous, and he floated from classes to one of the soaringly beautiful dining halls, then perhaps to the Faculty Club or the gym. Campus was a stunning idyll, bathed in intellect. Eph couldn’t imagine a place he’d rather be, even as he questioned whether he deserved to be there. For those inside the bubble, Devon was a reprieve from the ordinary, workaday lives of commuting and cubicles, or in Eph’s case, tractors. Tenure was immutable, impregnable security; but more than that, for Eph it was validation, an imprimatur that declared he had risen above his roots. Getting denied would likely mean starting again somewhere else, the stain of rejection following him. It was unthinkable.
He flashed back to his unlikely journey, from Coastal Alabama Community College to Samford University—also in Alabama—on a scholarship. (When he said, “Samford” quickly enough, he knew people at Devon thought he was saying “Stanford,” a misunderstanding he was content to let go unremarked.) From there he’d gained entry to the English Lit Ph.D. program at Florida State, skipping right over his master’s. After graduating at the top of his class, he submitted an application to Devon for an open assistant professorship in American Lit, his specialty. It was a shot in the dark. He was shocked when he got the call for an interview, and more shocked still when he got the job. He found out later that the Devon English Department felt the need, however temporarily, to reach beyond its usual pool of Northeastern Ivy League academics. That window seldom opened and he got lucky.
It was nine-thirty on the dot. Showtime. He jumped right in.
“Good morning. The Civil War marked a significant turning point in American literature. The Romantic Movement that dominated the first half of the century, with writers like Hawthorne, Emerson, and James Fenimore Cooper, yielded to something new, the Age of Realism. The backdrop was an America first feeling its industrial might, an America where anyone, it was thought, could rise up to become a Carnegie, Rockefeller, or Vanderbilt. It was Twain himself who coined it the ‘Gilded Age.’”
Eph began pacing back and forth, as was his habit on the academic stage. “There were critics, particularly from Britain, who said the Realists were nothing more than a derivative of English literature the likes of Dickens. I beg to differ. This new American literature was something different entirely: unbound, messy, and socially aware. There was no confusing Twain or others with any English writer. The precise turning point, if we’re forced to pick one, would be Walt Whitman’s ‘O Captain! My Captain!,’ an elegy for Lincoln, the man he admired above all. Whitman’s poetry was like nothing that came before—highly descriptive, bowing before no conventions of rhyme or cadence, a riotous chronicling of the passing American scene. It was a consciously radical attempt to create a uniquely American poetry.
“Perhaps this doesn’t seem like a big deal. I mean, who reads poetry today, right? In that time, though, poetry was easily the most read literary form. It ranked far above the novel in literary importance.”
Some movement by the classroom door distracted Eph for a moment. Someone was there, in the door’s small window, but the face vanished just as Eph looked over. Was that Toes?
“Uh, so while the Hawthornes and Emersons wrote of an idealized, naturalistic world—thus the term romanticism—these new writers, the Realists, wrote about the lives of everyday people, frequently using a regional patois, bringing to life vivid characters and exploring the human condition. The Romantics viewed nature as the primary channel through which self-reflection and self-realization could take place—think of Thoreau, out on his pond, striving to put into words the sound of one hand clapping—but later writers rejected this for tales of real people doing real things. Twain was the dominant force of this new realism. Hemingway would later say of Twain that all American literature can trace its roots to a single book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which we will read this week.”
He had them. They were absorbing his every word and feverishly taking notes. He thought briefly back to his time as a teaching assistant at Florida State, where the boys would spend class on espn.com while the girls surfed social sites. He realized he was thinking elitist thoughts, but weren’t there some things about which it was worth being elitist?
A girl in the front row raised her hand. She had round blue-tinted glasses and straight black hair that fell halfway to her waist. “I feel like this is all a very white perspective.”
“Well, I suppose you could say that,” answered Eph. “Most of the notable literature from the time was written by whites, although African-American literature began to flower in the very late part of the century when increased access to schooling led to higher literacy rates. I cover that period in a different class.”
The girl was undeterred. “I feel like it’s still kind of racist not to acknowledge the African-American community during the earlier periods.”
“Well, as we’ll see, they certainly were acknowledged, particularly by Twain, but there was little literature actually produced by African-Americans until later.”
“I feel like”—Eph began to sense a linguistic Groundhog Day—“I feel like this is an injustice. It upsets me.”
“The treatment of African-Americans certainly was an injustice,” Eph replied.
“Was?” A murmur spread through the class.
“Uh, was, and is, but for the purposes of this class, we’re going to confine ourselves to the nineteenth century, if that’s all right with everybody?”
There was some audible seat rustling, but no apparent objections.
“Your term paper will be due before you leave for winter break,” Eph continued. “I want you to compare and contrast a Romantic and a Realist. Choose one from each period. I want to see a deep dive. Twenty pages, give or take.” He waited for the groaning to commence, but there was none. Back at Coastal Alabama Community College, a twenty-page paper was unheard of, but this was Devon. It was expected.
After lunch at the Faculty Club (a delightful poached salmon served with fennel and a beurre blanc sauce), Eph walked back to his office, which, like his class, was in Grafton Hall. In the long hallway that bisected the building, he caught Toes emerging from a meeting room along with a few others. Toes’s prematurely gray hair was in the usual bun, which was pierced with what looked like a chopstick. Eph wondered what purpose that served.
“Eph, dude!”
“Hello, Barrett.”
Glancing through the door, Eph recognized one or two English Department colleagues as well as some professors from the Language Department. He tried hard to suppress his curiosity, not being inclined to give Toes the satisfaction of asking. He failed.
“What’s up in there? Plotting a literary coup of some sort?”
“Ha, no! This is our Esperanto working group. Some of us are trying to persuade the Devon Language Department to offer a course.”
“Aren’t there, like, five people in the world that speak Esperanto?”
“It might surprise you then to know there are over two million Esperantists worldwide.”
“You call yourselves Esperantists?”
“That’s right. Our goal is to make Esperanto the universal language, which we think will promote peace through better mutual understanding.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Say, are you interested in getting involved?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, but just you wait, my friend. Esperanto tranprenos la mondon!” Toes waited for Eph to ask for a translation, but the request was not forthcoming. “That means ‘Esperanto will take over the world.’”
“Okey-dokey.”
“All right, then. Peace, brother!” Toes’ shoes made a squishing noise on the marble floors as he walked away. Eph tried to find Toes annoying—well, he was annoying—but he was also relentlessly upbeat, which made him difficult to dislike. Much.
In his cramped office, Eph checked his email. The first one in his in-box was from a student.
Professor Russell, I am in your 19th Century American Lit class (which I love!) and I was wondering if I could come by your office to discuss my paper.
Eph didn’t recognize the name. It was still early in the semester and he’d only learned the names of the few who regularly spoke up. He proposed a time on Friday during office hours and got an almost immediate response.
Thank u. Can’t wait!
Can’t wait? For a faculty consult?
As a professor, Eph always liked it when students reached out. It usually meant they cared about the subject, at least enough to improve their grades. Many professors at Devon were content to lecture, but to Eph, teaching was all about the interplay between teacher and student.
He looked forward to meeting Miss Harris.