Stillness & Shadows by John Gardner (accelerated reader books TXT) 📕

or three official-looking letters, meticulously stacked, ball-point pen, small appointment calendar still on yesterday’s date, October 13, every hour on it filled in up to 7 P.M., where someone had scrawled—no doubt Davies himself —club meeting. Odd, if his schedule was so busy, that he hadn’t turned the page, Craine mused. Odd that there was no one out there waiting to get in. No doubt some days were busier than others, he thought. He glanced at his watch, then checked the clock on the wall. They agreed, half past eleven. That too seemed odd, though he couldn’t think why.

“It’s a shame what Ira does at the computer center,” Professor Davies said. “I’m afraid he’s been working on concordances. You’ll say it’s a terrible waste of time for a man with a talent like Ira’s, and I guess I’d agree with you, but universities are peculiar places, not always enlightened. Tenure committees—” He gave a little shrug, glanced at Craine, then looked back out the window. “Ira can be difficult. I don’t say I blame him, I’m just telling you the facts. He refuses to write critical articles or work on a scholarly book—those are the kinds of things tenure committees like—not that such things are beyond his capabilities; he’s an excellent teacher, a really brilliant critic—at least that’s the report I get. I could show you his files. But he ‘prefers not to,’ as Bartleby would say.” He glanced at Craine. “Bartleby the Scrivener—story by Melville.”

Craine waited.

Professor Davies looked down. “Never mind. As I say, he won’t do what the committee wants, though he could if he would. With a little arm-twisting—on my part, mostly—he was persuaded to begin a computer concordance. That, it seems, doesn’t too much interfere with the flow of his poetic spirit.” He studied the pencil, which he held now by the point and the eraser, between his two index fingers. His smile was slightly rueful, perhaps apologetic, aware that he’d let a touch of irony creep in. “It’s turned out very strangely, I must say. An extremely self-destructive young man. But that’s not relevant just now.”

Craine waved his pipe, stopping him. “What do you mean, ‘strangely,’ ” he said.

Davies cleared his throat, sorry he’d brought it up. “Well you see,” he said, “the original idea—my idea, that is—was relatively simple. Do a concordance, a kind of word list or index with line numbers, and so on—of the work of some relatively important modern poet—Ashbery, Ammons, Anne Sexton, or whoever—bring it out through some respectable university press … It might be bullshit, granted, but it’s the kind of thing university committees understand. That’s what I thought he was doing all this time, but it seems I was mistaken.” He sighed, then again glanced at Craine and smiled. “He’s been doing—or trying to do—a concordance of all ‘serious’ American poetry published since January 1970.”

Craine thought about it. Hundreds of books and magazines? Thousands? Tentatively, he said, “That’s insane.”

Davies smiled, meeting his eyes. “You’re telling me!” He came back to the desk, put the pencil down, and laid his hand on the back of the desk chair, as if thinking of sitting down. “But they love him over at the computer center. Not just because of the programmer time, or the absolutely incredible budget for printout. They like the idea. Philosophically.”

Craine puffed at his pipe, trying to get it going, and waited for Davies to explain.

“You see, what they’re after—Ira Katz and his mad mathematical friends—is a picture of the whole American reality, that is, mental reality. If you assume we don’t live in the world but only in the world as we have words for it—”

Craine raised his pipe. “I see,” he said. A tingle went through his brain.

Davies nodded. “No doubt it’s a wonderful idea; I’m no philosopher. But I can tell you one thing: it will never get him tenure. Ten years—more like fifty—maybe by then he’d get something he could publish. Meanwhile, he’ll be long gone from here. Don’t think he doesn’t know it.”

Craine nodded, thoughtful. “I take it you’ve got some idea why he’s doing it.”

Davies nodded. “I think so. Partly, of course, it’s because he believes it’s a good idea, maybe a brilliant idea. One should never underestimate the seriousness of these young intellectuals. Tenure’s the least of what they’ll sacrifice in the name of their convictions. He’s a poet, after all. Poets—even relatively bad ones, and Ira’s not that, I think—poets have an almost frightening tenacity, not unlike hard scientists or mathematicians. They’ll work days, weeks, months to get one small detail just right by their own private judgment.”

“Autumn, clear as the eyes of chickens,” Craine said.

Davies glanced at him, decided to let it pass. “Yes, something like that,” he said. “Everything in a poem—rhymes, rhythms, line breaks, every slightest little technical trifle—aims at one single thing, saying exactly and precisely what you mean, intellectually and emotionally. Choose a slightly wrong word, let in the slightest distracting assonance, even indent a given line too far, and you change the whole meaning—disastrously! Believe me, it takes a madman—I mean in Plato’s sense—to write poetry. What I’m saying may not hold for every poet—I’d say it doesn’t hold for Robert Duncan, for instance—well-known poet in San Francisco—but it’s true, I think, for Ira Katz and for many others like him. He gets an intuition and he follows it out; nothing on earth can stop him, all ordinary human considerations are forgotten—family considerations, anything you can name—he follows it out with the ferocious concentration of a maniac, or a cat at a mouse hole, follows it till he gets it—or it kills him.”

“You admire him a good deal,” Craine said.

“I envy the son of a bitch, that’s the truth of it.” He did not smile. “So anyway, put a mind like that on this crazy computer idea and you can predict what will happen.” Now he did smile, shaking his head. “And then, of course, there’s the social-psychological component.”

Craine waited.

“It’s a natural alliance, poet