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Show Anting Alone Page 258 No, instead Sam got all kindly and bucked the guy up a little bit. (This Kansas place was so boring that Sam had to resort to jacking these sorts of guys off.) He regaled the dead hippy with a bona-fide Sambo sermon, inspired by the cool breeze generated by a new Moral Majority-type Reaganite marching briskly through the office with his green attache case - one of a new, incongruous breed of good Christian boys who are currently also invading sixth-rate English departments. Former junkies themselves, they are somehow able to reconcile their new religio-politics with the study of English lit: Chaucerian farts; Shakespearean cunts, etc., etc. More or less consciously in the homiletic style of Dr. Abraham, Sam now delivered a lecture on the One Unpardonable Sin, the 0. U. S.: r'Despair!" He waggled his big index finger in the ex-speedfreak's . sallow face and intoned, "Despair. You despair of ever writing again, therefore you consign youself without doubt to a professor's life: perdition. A writer is only not a writer if he stops writing -" "Hey, yea-a-ah," the dead fool murmured, taking a moment away from his crossword puzzle to stare down at his caved-in forearms. " - and as long as you write and send things out, you leave open the chance that you someday may get something published - which is immortality. Publico Ergo Sum. Remember our older colleagues' credo, remember that. Your perception (god, I hate that word now - perceive - don't you? It's been killed, huh?), your perception of your chances becomes greater than the present reality of these piddling are-jays. Your fantasies of Pulitzers and National Book Awards become your true, palpably real Heaven, here and now, even as you fling yourself up in front of your classroomsful of greedy |
