1974 by Francine Prose

Author:Francine Prose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-06-18T00:00:00+00:00

At that time, that was the case for me, and I wondered what Henry and Grace had told Tony.

The previous year, I’d had a boyfriend, Emmet, who was born in the South. I liked to think that I missed his accent more than anything else, but I knew that was one of those glib things I thought to protect myself from the complicated truth.

Tony said, “If guys aren’t from the South, they think the accent means you’re stupid. People liked me fine at Princeton. They thought I was funny. Especially the foreign students. Some of my fellow Americans didn’t think I was all that bright. My professors took personal pride in lifting up the hillbilly genius whiz kid. Teaching me to eat something besides grits and pork rinds gave them a warm, fuzzy feeling.

“Anyway, Princeton was like Disneyland compared to later, when I was at RAND, especially at the end. Doors slammed shut when I walked by. It got kind of Pavlovian. I’d say good morning and everyone stood and walked out of the room.”

“Sounds sort of like graduate school.” What did I even mean? My fellow students hadn’t tried to make me uncomfortable; they just did. And how could I compare my sad little bout of academic alienation with Tony’s having been frozen out by war profiteers disguised as statistical analysts? Asking a nun to translate dirty stories from Middle English was not the same as factoring the bulk price of Agent Orange into the projected budget of the defoliation campaign.

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