Looking for Class by Bruce Feiler

Author:Bruce Feiler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

“So what did you think of our little feud here tonight?”

Ian and I were carrying dishes into his gyp later that evening. He had taken off his camel-hair jacket and was wearing only a droopy black jumper with the logo of a British fencing society emblazoned on the chest. As he walked with dirty glasses in his hands, he would suddenly lunge forward every now and then and pretend to stab an invisible enemy.

“I think you’re all full of crap,” he said, parrying in my direction, pretending to riposte, and thrusting some leftover beer onto my sweater. “The problem with this place is not that we don’t have enough art, it’s that we have too much. We’ve all lost our balls. We’ve forgotten that underneath all the mind games and the gentle manners we’re all still animals.” He set down his glasses and grabbed his crotch for emphasis. “Aristotle said that all our thoughts, even our souls, begin in the deepest part of our bodies.”

“I suspect that most dons would rather discuss existential philosophy than animal instincts,” I said, turning back toward the room.

“Isn’t that the problem with the academy?” he said as he followed, happy at last to offer his undisclosed theory of education. “We’re all trapped in this bubble, removed from the rest of humanity.”

“Don’t look at me,” I said, even though he hadn’t. “I agree with you.”

“We’re just learning how to masturbate—intellectual masturbation. I learn how to argue, you learn how to argue, but neither of us learns anything from the other. That’s the problem with what Thaddeus was saying: here we only learn how to talk; we don’t learn how to touch.” He sat on the edge of his bed, ran his fingers through his hair. “In the end, we just go back to our rooms and wank off with our books….” He picked up a copy of Thomas Hobbes from his bed and threw it on the floor.

“Is something bothering you?” I asked.

“No,” he snapped. “Well, yes.” He lay down on his bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. I sat down in the one chair in the room that didn’t have a broken leg. “What happened to my passion?” he said. “I wanted to be great. I wanted to be famous, and brilliant, and beautiful, too. I’m already beautiful, I know.”

“Allow me to disagree—”

“But I’ve lost the rest. I used to have ideals. I believed in Plato and the higher good. I believed in virtue. ‘Virtue,’ Socrates said, ‘is aspiring to fine things and being able to achieve them.’ But I can’t believe that anymore. My girlfriend of two-and-a-half years leaves me for no reason. Louise Rogers won’t even respond to my letters. This place, with its books, is corrupting my mind. It’s telling me I have to be gentle, and soft, and kind. It’s telling me I have to be rational and ignore my body.”

He rolled to one side and propped his head on his elbow.

“Take this war thing. I’ve been listening to the radio recently—all the talk about midnight deadlines and lines in the sand.

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