Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever by Kirn Walter

Author:Kirn, Walter [Kirn, Walter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: United States, Walter - Childhood and Youth, Autobiography, Students, Students - United States, 20th Century, Personal Memoirs, 21st Century, General, Literary, American - 20th Century, American, Literary Criticism, Kirn, Authors, Biography & Autobiography, Students & Student Life, Education, American - 21st Century, Biography, Higher
ISBN: 9780385521284
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2009-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

The fear of a terrible reckoning, of expulsion, of banishment from the ninety-ninth percentile and a quick trip to whatever hell is reserved for fallen overachievers who’ve mastered or out-maneuvered every challenge except adjusting to the company of their own merciless species, hit me on the last day of Christmas break, on the way to the airport in my father’s car. I belched sour orange juice into my throat as I remembered the limp piano wires, the toxic odor of the frying Sony, the glorious, heedless manic rush of tearing apart my prison with my bare hands. With motive galore and sole access to the crime scene, how had I expected to get away with it? I hadn’t, obviously. This seemed to mean that I’d been courting punishment, soliciting some absolute rejection that would remove the tension of awaiting one. I didn’t buy it, though. The better explanation, I believed, was rooted in Julian’s theories about consciousness, at least as I’d been able to understand them. We humans had come to believe over the centuries that our thoughts and actions belonged to us, that they were wholly ours, from our own skulls, and that had led us to feel we could control them or, when we couldn’t, that we should answer for them. But maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe, at times, the mind slipped back, evolution and history reversed themselves, and the ancient phantoms regained command.

My defense, if it ever came to mounting one, would be possession, I decided. Or regression, that is. And it might just be the truth. A throwback lobe had made me slay the Steinway.

My father exited the freeway and took a shortcut through downtown St. Paul that was only a shortcut under ideal conditions. As usual, they didn’t obtain today. There was construction. Then there was an accident. Luckily, we’d set out early, so being late for my flight was not our worry. Our worry—not just mine, I knew—was having extra time to talk but nothing much to say.

“So it’s been good? You’re getting used to it?” My father had asked the same thing at Christmas dinner and I’d answered the same way I did now.

“It’s different. It’s a different kind of place.”

“I can’t disagree. And it’s tough sometimes, I bet. But I made the best friends of my life at that damned place and you will, too, if you make a little effort.”

I didn’t respond. Too anxious. And now too sad. I’d met my father’s wondrous college friends—all three or four of them—though only briefly, and never more than twice. They lived spread out around the country, mostly in the East, and every few years one would pass through Minnesota and show up at our dinner table, where my brother and I were expected to receive them like long-lost relatives. They always got drunk before the meal was over. Often, they arrived drunk. Then they told stories about getting drunk. For a few days after they left my father would talk about how much

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