The Latecomer by Korelitz Jean Hanff

Author:Korelitz, Jean Hanff [Korelitz, Jean Hanff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary, Mystery, Adult
ISBN: 9781250790798
Amazon: 1250790794
Goodreads: 57693566
Publisher: Celadon Books
Published: 2022-05-31T07:00:00+00:00

21

Go Down, Moses

In which Harrison Oppenheimer ventures below the Mason-Dixon Line for the first time, and is compelled to relate “The Watermelon Affair” to his new friends there

Roarke didn’t have anything so banal as a summer vacation, but students were given leave as needed in June and July, subject to their responsibilities on the farm and pending written application. Harrison and Eli submitted their requests together, with a joint letter of invitation from the Hayek Institute.

The invitation encompassed not only travel, lodging, food, and inclusion in what Eli promised would be an enlightening intellectual conclave, but also, as he had implied, a presentation of Harrison’s own, on any topic that might contribute some insights into his generation. Harrison spent many evenings in the Stearns Room in May and June, trying to settle on a subject, and finally, in the absence of any better idea, he decided to write about the political journey of American Jews from the early nineteenth century to the present. Harrison didn’t ask Eli’s opinion about his topic. He was afraid to be told it was too general, too well-trodden, or, worst of all, too obvious for a young conservative intellectual who happened to be Jewish, and besides, both of them were already inundated with academic and administrative work: end-of-term projects in history and philosophy, not to speak of his final generation of chickens (soon, blessedly, to be handed off to an incoming first-year), and Eli was preoccupied with the search for a history of science faculty member, and the winnowing of fifty-three finalist applicants for the next Roarke class down to fourteen brilliant young men from eight states, England, Canada, Italy, and Iceland. The farm, meanwhile, turned a corner to summer, and as it did, the last foul remnants of the plagiarism charge, and the taint of their departed classmates, Carlos, Tony, and Gordon, seemed finally to dissipate.

In the middle of July, Eli and Harrison flew to Charlottesville. Harrison had long been taught that the south was a foreign country, and one to be vilified. (How many units on slavery? How many spirituals solemnly sung by the children of wealth?)

“First time below the Mason-Dixon Line,” he told Eli as they descended. Then, reflexively, he apologized.

“What for?” said Eli.

“Well, I don’t mean to be … insensitive.” He halfheartedly tried to make it a joke, but there was too much Walden in him, after all. “Actually, my forebears weren’t exactly first-class citizens here, either.”

Eli looked at Harrison. “You’re referring to postwar carpetbaggers?”

“I was thinking Leo Frank, actually.”

“You know, it’s interesting,” said Eli. “I think this is the first time you’ve self-identified as Jewish.”

It was an observation, not an insult, but Harrison cringed, nonetheless.

“I don’t ‘identify.’ It’s more of a genetic factor. Like being Aboriginal, or a Pict. You don’t go around feeling good about it or bad about it. It just is.”

“But still,” said Eli, though he was smiling, “the sacred brotherhood of the Negro and the Jew. Go down, Moses. Two peoples bonded in suffering. Do you think that explains our friendship?”

It was the reference to “friendship” that landed first.

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