The Complete Roderick

‘It’s always Prague — the Infant, the golem, Rossum’s Universal Robots — you begin to wonder what was really going on there?’

Outside it was spring, warm enough for students to lie on the lawn with bag lunches and define their terms in arguments, if they were not better occupied cuddling or daydreaming or dozing or throwing frisbees.

‘…a surrealist musical, he calls it Hello Dali…’

‘But hey listen, the Golden Section…’

‘Basically I guess I must be a Manichee, I always see two sides to everything…’

‘…this Golden Section, this computer worked it out to thousands of decimal places, I still don’t know what it is exactly…’

‘…to match up these thousands of potsherds, only the program went wrong. That or else the Beaker people made a beaker without a mouth, so much for Keats…’

‘La vie electrique, by Albert Robida.’

‘Br’er Robbie…?’

‘Ah ah ah!’

Someone sneezed, someone spoke of spring the sweet spring. A frisbee player stepped on a tuna salad sandwich. Someone looking quickly through a book on Rodin remarked that some of his stuff wouldn’t be bad when it was finished.

A few heads turned as a woman in white passed. Her long hair, in sunlight the colour of clean copper, hung long over her shoulders and back, all but obscuring the legend on the back of her white coveralls: SANDRO’S SHELL SERVICE.

Down the line, heads were turning for a different reason as Lyle Tate passed, coming the other way. The birthmark down his cheek was darker than usual because he was angry; it rendered one side of his face a mask of infinite fury, its eye weeping ink. He and the woman in white met by the frisbee players.

‘What is it? Weren’t we meeting at the Faculty Club bar?’

‘Nothing, I just can’t — we’ll have to go have lunch somewhere else, Shirl.’

‘Lyle, what’s wrong?’

‘I met that sonofabitch Gary Indiana, that’s all. I just can’t stay in the room with him, not after what he did to my one-man show, did you see his review?’

‘No. Look let’s skip lunch, we can just sit down here on the grass and talk this out, can’t we?’

He sat down but continued to wave a clipping from a slick art magazine. ‘After this I’ll be lucky if the department doesn’t drop me, that’s all.’

‘It looks like a long review for a bad one.’

His face twisted more. ‘That’s the worst of it, he pretends to like my work, then tears it apart — I mean for instance getting the titles of the paintings wrong! Cigar Tragic he changes to Cigarette Tragedy, the palindrome was the whole point of the title, the whole painting is a visual palindrome with Castro’s exploding Havana mirroring the vaudeville gag, was trying to show the comic-book minds behind it, but no not only does he change the name he spends half the review talking about America’s position on puppet governments, turns out to be some fucking speech he ghosted for General Fleischman — you see what I’m up against? And he claims it’s all some problem with his word processor, a page of speech got slipped in by mistake. Can that happen?’

She shrugged. ‘If he’s an idiot.’

‘He’s — I don’t know what he is, talks about me handling my faeces and then says the word processor put in an e, it was faces I don’t know what to believe. And it keeps getting worse, listen to this: “Tate, handling his faeces with a skill that betokens a savouring of every movement and at the same time reminds us of his personal affliction, piles on de tail.” Can a word processor really do this? Wreck my whole future like this?’

She nudged him. ‘Hey look, one of those fraternity boys going by — he looks just like you in profile.’

Lyle did not look. ‘My good side, no doubt. But just tell me, you’re the expert, can a word processor make all those mistakes?’

‘Yes and no, Lyle. In any case, why didn’t this Indiana character read his copy over before transmitting it? Why didn’t his editor catch anything? Even with direct setting somebody’s supposed to read the stuff.’

‘Then somebody’s out to get me.’

‘With a reamer, Lyle.’

Someone spoke of spring training. A frisbee player stepped on a Rodin book, while someone opened a tuna sandwich to study it. Someone sneezed, unblessed.

‘Brother Robbie, come on.’

Time for a class.

* * *

‘We can say for example that a work of art resembles other works of art in that it is art, but it differs from them in that it is a different work, not too hard to follow that, is it? And this blend of similarity and difference, this tension serves not only to place the work in the field but to move the field itself in some specific direction. In the same way, if we use an iterative algorithm to calculate the value say of pi, we may get 3 the first time through, then 3.1, then 3.14 and so on. Each new value is in part like its predecessor, but in part different. And the movement is towards a true value, which we might call an ideal…’

As usual, the lecture was reaching less than half the class at any moment. By some law, eleven of the twenty-one students were always lost in sleep or diversions.

In the first row, only Ali was dozing off while the rest were alert. In the second row, Fergusen and Gage were playing tic-tac-toe, though the rest took notes. In the third row, only Klein and Loomis paid attention, while the other three were having a whispered political discussion. In the fourth row, only Potter was staring towards the lectern; the rest were otherwise occupied.

Alone in the last row sat Robert Underwood Robey (the boy they called ‘Robbie’) sound asleep as always.

Gage won the game and took lecture notes, while Fergusen began a new game with Halley. Morris stopped discussing politics long enough to scribble a note or two, while Loomis started cutting his nails.

Ali awoke just as Blake began to daydream. Halley won the game and went back to work, while Fergusen mulled over new strategy and Ingersoll looked at a knitting pattern. Morris commenced an elaborate doodle and O’Toole unwrapped a sandwich while between them Noble took in the lecture. Potter borrowed a newspaper from Quaglione, who attended the lecture.

While Ingersoll folded up the knitting pattern and resumed listening, Jones developed a leg cramp that took precedence. Immediately behind Jones, O’Toole put down the sandwich and observed the lecturer while Noble started reading a popular novel whose protagonist was a pigeon.

Black snapped out of the daydream as Clayburn turned to borrow a pencil or pen from Gage. Fergusen followed the lecture, while behind him Klein played with a ‘15’ puzzle and Loomis started taking notes. Quaglione put in an earphone and listened to the ball game. Reed woke up.

Jones’s cramp ceased as Ingersoll took another look at the knitting pattern. Noble put down the novel while O’Toole picked up the sandwich.

Clayburn took notes while Drumm fell asleep. Gage and Halley began a political discussion. Morris stopped doodling while Noble read more of the pigeon’s adventures. Reed began a crossword puzzle, and Smith stopped worrying about money and paid attention.

Since Gage refused to argue any more, Halley took up the political discussion with Ingersoll. Loomis started examining his scalp for dandruff, while Noble finished a chapter and took notes again.

Drumm came alert as Esperanza began a game of connect-the-dots with Jones; behind him. Halley tried to read Hegel while Ingersoll tried to catch up with the lecture. Noble read more of the pigeon; O’Toole finished lunch and took notes. Smith went back to financial worries on the back of an envelope, while Teller stopped looking at pictures of pubic hair and noticed the lecture.

Halley too at last preferred the lecture to Hegel, as Ingersoll began knitting and Morris began an even more elaborate doodle. Noble put down his book for a few last notes as the lecture ended.

In the cafeteria Robbie sat alone at an empty formica table among other formica tables ranged, with their fibreglass chairs (many occupied), in ranks and files across an acre of thermoplastic tile floor. At other tables drama