Marisha Pessl: Special Topics in Calamity Physics

C.Murder by “Sloppy Ed,” the member of the Vicious Three still at large.

D.One of those muddy events in life, which one will never know with certainty (see Chapter 2, “The Black Dahlia,” Slain , Winn, 1988).

3. Jade Churchill Whitestone is:

A.A phony.

B.Beguiling.

C.Irksome as a stubbed toe.

D.An ordinary teenager who couldn’t see the sky through the air.

4. Making out with Milton Black was like:

A.Kissing squid.

B.Being sat upon by an Octopus vulgaris.

C.Doing a jackknife into Jell-O.

D.Floating on a bed of frontal lobes.

5. Zach Soderberg is:

A.A peanut butter sandwich with the crusts cut off.

B.Guilty of lion sex performed in Room 222 at The Dynasty Motel. C.Still , after myriad explanations and Visual Aids presented to him by Blue van Meer as they toured the country for a summer in a blue Volvo station wagon, somewhat disturbingly unable to grasp even the most rudimentary concepts behind Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. He is currently learning to recite pi out to sixty-five decimal places.

D.An Oracle of Delphi.

6. Gareth van Meer abandoned his daughter because:

A.He had had enough of Blue’s paranoia and hysterics.

B.He was, to quote Jessie Rose Rubiman, “a pig.”

C.He finally had the guts to take a stab at immortality, follow his lifelong dream to go play Che in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; this was what he and his sham professors across the country had been organizing in secret; this was also why countless African newspapers were found strewn around the house in the immediate aftermath of his departure, including Inside Angola .

D.He couldn’t bear to lose face with his daughter, Blue, Blue who always thought The World of him, Blue who, even after learning he was an intellectual outmoded as the Great October Soviet Socialist Revolution of 1917, a disaster-prone dreamer, a showboat theorist (and only a very minor one), a philanderer whose illicit affairs caused the suicide of her mother, a man who doubtless will end up like Trotsky if he isn’t careful (ice pick, head), still can’t help but think The World of him, Blue who whenever she is running late to her lecture “American Government: A New Perspective” or passing by a park with trees that whisper overhead as if they wish to let slip a secret, can’t help but wish to find him sitting on a wooden bench, in tweed, waiting for her.

7. Blue’s detailed theory of love, sex, guilt and murder scrawled across fifty pages of a legal pad is:

A.100 % Truth, as things are 100 % Cotton.

B.Preposterous and delusional.

C.A frail web spun by a garden spider, not in some sensible porch corner, but in a massive space, a space so huge and far-fetched one could easily fit two Cadillac DeVille Stretch Limos in it, end to end.

D.The materials Blue used for her boat, in order to pass without serious injury through a harrowing patch of sea (see Chapter 9, “Scylla and Charybdis,” The Odyssey , Homer, Hellenistic Period).

Section III: Essay Question

Many classic films and published academic works do their best to shine tiny lights on the state of American culture, the surreptitious sorrow of all people, the struggle for selfhood, the generalized bewilderment of living. Nimbly utilizing specific examples from such texts, structure a sweeping argument around the premise that, while such works are enlightening, amusing, comforting, too — particularly when one is in a new situation and one needs to divert the mind — they can be no substitution for experience. For, to quote Danny Yeargood’s exceptionally brutal memoir of 1977, The Edgycation of Eyetalians , life is “one blow after another and even when you’re on the ground, you can’t see nothin’ ’cause they hit you on the part of the head where sight comes from, and you can’t breathe ’cause they kicked you in the stomach where breathin’ comes from, and your nose’s all blood ’cause they held you down and punched you in the face, you crawl to your feet and feel fine. Beautiful even. Because you’re alive.”

Take all the time you need.

I am deeply indebted to Susan Golomb and Carole DeSanti for their tireless enthusiasm, criticism and sound advice. Many thanks to Kate Barker, and also to Jon Mozes for his feedback on those early drafts (making the imperative suggestion that I replace high heels with stilettos ). Thank you to Carolyn Horst for meticulously dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. Thank you to Adam Weber for being the most big-hearted friend on earth. Thank you to my family, Elke, Vov and Toni and my amazing husband, Nic, my Clyde, who graciously watches his wife disappear daily into a dark room with her computer for ten to twelve hours at a time and asks no questions. Most of all, I thank my mother, Anne. Without her inspiration and extraordinary generosity, this book would not be possible.

1. A pallor hinting at acute insomnia, melancholy or the unknown illness that necessitated her having a small pharmacy in her bathroom cabinet.

2. A bearing that mimicked the stiff Quaker chair in the corner of her bedroom.

3. The tired and contemplative look on Hannah’s face gave her an odd sort of fill-in-the-blankness, which made me wonder if my initial suspicions had been incorrect, that she was, in fact, that little round-eyed girl in the three framed photographs positioned on that bureau. And yet, why would she put those photos on display? The absence of her mother or father in the pictures seemed to indicate she wasn’t on the cheeriest of terms with them. Yet Dad said happy photos on exhibition as a representation of deep feeling was a facile assumption; he said if a person was so insecure he/she had to have constant reassurance of all “gay ol’ times,” well, then “the sentiments obviously weren’t all that profound to begin with.” For the record, there were no framed pictures of me around our house, and the only class portrait Dad had ever ordered was the one from Sparta Elementary in which I’d sat, knees glued together, in front of a background that looked like Yosemite, sporting pink overalls and a lazy eye. “This is classic,” Dad said. “That they shamelessly send me an order form so I can pay $69.95 for prints large and small of a photo in which my daughter looks as if she just suffered a great blow to her head — it just shows you, we are simply strapped to a motorized assembly line moving through this country. We’re supposed to pay out, shut up or get tossed in the rejects bin.”

I suggest using a No. 2 pencil on the off chance you make a mistake in your initial perceptions and, provided you have a little bit of time left, wish to change your answer.

1. I suggest using a No. 2 pencil on the off chance you make a mistake in your initial perceptions and, provided you have a little bit of time left, wish to change your answer.