Renata Adler - Speedboat

“Exactly.”

Summer. The speedboat was serious. The young tycoon was serious about it, as he was serious about his factories, his wife, his children, his parties, his work, his art collection, his resort. The little group had just had lunch, at sea, aboard the tycoon’s larger boat, a schooner. The speedboat, designed for him the year before, had just arrived that day. The tycoon asked who would like to join him for a spin to test it. The young American wife from Malibu, who had been overexcited about everything since dawn, said she would adore to go. Her husband, halfway through his coffee still, declined. The young Italian couple, having a serious speedboat of their own, went to compare. In starting off, the boat seemed much like any other, only in every way — the flat, hard seats, the austere lines — more spare. And then, at speed, the boat, at its own angle to the sea, began to hit each wave with flat, hard, jarring thuds, like the heel of a hand against a tabletop. As it slammed along, the Italians sat, ever more low and loose, on their hard seats, while the American lady, in her eagerness, began to bounce with anticipation over every little wave. The boat scudded hard; she exaggerated every happy bounce. Until she broke her back.

She was sped to shore, of course, and then to Rome, by helicopter. Soon after that, she was well enough to fly back to New York. She recovered in Malibu. But violent things are always happening to the very rich, and to the poor, of course. Freak accidents befall the middle classes in their midst. Martin, our campaign contributor, who spent one term at Oxford many years ago, and who has sounded English ever since, tends to say “How too like life” when he is drunk. Anything — a joke, a sigh, a quarrel, an anecdote — has upon him, at such times, this effect. He says “How too like life.” When the American lady had her accident, Martin said How too like life all afternoon.

The Dean of Cultural Affairs called a meeting of the representatives of our two departments on the question of jurisdiction in the Space on Film course, late one morning. Seven H.B.A.s attended this, because, not having thought or published anything in twenty years, and not having, like Professor Klein, careers near the mainstream of cultural life, they do not spend their lives entirely in idleness. They quarrel. The Dean, whose analyst is Franz, has the same girl who caused Edith to tear Max’s four-leaf clover apart. The situation is, in every way, unorthodox. Franz was once suspended for a year from his analytic institute for having twice married his patients and divorced his wives. He spent that year as a therapist for children in our Guidance School.

Our branch of the university is accustomed anyway to jurisdictional disputes. Drama and Cinema grew out of a workshop that existed many years ago to remedy the accents of bright city girls, who could not afford college out of town. When such programs became unfashionable, the staff chose to become two faculties: Dramatistics, and Perspectives in Media. Within a year, the Media people chose to join the newer Department of Minority Groups and Social Change — which already offered History of Broadcasting 204, 301, and Seminar and whose course on Prostitution, Causes and Origins, was being televised. The Dramatistics people felt they could not attract students, or budget allocations, on their own. They added Film. Our department changed its name, and became what it now is. Our Drama people are trying to take over the English Department’s course Creative Writing 101; Playwriting A. The English Literature people are beleaguered on another side. For twenty years, they have had The Brothers Karamazov (translated, abridged). The Department of Russian Literature, which teaches all its courses in translation now, wants Dostoevski back.

The Drama people have designs in other fields: Ibsen and Strindberg, in particular — which seems reasonable enough, since all the texts are plays. Ibsen and Strindberg, however, belong, with Swinburne, to the Department of Germanistics and Philology. Between 1938 and 1949, all German courses were unpopular. The German Literature people simply seized Ibsen and Strindberg — and by some misunderstanding, which was noticed too late, got Swinburne as well. There were no Drama people, or any other sort of people, at that time, to compete. Chekhov, meanwhile, for reasons that, I am afraid, are clear, is taught in the Classics Department (Greek 209C). The operative principle appears to be that if any thing or person mentioned in another department could conceivably be mentioned in your own, you have at least an argument to seize the course. One night when the Women’s Studies Division gets under way, we all expect there’s going to be a coup.

Constituency. Dennis, a rich, unintelligent, and not particularly well-meaning man, revelled in his favorite expressions. When he was certain of something, he said it was sure as God made little green apples. When he wanted no interference from someone, he would ask him to keep his cotton-picking hands off. When he felt superior to someone, he said he ate that sort of fella for breakfast. Since a good part of Dennis’ day consisted in being certain, deploring interference, and feeling superior, he had occasion to use all these idioms, which he thought gruffly witty, several times a day. His appointments secretary, in whom he confided his impressions, of business, his home life, his diet, had a recurrent dream that she shot him.

Lewis, the barber, discouraged conversation. Over the years, by keeping his face vacant and refusing to reply even to the direct questions of his customers, he managed to impose his own silence upon them. Florian, who worked the next chair, spoke incessantly and even sang sometimes. He flourished his towels. He gave advice. He danced around the little flames with which he scorched the hairstyles of his customers. As far as anyone could remember, Lewis addressed the subject of Florian only once. “Someday,” he said, “I’m going to kill him.”

About money. When we had come from our public schools and our private schools, and our travels abroad, and our own education to our first solid jobs in the city, one of our golden couples gave a party to raise funds. The cause was desperate and just. Five haggard members of the group whose cause it was spoke eloquently on the terrace, sang sad songs, and afterward stood among us in the living room. There were servants. There was a bartender. The first odd thing was that the cups were plastic, and the brands of Scotch, gin, bourbon, even beer, were unknown brands. We knew that charities ought not to waste money on overhead. But when the awkward moment of collection came, our most successful lawyer reached into his pocket and came up with change. One of the wives, who was just becoming known in fashion circles for her clothes, opened her purse, hesitated, and brought out a crumpled dollar bill. Checkbooks came out on every side. Checks for three dollars, two dollars, even a check for four dollars and eighty-two cents, were signed with a flourish and passed along. It became clear: nobody under forty gives anything to charity. Martin and Iris do contribute to the arts, but Martin wants to be on boards of trustees with the fathers of friends he went to Harvard with. A lot of the under-twenty-fives give every cent they have to weird sects they want to get their head together in. But nobody, as a matter of course, any longer tithes.

The Art people, then, met our people, regarding Space. The meeting began quietly enough. “I particularly resent,” Mel said, leafing to the fourth page of a nine-page memorandum the Art people had sent that morning, in reply to his own eleven-page memorandum of the night before, “your use of the word ‘unconscionable.’ It is inappropriate in a memoranda of this sort.” “Memoranda” in all departments of our university is singular, “memorandums” plural. “Phenomena” is another singular, taking the plurals “phenomenas” and “phenomenae.” I have also heard “phenomenums.” Usage, for those of us who went to colleges and universities of other sorts, is always odd. A change of grade, for example, after semester’s end, requires of the professor a signed slip. The professor must, without the help of Miss Fiotti from Fringe Benefits, fill in the line: Reason for Change of Grade. The Dean had such a form before him as we met. “Reason for Change of Grade,” it read. “Cleracal Error.” It was signed “Professor Leora J. Smith.” Leora is our Permanent Head.