John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

I listened amazed. Though the quotation was ended, the gloss-upon-the-gloss evidently was not:

"Hugo Krafft takes a similar stand in his brilliant and exhaustive (if sometimes oppressive) West-Campus Cattle-Barns from Pre-History to the Thirty-Seventh Remusian Chancellory, and, like other semantically oriented interpreters, makes much of Xanthippides's fondness for word-play as a pedagogical device. The Neo-Philocastrians, to be sure, like the Scapulists they derive from, have never sympathized with pragmatism, higher or lower, and are inclined to be skeptical of the close textual analysis made popular by Krafft's followers; in general they still maintain that virtuosity, rather than net achievement, is the key to Commencement Gate — - whether the performance wherein it is manifest be in itself 'admirable' or not. Thus Bongiovanni cites the examples of Carpo the Fool, an early freshman who knocked himself senseless in a fall from the parallel bars and was for some terms thereafter the butt of campus humor, and Gaffer McKeon, 'The Perfect Cheat,' who confessed to never having given an uncribbed answer during his brilliant undergraduate career. Both men passed.

"But the West-Campus Philocastrians identify virtuosity with particular excellencies, while their East-Campus counterparts (if so various a group may be thought of collectively) tend to speak of it with a capital V, as something distinguishable from virtuoso performances. Thus the old East-Campus table-grace quoted by Dharhalal Panda:

With Milo, Carpo, and Gaffer,

I live alone alone:

Four fingers of a hand.

May I, with Sophie or some other thumb,

Grasp Answers as I grasp this food;

Eat Truth; and on the Finals know

I feed myself myself.

"Among the rash of modern researches into the political and economic life of the early West-Campus colleges one finds frequent mention of Milo and the heifer — - for example, in E. J. B. Sundry's scholarly analysis of the old enmity between the Divisions of Agriculture and Athletics in the Lykeionian Academy. Yet while one welcomes new light on studentdom's history from whatever source, one cannot but regret the deprecatory tone of these investigators and the glib iconoclasm especially manifest in their handling of traditional anecdotes. Sundry's suggestion, for example, that Xanthippides saw in 'the Milo affair' an opportunity to '…pull the collective beard of the Ag Hill Lobby [sic}' as a gesture of mollification to Coach Glaucon, who was miffed at the large appropriation for new mushroom-houses, is more exasperating by reason of its partial truth than are plainly lunatic hypotheses (e.g., that the Chancellor's hand was forced, there being no other way to unoak the cow; or that the whole incident was cynically pre-arranged by Milo and the Chancellor, or by the School of Athletics, or by some Lykeionian equivalent to the Office of Public Information, for publicity purposes)."

Surely, I thought, that must end both gloss and gloss-gloss. But the indefatigable scholiast went on to recommend as perhaps the best general work on the whole matter a recently-taped study by one V. Shirodkar, called There Is One Way:

"As the title suggests, Shirodkar approaches 'Khadrunianism' and 'Philoeastrianism' (which is to say, in a special sense, Entelechism and Scapulism) by way of the ambiguity of Xanthippides's famous observation, and he attempts to combine, or at least subsume, the major traditions into what he calls Mystical Pragmatism. The result, alas, is more syncretion than synthesis, but Shirodkar's historico-semantic schema belongs in every undergraduate notebook. Please Hold and Gloss."

Appalled, I did, and from a slot in the console issued, in the form of a printed diagram, this gloss upon the gloss upon the gloss upon Bray's quotation from Enos Enoch's allusion to Xanthippides's remark upon Milo's misdemeanor:

Even as I endeavored to make sense out of the diagram, the Hold-button popped out and the recentest speaker concluded primly:

"Pragmatic Monism, for example, Shirodkar maintains, comes to quite the same thing as Equipollent Pluralism, and Valuational Monism to the same as Disquiparent Pluralism. That this correspondence (which may be merely verbal) is ground for synthesis seems doubtful: the position of the old Lykeionian Sub-Department of Dairy Husbandry may, it is true, be assigned with equal justice either to Negative Valuational Monism or to Negative-Superlative Disquiparent Pluralism; but what meeting of minds can be hoped for between Negative Valuational Monism and Positive Valuational Monism, or between Mystical Monism and any of the others? These secondary and tertiary glosses were prepared by your Sub-Department of Comparative Philosophical History."

I chewed nervously on Shirodkar's historico-semantic schema, waiting to see what would happen next. The Gloss-button popped up and automatically redepressed itself, whereupon the voice of the earlier commentator, the Agricultural-History man, resumed his own conclusion — no advertisement after all:

"… Heifer House, which generations of exchange-students have been surprised to find is no stock-barn but the ancient headquarters of the Lykeionian Campus Patrol, stands where Sophie's Oak reputedly stood. The exact site of the tree is marked by a bronze disc let into the floor of what was formerly an auxiliary detention-chamber. Thank you."

Up came Gloss and Hold simultaneously, down went Lecture, and at once into my headset Bray's voice rang, more impassioned even than before:

"Learned Founder! Liberal Artist! Dean of deans and Coach of coaches, to whose memos we still turn in time of doubt: stand by us through these dark hours in Academe! Teach me, that am Thy least professor, to profess no thing but truth; that am Thy newest freshman advisor, not to misadvise those minds — - so free of guile and information — - Thou has committed to my trust. Help me to grasp Thy rules; make clear Thy curricular patterns as the day; Thy prerequisites unknot for me to broadcast with the chimes. Enlighten the stupid; fire with zeal the lowest percentile; have mercy on the recreant in Main Detention and the strayed in Remedial Wisdom; be as a beacon in the Senate, a gadfly in the dorms. Be keg and tap behind the bar of every order, that the brothers may chug-a-lug Thy lore, see Truth in the bottom of their steins, and find their heads a-crack with insight. Be with each co-ed at the evening's close: paw her with facts, make vain her protests against learning's advances; take her to Thy mind's backseat, strip off preconceptions, let down illusions, unharness her from error — - that she may ere the curfew be infused with Knowledge. Above all, Sir, stand by me at my lectern; be chalk and notes to me; silence the mowers and stay the traffic that I may speak; awaken the drowsy, confound the heckler; bring him to naught who would digress when I would not, and would not when I would; take my words from his mouth who would take them from mine; save me from slip of tongue and lapse of memory, from twice-told joke and unzippered fly. Doctor of doctors, vouchsafe unto me examples of the Unexampled, words to speak the Wordless; be now and ever my visual aid, that upon the empty slate of these young minds I may inscribe, bold and squeaklessly, the Answers!"

I shucked the earphones and left the stall — moved to the pasterns by his rhetoric, dazed with envy at the force of his imposture. No one else seemed to be leaving: perhaps the orientation-lecture was not ended, or perhaps they had availed themselves of more glosses than had I. But I could hear no more; I left the hall despite my horn-rimmed helper's information that one could select questions from a prepared list to ask the commentators by remote control. Aside from my distress, I saw no help for my Assignment in that learned chatter, and sad to relate, Bray not only had reminded me, with the Milo epigram, of my responsibility to Max, but had tutored me as well. More accurately, his description of class- and course-work as merely one among a number of possible means to Commencement (a sentiment so recognizably Affirmative-Eclectic-Disquiparent-Pluralistic that I never doubted he had lifted it from some old Hierarchical Adverbialist, probably without permission) gave a rationale to what had been my inclination since leaving the barn: to waste no further time on books and lectures. Matriculation yes, class-attendance no; I must wrest my Answers like swede-roots by main strength from their holes.