John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

No matter. Tombo's end is not given me to know, but I know my own, that rushes towards me like Triple-T. The wheel must come full circle; Fate's pans, tipped a brief while mewards, will tip back, like the pans of history. No one these days need die for the curriculum of his choice, as in terms gone by; alas, would anyone be willing to? The passion that exalts is the same that persecutes; if New Tammany's new Auditorium has no flogging-room beneath it, neither has it a soaring campanile above. Never was enrollment greater, or the average student less concerned for the Finals. Professors have ceased to kick the child who fidgets while they lecture: is it not that they also care less strongly than they ought whether he Passes, or believe less strongly that their words will be his Answers? The present Chancellory — by this one praised, by that condemned — has like any other the vices of its virtues, precisely. To gain this, one sacrifices that; the pans remain balanced for better and worse…

Nay, rather, for worse, always for worse. Late or soon, we lose. Sudden or slow, we lose. The bank exacts its charge for each redistribution of our funds. There is an entropy to time, a tax on change: four nickels for two dimes, but always less silver; our books stay reconciled, but who in modern terms can tell heads from tails?

And as with the profession, so with the professor; so even with Grand Tutors. I go this final time to teach the unteachable, and shall fail. A handful will attend me, and they in vain. The rest will snore in the aisles as always, make paper airplanes from my notes, break wind in reply to my questions. I know they will steal my lunch, expose their privates in the cloakroom, traffic in comic-books under the seminar-table. My voice grows hoarse; the chalk will break in my hand. I know what Seniors will murmur in the stacks and Juniors chant at their torchlight rallies. A day approaches when the clerks in Tower Hall will draw up forms; Stoker's iron tools are oiled and ready; it will want but a nod from the Chancellor to set my "advisees" on me in a pack. They will not remember who ordered their schedules out of chaos and put right their college; who routed the false Grand Tutor, showed the Way to Commencement Gate, and set down this single hope of studentdom, The Revised New Syllabus. Those same hands that lovingly one term put off my rags, sponged me in dip — will they not flip a penny for the golden fleece they dressed me in? My humble rank and tenure will be stripped from me, as were Max's; my protégés — aye, Tombo, even you, even you! — will curse the hour I named them beneficiaries of my poor policy. Naked, blind, dishonored, I shall be coasted on a rusty bicycle from Great Mall. Past Observatory and Amphitheater, Turnstile and Scrapegoat Grate, George's Gorge and intersection — yea, past the remotest Model Silo, beyond the Forestry Camps and the weirs of the Watershed Researchers — I shall make my way, in lowest gear, to the first spring of the last freshet on the highest rise of Founder's Hill. There, in a riven grove beyond the Shaft, one oak stands in the rock: its top is crowned with vine, its tap-root cleaves to the spring beneath and drives I think to the fiery bowels of the campus. At that day's dusking, when lights come on in Faculty Row and my enemies raise their liquor, I'll make a goblet of my hands, drink hot toddies from that spring. My parts will be hung with mistletoe, my cleft hold the shophar fast; the oak will yield, the rock know my embrace. Three times will lightning flash at a quarter after seven, all the University respeaking my love's thunder — Teruah! Tekiah! Shebarim! — and it will be finished. The claps will turn me off. Passed, but not forgotten, I shall rest.

POSTSCRIPT TO THE POSTTAPE

Anticlimax, a vice in dramatic fictions, is clearly no failing in a work of the nature of R.N.S., whereas textual integrity is of the first importance. As agent for Stoker Giles (or "Giles Stoker"), therefore, and aspirant professor of Gilesianism in whatever college may see fit to appoint me, I must observe — reluctantly — that however affecting here and there might be the rhetoric of the document entitled "Posttape" (I myself am unmoved), there is every reason to believe it spurious. An interpolation of later Gilesians, perhaps — more likely of antigilesians — or an improvisation of Wescacus malinoctis, but not the scripture, so to speak, of George Giles, Goat-Boy and Grand Tutor. Nor of His son, whom the document so unfairly and uncharacteristically maligns. I include the "Posttape" with the manuscript proper only because I found it (much soiled and creased) stuck among the pages left in my trust by the Grand Tutor's son, and feel unauthorized to delete what he so magnanimously let stand. That is, if he even knew of its existence; it was folded crudely and inserted between two random pages, as though in haste. Quite possibly it is the work of some crank or cynic among Stoker Giles's contemporaries; indeed, the typescript languished unguarded so long on my desk, the "Posttape" might even be some former colleague's idea of a practical joke.

In any case, one ought not to take it seriously. Consider the internal evidence against its authenticity: in the "Post-tape" the "Grand Tutor" puts quotation-marks around such terms as "My Ladyship" and "Lady Creamhair," a practice followed nowhere else in the manuscript; also around "Revised New Syllabus" and "Gilesianism" — as if he had grown contemptuous of the terms! More revealingly, he mentions technological and cultural phenomena whose existence is never previously alluded to, such as airplanes and comicbooks; and his references to nickels, dimes, and pennies, for example, seem flatly discrepant with the economic system of New Tammany College implied by the rest of the chronicle — and so important to an understanding of the Boundary Dispute. It may be objected by ingenious apologists that in one instance a reference of this sort is preceded by the ambiguous phrase "in modern terms," which, though it patently means "nowadays," might be said to suggest in addition a translation — by WESCAC or the Grand Tutor — of His University into our terms. Indeed, there is a sense in which the same may be said of the entire Syllabus — of all artistic and pedagogical conceit, for that matter, especially of the parable kind. But suffice it to say, in reply to this objection, that the Grand Tutor seems nowhere else in the vast record of His life and teachings to resort to this device — only in the gloomy "Posttape."

Which brings us to the real proof of its spurious character. Even if none of the above-mentioned discrepancies existed, the hopeless, even nihilistical tone of those closing pages militates against our believing them to be the Grand Tutor's own. Having brought us to the heart of Mystery, "He" suddenly shifts to what can most kindly be called a tragic view of His life and of campus history. Where are the joy, the hope, the knowledge, and the confident strength of the man who routed Harold Bray, affirmed the Candidacies of His Tutees and readied Himself to teach all studentdom the Answer? "Not teachable" indeed! And the unpardonable rejection of Greene, of Anastasia, of His own son, in favor of a sickly mulatto boy with the improbable name of Tombo — -

But no, the idea is ridiculous. Some impostor and antigiles composed the "Posttape," to gainsay and weaken faith in Giles's Way. Even the type of those flunkèd pages is different!

J.B.

FOOTNOTE TO THE POSTSCRIPT

TO THE POSTTAPE

The type of the typescript pages of the document entitled "Postscript to the Posttape" is not the same as that of the "Cover-Letter to the Editors and Publisher."

ED.

Scan Notes v3.0:

Proofed this very thoroughly. There are many made-up and compound words in the story — any word that was questionable was looked up in the DT. There are 9 or 10 images embedded in this RTF file, most of them musical scores that fall in the midst of action in the book. Since the file is only approx 5.5MB with them, I decided to keep them embedded despite the extra size it lends the file.