Alison Lurie - The War Between the Tates - A Novel

Principally, he thinks, because Wendy was not a graduate student in his department, but in Social Psychology. She had taken his course more or less by accident, and discovered an enthusiasm for American history which he believed to be largely real, even if it was confused in her mind with enthusiasm for him. One of her ambitions was to go into the wilderness and live in a commune based on mutual cooperation and mystical philosophy. Her department treated such groups as examples of social pathology. From Brian she learned that they were in the mainstream of the American Utopian tradition.

“All those dumb old uptight behaviorists, they think anybody who believes in love and community is a deviant,” Wendy exclaimed when these facts fully dawned upon her. Brian had smiled noncommittally; though he did not admit it, he shared her descending opinion of the graduate school of Social Psychology. He believed most of the men in Wendy’s department to be self-seeking fools, and their courses to be composed in equal parts of common sense and nonsense—that is; of the already obvious and the probably false.

He was pleased, but not surprised, that Wendy should consult him rather than her adviser (a cynical, nervous young man called Roger Zimmern who was a cousin of Leonard’s). He liked to answer questions, to explain things. What made explaining things to Wendy especially gratifying was that she wanted nothing from him but knowledge—or so he thought in the beginning. Her reactions were naïve sometimes, overemotional often, but never bored or contrived. There was no academic reason for her to listen to what he said, or read the books he suggested. He was not responsible for her examinations, her financial support, or her M.A. thesis; he would not have to recommend her for jobs or fellowships. He never saw in her eyes as he spoke the dull-red stare of academic duty and boredom; or the hard glaze of self-concealment as a prelude to self-advancements—the yellow signal “Caution” which glowed so often in the eyes of his own graduate students. Her gaze was pure green light.

Wendy’s conversation also had a certain interest. She was outspoken about her professors and courses as no student in Political Science would have been, and it amused Brian to learn about another department from the underside in this way; the more so perhaps because she did not always know how much she was revealing. He encouraged her, as he would not have done had he expected to see more of her. But he assumed that the coming summer would mean the end of the acquaintance. Wendy would have her degree; she was planning to hike around Europe and then teach high school and live in a commune she had heard of in Massachusetts.

But in September of the following year she was back in graduate school and back in Brian’s office. Europe was a great trip, but you couldn’t stay there long without bread; the commune was a good scene until there got to be too many freeloaders, runaway kids and old acidheads! the Green River school system was a bad, ugly trip and scene. Brian was not sorry to see Wendy again: her letters from Holland, Yugoslavia and Green River had been amusing; he had missed her reports on the psychology department, and was glad to have them resume.

What was even more important, or soon became so, was the news Wendy brought of the “youth scene.” Brian had known for some time that he and his colleagues were not living in the America they had grown up in; it was only recently though that he had realized they were also not living in present-day America, but in another country or city-state with somewhat different characteristics. The important fact about this state, which can for convenience’ sake be called “University,” is that the great majority of its population is aged eighteen to twenty-two. Naturally the physical appearance, interests, activities, preferences and prejudices of this majority are the norm in University. Cultural and political life is geared to their standards, and any deviation from them is a social handicap.

Brian had started life as a member of the dominant class in America, and for years had taken this position for granted. Now, in University, he finally has the experience of being among a depressed minority. Like a Chinaman in New York, he looks different; he speaks differently, using the native tongue more formally, the local slang infrequently and as if in quotation marks; he likes different foods and wears different clothes and has different recreations. Naturally he is regarded with, suspicion by the natives.

Of course Brian does not have to spend all his time in University. In the evenings, on weekends, and during most of the summer he can return to the real world, where other standards are in effect. The trouble is, he can see quite well that the “real world” is growing to resemble University more every year, as the youth culture becomes more dominant; and he is aware that all he has to look forward to is the prospect of joining the most depressed minority group of all, the Old.

Brian had never attempted to pass as a native of University, although he realized there were certain rewards for doing so. He did not want to become assimilated, and rather despised those of his colleagues who did. He felt no impulse at all to take drugs, curse policemen, wear beads or study Oriental religions. At the same time, as a political scientist, he felt increasingly that it was his job to know something about these developments.

Unlike his other students, Wendy Gahaghan did not conceal the nonacademic side of her life from Brian. In simple, confiding tones, she related how she and her friends smoked hash, deceived draft boards, “lifted” goods from store counters, and made casual, violent love. When something politically or culturally controversial happened in University, Wendy came and told Brian what the students thought about it, concealing nothing, as if unaware that he was the enemy. In return he tried not to be the enemy: he made an effort never to show shock or disapproval, merely a steady interest.

Gradually Brian began to look forward to Wendy’s appearance, especially at times of crisis—to think of her as his Native Informant. He began to be aware that because of her visits he was pulling ahead of his colleagues in knowledge of student motives and reactions—even sometimes ahead of those who attempted to ape these reactions. They were disguised as natives, but he understood the indigenous customs and language better than they; often he could tell them what SDS or the Society to Legalize Marijuana was going to do next. Scrupulously, he declined to reveal his sources. Indeed, he often concealed the fact that he had a source, preferring for several reasons to suggest that he had many student informants; or that he was only brilliantly guessing, theorizing as a political scientist, about what might happen.

The final reason Brian had not discouraged Wendy’s visits, he thinks—indeed, had begun to encourage them—was that he didn’t believe she could ever constitute any threat to his emotional or physical equanimity. He would have been on his guard if she had been anything like his wife at that age. But Erica had been exceptional: an honor student, elegantly dressed, extraordinarily pretty; she was president of the Arts Club, an editor of the literary magazine, and one of the most popular girls in her class—always surrounded by admirers and friends.

Wendy, by contrast, was an ordinary female graduate student. She was “not plain, indeed quite attractive by conventional standards, but she was completely undistinguished—a well-rounded baby-faced ash-blonde, with pink cheeks and lank silky hair. She dressed usually in Indian style, but—like his children when they were small—confusing the Eastern and Western varieties. She wore, indiscriminately, paisley-bedspread shifts, embroidered velvet slippers, fringed cowhide vests and moccasins, strings of temple bells, saris, shell beads, sandals, and leather pants very loose in the ankle and tight in the ass. In spite of all this paraphernalia, she never looked like either sort of Indian. Rather, with her round pink freckled face and limp yellow hair, she resembled a solemn schoolchild got up for a Thanksgiving or United Nations Day pageant. Even when not in costume, she often tied a beaded or embroidered strip of cloth tightly across her brow in the shape of a headache.