Rebecca Goldstein - 36 Arguments for the Existence of God

“In a sense, I can’t blame her. When we got married, I’d already been working with Jonas for four years, so it was safe to assume I was nearing the end. I told her I’d have my degree and a tenure-track assistant professorship, preferably on one of the coasts, in a year or two. I said it in good faith. Although maybe, in retrospect, I shouldn’t have been so confident. Maybe I should have taken the grim statistics into account.”

Gideon’s intimations were putting the finishing touches to the day’s discombobulations. It was after midnight, they were sliding into yet another day, and exhaustion fell on Cass with a perceptible thud.

“What do you mean, the grim statistics?”

“Nobody’s ever completed a dissertation under Klapper.”

“What do you mean? What happens to them? Does he ask them to leave?”

“No, I’ve never known him to ask someone to leave-once, that is, he’s chosen you. He subjects us to tests of his own devising. You may not even realize you’re being tested until it’s over. He’s got his own pedagogical methods. You have to submit to them. It’s not easy. Believe me, I’ve been with him twelve years, and I still don’t find it easy. But if you pass, then Jonas will always be forbearing with you. I wouldn’t say that he’s slow to anger-well, you witnessed that for yourself-but that sort of grace that you also witnessed is characteristic of Jonas. If he takes you back in, you’re one of us.”

Cass absorbed this information as best he could, knowing that more was being given to him than he could understand at the moment.

“I’ve been with Jonas for longer than anyone, and you can always come to me when you’re in doubt, although you’ll find that Jonas is relatively accessible. But there are times when he isn’t, especially when the next phase in his thinking is being worked out, which can be cataclysmic- the paradox shifts.”

“What happens to his students, if they never get their doctorates?”

“They leave, for one reason or another. It’s always a terrible ordeal for Jonas.”

“But you’re not planning to be a graduate student for the rest of your life, are you?”

Gideon laughed. He had a surprising laugh. There were recessed places in him where the infantile had pooled, and his laugh was yet another of them. It was a high-pitched giggle, gleeful and a little slurpy.

“Certainly not! I’m not lying to Lizzie when I tell her that I’m not leaving without my degree! I’ve sunk twelve years into this. I intend to leave Jonas with his imprimatur stamped on my accursed forehead!”

Gideon Raven was at least half a foot shorter than Cass, and he took strides disproportionately long compared with his height. This gave him a bobbling locomotion, his round head springing like a pigeon’s.

They walked down a few steps to enter the bar. There appeared to be no windows, and the gloom was lying heavy on everything. As Cass’s eyes adjusted, he saw a long freestanding bar up front, a few authentic working-class types sitting immobile and silent, and booths toward the back. Behind the bar there were yellowing posters of 1950s pin-up girls. The bartender looked as if he must have hung them up himself decades ago, when he would already have been an old lech.

Gideon went to get a pitcher, and Cass sank down at a sticky booth. Rousing from his mind any bits that were still rousable, he tried to sort out the items of information he had gathered today. They added up to ten:

The next assigned book for the seminar was Aristotle’s Poetics .

His long experience with Cass here, Jesse there may have had something to do with The View from Nowhere.

Gideon Raven was a hell of a nice guy.

Gideon’s marriage to Lizzie had problems.

Jonas Elijah Klapper did not like Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Jonas Elijah Klapper believed that much of what passes for science is scientism.

None of Jonas Elijah Klapper’s graduate students had completed their doctorates.

When Jonas Elijah Klapper was testing a graduate student, one didn’t necessarily know it until it was over (if then).

Once one was chosen by Jonas Elijah Klapper, one would not be exiled.

He, Cass Seltzer, would not be exiled.

Gideon came back with a pitcher of beer, two mugs, and several shots of tequila, and when he had sorted them out and sat down, Cass asked him, “What exactly is scientism?”

Gideon drained his mug and chased it with a tequila before he answered.

“Scientism is the dogma of our day. It’s the sacred superstition of the smart set that savors its skepticism. It’s the product of the deification of the stolid men of science, so that the arrogance of the illiterati knows no bounds. More particularly, it’s the view that science is the final arbiter on all questions, on even the question of what are the questions. Science has wrested the questions of the deepest meaning of humanity out of the humanities and is delivering pat little answers to all our quandaries.”

“And much of what passes for science is scientism.”

“Exactly.”

“But a lot of what passes for science really is science.”

“No doubt. But I wouldn’t go emphasizing that point in front of Jonas if I were you.”

“What’s he got against science?”

“The same thing that he’s got against Great Britain.”

“What’s wrong with Great Britain?”

“They don’t get Jonas Elijah Klapper.”

“The whole country?”

Gideon might have considered the question rhetorical, since he didn’t let it interrupt his drinking. He drank with an extraordinary thirst. Cass tried to keep up, which brought him quickly to the point of wondering what would happen if, theoretically, he tried to stand.

When Gideon decided again to speak, he launched back into the theme of his marital difficulties as if that’s what they had been discussing this whole time.

“Jonas warned me not to marry Lizzie. ‘She is in her victorious prime, the pinnacle of her prothalamic prowess.’” His impersonation was uncanny. It wasn’t for nothing that he was reputed to be the foremost expert on Jonas Elijah Klapper. Cass had heard, when he was back at Columbia, that Gideon had already published half a dozen articles analyzing Jonas Elijah Klapper’s paradox shifts. “‘The bloom of youth has painted her vividly with the war stripes required for victory on the battlefields of sex. She stands before you, a Maori warrior, only armed with mighty cleavage. She shall go downhill on that front, have no doubt. Heed me well, young pup! That woman will run to fat before the first five years are out, and by the tenth she’ll have a lap wide enough to hold the heap of mewling babes she shall wrest from your besieged manhood.’”

Cass was shocked by what Gideon was saying. He didn’t want to rush to any interpretations, but, at least on the surface, the words sounded misogynistic.

“So I take it Professor Klapper’s never married?”

“The only woman Jonas ever talks about with real longing is Olga the cheesemonger at Zabar’s. And, of course, good old Hannah.”

“Hannah?”

“You really are a novice, aren’t you? You mean to tell me you don’t know about the sainted Hannah? Sophocles’ Antigone, Dante’s Beatrice, Quixote’s Dulcinea of El Toboso, and Luke’s Madonna all rolled up in one.”

Cass couldn’t tell whether Gideon was being ironic or not. The more they drank, the less possible it became to tell. Gideon Raven seemed to be undergoing his own paradox shifts, and all in one sitting.

Cass shrugged, so weary he had to exert himself to lift his shoulders.

“She’s the one with the crazy eyes he keeps framed on his desk.”

Cass had seen the photograph in Professor Klapper’s Columbia office.