Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

So on he read. It was dreary prose, indeed, a sententious parade of marrow-pea wisdom, garbled quotation, and fractured syntax, the more frightful, most of them, for having been written out in longhand. Niggards separated words. Ideorealists upslanted. The morbid girls intertwined lines; the vain whorled; the corkscrew hand seemed to indicate a kind of obstinacy. Everyone’s handwriting had a physiognomy of its own. It was a revelation of sorts, those, of course, that could be read, for there were a few specimens of the hook-and-butt-joint variety which looked as though they’d been written with a spitsticker mis-gripped between two non-opposable toes.

But the subject matter — there was the fascination! The girls were Southerners, uncompetitive in terms of mind, and while each approached her topic, alien because academic, with buffleheaded equivocation and ineptitude, the papers almost all digressed into an autobiography of dreamy fancy, teasing indulgence, and orphie posturing: a high-souled but predatory tone of flirtation which reduced everything of intellection to a floating and eddying mistfall wherethrough each author’s face could be found cutely peeking with batting eyelashes and that romantically illuminated look usually reserved for meeting one’s lover.

Darconville sighed and looked, sighed and looked, sighed and looked, and sighed again — then finished. He entered the grades in his class book.

“Martha Washington, Hemstitcher” by Muriel Ambler B-

“Sawmilling: Why It’s Important to Us” by Melody Blume C

“A Look at Tarot Packs” by Wroberta Carter D

“My Summer in Chincoteague” by Ava Caelano B-

“Freshman Worries!” by Barbara Celarent C

“ Three Wogs : My Favorite Novel” by Analecta Cisterciana A

“How to Candy Shoups” by Ailsa Cragg C

“Fidelity in Penguins” by Childrey Fawcett B+

“The Legend of Kali Pátnï” by Galveston Foster B

“The Life and Works of Kate Douglas Wiggin” by Scarlet Foxwell B

“Jesus Christ: My Personal Savior” by Opal Garten B

“The Day We Lost Our Dog, Pee Wee — and Found Him

Again!” by Marsha Goforth C

“My Pet Peeve: Pet Peeves” by LeHigh Hialeah C-

“My Life Eats Shit” by Elsie Magoun [nervous breakdown] Inc.

“Quinsy College: That First (Gulp!) Glimpse” by Sheila Mangelwurzel D

“Was Shakespeare Shakespeare?” by Christie McCarkle C

“My First Batch of Potato Cookies” by Trinley Moss B-

“Dating vs. Non-Dating” by Glycera Pentlock D

“Love at First Sight” by Hypsipyle Poore B

“ Areopagitica ” by Hallowe’ena Rampling [plagiarism!] F

“An Embarrassing Occurrence at Zutphen Farm” by Isabel

Rawsthorne

“My Prize Hen” by Cecilia Sketchley B

“A Poetic Analysis of ‘The Pig Lady’ “ by Butone Slocum B

“Coiffures Through the Ages, 1936–1970” by Millette Snipes B-

“Pellagra: Blight of the South” by April Springlove C

[missing] by Lately Thompson F

“4-Hing Can Be Fun” by DeDonda Umpton D

“A Short Study on ‘ The Essay of Megalanthropogenesis , or,

the Art of Producing Intelligent Children Who Will Bear

Great Men’ “ by Shelby Uprightly A

“Quain’s Fatty Heart: A New Disease?” by Martha Van

Ramm B+

“Dinky, My Favorite Rabbit” by Poteet Wilson D

“Menopause: It’s Closer Than You Think” by Rachel Windt D

“‘Traveler’: General Lee’s Loyal Steed” by Laurie Lee Zenker D-

Darconville dropped in his drawer the thirty or so little maimed and undermedicated projects, roughly eight to fifteen pages in length each, stapled, bradded, corner-crimped, and of course those several gathered together feminologistically with a punched hole and a loop of yarn.

The one paper he’d set aside — after shooing Spellvexit away — he now had a chance to review in peace. The calligraphy was spidery, a thin arachnoid scrawl, but unique in its own way and, he thought, rather beautiful, with somewhat of a forward slant, long t-bars, and the overuse of hyphens, along with perpendicular ascending final sweeps and, well, the rather choleric preference for red ink. It wasn’t, frankly, either a hand or a prose style comfortable with language, nor was it, upon the reflection of several re-readings, a person perhaps very comfortable with herself. The pity of it! He found himself — queerly, he was not certain why — loath to give it a grade. It was strange: a judgment of any kind seemed presumptuous. Nettled only in that, while logic told him the paper was flawed, truth told him it wasn’t, Darconville delayed.

Although exhausted, he lit up another cigarette and went to the window. He wouldn’t grade it: no one is equal to only one thing she does. He went to bed. But he had to grade it — so he got up, turned on the light, and read it again.

Précis:The Disquisition recounts how Isabel Rawsthorne, upon the Occasion of being invited to dine at the large farm of her Wealthy Neighbors — surstyled van der Slang — was overtaken with nerves, and, giving Further Particulars concerning that, is then wholly devoted to a Full and Faithful Report of what befell the subject in mid-meal when, twiddling her plate in a vigorous attempt to separate for consumption an obdurate chop, she embarrassingly jerked her portion of peas across the table, a Lapse in Elegance she begs leave to offer, while confessing no other motive which her heart had informed her of, as caused by finding herself in Unnatural Surroundings, after which the Narrative reverts to the High-Dutch pedigree of her Neighbors (q.v.), containing under Different Heads everything Illustrative and Explanatory of a social class disquiparant to her own, superadded to which is not only a Digression on the current value of the Angus cattle they owned but also an Episode, provided for comic relief, that treats of Diverse Little Matters anent the reactions of the Boys in that family, how they laughed, &c &c, appending then a Touching Moment when the adjudged delectus personne , though pulsing by secret oath to refuse it, is given an Open Invitation to return, this comprising a Final Exit concluded to the satisfaction of Practically Everybody, intended all, as so put, less as a rehearsal of the Scanty and Defective social graces of the author than an example of the Voluminous Essay, indeed Book, which she implied could but never would be written on same because of her insignificance. It was signed: Isabel Her Mark — and graded A.

Awkwardness is the prerogative of kaleidogyns.

THE NIGHT finally came. A porchlight was lit. Upstairs, Darconville sat at his desk, a single finger in cogitative support of his head, flinging arbitrarily between one thought and another and staring into space. It was Thursday.

He wasn’t worried. He felt apprehensive, but he noticed: it wasn’t his kind of apprehension. She was coming to visit him this night, and, although he tried to work, driven by the fact that for several nights he hadn’t, he couldn’t and, furthermore, perversely deemed it of no consequence. He had of course often written scribble before, but that wasn’t it — now, nothing came.