Tooth and Nail: A Novel Approach to the SAT (A Harvest Test Preparation Book)

by Charles Harrington Elster

  Which book should he choose? And how could he decide on one if he couldn’t even fathom its title? Clearly the task of finding something appropriate was going to take longer than he had at first envisioned. He decided to come back the next day when he would have more time.

  On his way out, Phil tried to be inconspicuous as he passed the information desk. He hoped to evade the librarian, who was engrossed in a book. He didn’t want her to see him leaving so soon after going to the trouble of getting a temporary card.

  “Couldn’t find what you wanted?” she asked, not looking up from her book.

  Geez, thought Phil, stopping in his tracks, that woman must have some kind of extrasensory perception. “I’m going to come back and try to find it tomorrow,” he told her.

  “What are you looking for? Maybe I can save you a trip.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t want to trouble you again.”

  “It’s no trouble,” she said, putting her book down decisively. “It’s my job, after all.”

  “Well, I’m looking for something on Shakespeare. Nothing fancy, just a book.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem. There are lots of them.”

  “That’s just it,” Phil agreed. “There are a whole lot—more than eight hundred—with abstruse titles I can’t understand. I don’t know which one to pick.”

  “It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack?”

  “More like starving at a banquet table.”

  The librarian chuckled. “I know the feeling. I’ve worked here for eighteen years and I haven’t read even one-half of one percent of the books in this library. We have more than a million volumes here, not including the books in our archives and special collections. Plus we subscribe to nearly two thousand periodicals.”

  “Yes, I read that in the catalogue.”

  “A college library has so many resources. It can be a little overwhelming when you’re not used to it.”

  Phil nodded abjectly.

  “But don’t worry,” the librarian went on, giving him a cordial smile. “I can help you. You said you wanted something on Shakespeare—an introduction to his work, perhaps?”

  “Yes, that’d be great.”

  “Give me a moment.” The librarian entered a few commands into her computer and looked at the screen. Then she scribbled on a slip of paper and handed it to Phil. “This book should fill the bill. It’s an engaging volume by a woman who taught Shakespeare here for many years. You’ll find it up in the stacks, on the seventh floor. I jotted down the call number for you. The elevator’s around the corner, at the end of the hall.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Phil said. He looked at the slip of paper and saw that the librarian had recommended A Garden of Words: The Life and Work of William Shakespeare, by Margaret Hargrave.

  Fifteen minutes later the elevator doors opened and Phil walked to the checkout counter feeling competent and resourceful. Armed with the call number, he had navigated the dense stacks and found the book nestled on a shelf near the floor at the end of a long, dim row. He checked it out and left the building, whistling softly. Next time Caitlin Ciccone wants to talk about Shakespeare, he thought, I’ll be ready.

  The sign on the door read, “Central Administration: Library Personnel Only.” Caitlin knocked and waited. When no one answered, she opened the door tentatively and peeked inside.

  “Hello. Anybody there?” she called out in a soft voice. She hesitated, then stepped in and closed the door behind her.

  The office was empty. Hargrave’s secretary must be at lunch, she thought, trying to ignore the rumbling in her stomach and feeling envious of anyone who might be eating at the moment.

  At the end of the room was a door marked “Chief Curator: Private.” Caitlin approached and rapped on it lightly. Someone inside stirred and mumbled something, which she inferred was an invitation to enter. She opened the door.

  The lights were dim. In the center of the commodious room, a man lay perfectly still on a dark leather sofa. His face was pallid and his eyes were closed. With one hand he held his forehead as if he had a bad headache. The long, spidery fingers spread across the thinning hair on his scalp.

  “Mary, you can leave whatever it is on my desk,” he said. “I’m not feeling well right now. I probably should have heeded the doctor’s admonishment and recuperated at CHS for another night. Ah, well. Please, no calls or visitors for the next hour or so, all right?”

  “Sir,” Caitlin began, taking a step into the room, “I’m very sorry to disturb you but—”

  “Who are you?” he asked, opening his eyes. For a moment he stared at her, disoriented. Then he struggled to sit up straight and smooth his disheveled hair.

  “Please don’t get up,” she said, feeling guilty for disturbing him. “May I get you a glass of water or something?”

  “No, thank you. But perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me who you are and why you’re in my office?”

  Caitlin felt herself blush. “Oh, of course. It was impolite of me to barge in. I’m sorry. My name’s Caitlin Ciccone and I’m from the Holyfield Herald. I’m looking for Professor Harold Hargrave. That’s you, right?”

  “Ah-ha! I expected some kind of media circus,” Hargrave grumbled cantankerously. He looked up at Caitlin. “Well, I’m the man you’re looking for. You’re here, no doubt, to ask me about last night’s mugging.”

  “Yes, but I could come back some other time.”

  “Now that you’re here, you might as well stay. I suppose I can spare a few minutes.” Hargrave took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. “They say that suffering sells newspapers. Do you think that’s an accurate assessment of the fourth estate, Ms. Ciccone?”

  “I don’t know,” Caitlin said nervously. She felt she was being tested, but she wasn’t sure how or why. “What’s the fourth estate?”

  “Ah, I see that like so many journalists today, you are woefully unenlightened about your profession. By the end of the Middle Ages,” the librarian explained in a listless voice, “power was divided among three classes, or estates: the clergy, the nobility, and the commons, which included the lower class and the emerging bourgeoisie. The fourth estate came along after the invention of printing; it refers to those in your line of work, the public press. The term has also been variously applied to the army and to mobile vulgus—a Latin phrase meaning the fickle crowd, the frivolous and capricious masses, from which comes our word mob.”

  Hargrave paused and squinted at her. It seemed to Caitlin that he was trying to gauge something—perhaps the level of compassion or empathy or maybe plain stupidity—in her face.

  “But you didn’t come to hear a lecture,” he said finally. “I understand you’re just trying to do your job. Please have a seat.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Caitlin crossed the room and sat down in a plump wing chair. From her bag she removed a notebook and pen.

  “You don’t mind if I lie down while we do this, do you?” Hargrave asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you have enough light?”

  “Plenty, thank you.”

  The chief curator stretched out wearily on the couch, closed his eyes, and released a long sigh. An enigmatic smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. “Now then. Where would you like to begin?”

  Caitlin was relieved that Hargrave was being so amenable and compliant, but some intuitive voice told her to remain vigilant. “Let’s start with motives. Is there any reason to believe that someone is angry with you?”

  “Well, perhaps. But the last thing the college needs is for the Herald to start linking Teddy Prospero’s lawsuit and this regrettable assault. But I suppose paranoid conspiracy theories sell newspapers too.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Caitlin said. “When was the last time you saw this Teddy Prospero?”

  Chapter 16

  Poetry, Philosophy, and Pizza

  In Room 217 of Iowa Hall, in South Quad, Carmen Torres stood at the end of a Formica-topped seminar table, f
acing her students in English 112: An Introduction to Literature and Composition. The clock on the dreary beige wall read 4:32.

  On the blackboard behind her, written in a flowing, cursive hand, was a summary of the lecture she had just delivered: “The Well-Tempered Essay: (1) state your hypothesis; (2) substantiate your argument by citing evidence from the text; (3) strive for continuity and build toward synthesis; (4) refine and underscore your points in your conclusion.” To one side of these succinct directives were the phrases “subjectivity = bias + speculation” and “objectivity = impartiality + analysis.”

  Torres closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Then she slowly spread her arms and spoke:

  The Brain—is wider than the Sky—

  For—put them side by side

  The one the other will contain

  With ease—and You—beside—

  Each word of Emily Dickinson’s poem came out of Torres’s mouth fully energized, like a tongue of fire, and her students, their imaginations kindled, listened earnestly. Phil was mesmerized and guessed that this fervent eloquence was part of the reason the professor had earned the nickname Dragon Lady.

  The Brain is deeper than the sea—

  For—hold them—Blue to Blue

  The one the other will absorb—

  As Sponges—Buckets—do—

  The Brain is just the weight of God—

  For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—

  And they will differ—if they do—

  As Syllable from Sound—

  A protracted silence settled on the room as the twenty-odd freshmen—some sitting around the table, others occupying lecture chairs scattered along the walls—tried to comprehend what they had just heard. A student in the back of the room coughed. Another tapped the eraser end of a pencil on the seminar table.

  Phil fidgeted in his chair and stared at his handout. The poem seemed incoherent. How could a brain contain “the weight of God”? And how does a “syllable” differ from “sound”? What was Dickinson getting at?

  Phil glanced around the room. His timorous classmates were all diligently studying their handouts, studiously avoiding eye contact with Professor Torres, who had seen Phil look up. She smiled at him.

  “Phil?”

  Now the other students looked up, and Phil could feel their eyes on him. The entire class was waiting for his response.

  “Yes?”

  “Is that furrowed brow evidence of some profound insight into this perplexing poem, or are you just feeling ambivalent about speaking in class?”

  “Pardon me?”

  The class laughed. Phil perused the professor’s face. There was nothing malicious in her expression; on the contrary, her benign smile was full of encouragement. He realized she was just making a joke, trying to get him to loosen up.

  “Did anything in the poem strike you?” Torres asked.

  “Strike me? What do you mean?”

  “What do you think is the focus of the poem?”

  “Well, I’m not sure, really. It seems like a riddle to me.”

  “An astute observation. I couldn’t agree with you more. The riddle is a venerable form that many writers have exploited. Dickinson was especially fond of it.”

  Phil was relieved that Professor Torres had chosen to be so magnanimous in her interpretation of his admission of ignorance.

  “Does anyone else find this poem enigmatic?” she asked, trying to stimulate discussion.

  The class’s attention shifted toward the door. Phil looked over his shoulder.

  “Yes, Heather?”

  Heather had three silver earrings in each ear and flamboyant streaks of blue and orange meandering through her long, strawberry blond hair. A walking neon sign, Phil thought.

  “There’s a lot in this poem that puzzles me,” she said. “The ‘you’ in line four, especially the way you read it, seems to be referring to us. But how are we contained by a brain? Whose brain? And don’t we usually think of the brain as being inside the skull rather than outside?”

  “All pertinent questions,” replied Torres. “Can anyone respond to them?”

  Next to Phil, a wiry guy with curly hair raised his hand.

  “Basically, I would concur with Phil and Heather,” he began, squinting at his handout as if to look up would hamper his concentration. “But maybe what Dickinson is saying is that the brain is the power of the imagination or the power of poetry, and imagining something like the sea or the sky and putting it in a poem is a way of putting it in a container and containing it. And so when she tells us the brain contains the sea and the sky, she’s telling us her poem contains these things—and us as well, whenever we read it. And it comes alive even though she’s dead. We’re contained in it, trapped in it, like a coffin. It’s like she’s reaching out from the grave with her brain and—”

  The student’s burgeoning exegesis was cut short by two sharp, disconcerting buzzes from the speaker below the clock on the wall. The class, which had been seduced by this torrid, passionate train of thought, was now abruptly brought back to the present. Phil rubbed his eyes and yawned. It had been a long day of classes and orientation and errands.

  “What a nuisance!” exclaimed Torres, scowling at the buzzer. “God knows why we need to have our brains rattled at the end of every class. Jake,” she said, turning to the student who’d been interrupted, “that’s an interesting hypothesis you’re developing.”

  “Thanks, professor.”

  “How many of you think it could be developed further?”

  A few hands shot up around the room. Torres gauged the response and then continued. “Okay. Listen, everybody. This is the suggested topic for your first essay: Does the poem contain the reader or the reader contain the poem? I’d like three to four double-spaced pages. No novels, please—and no haikus, either. Remember, there are no correct answers, only articulate, coherent, well-substantiated ones. Your papers are due Friday. If you don’t like the topic, see me in my office tomorrow morning and we’ll come up with something else. If you have any questions, I’ll be here for a few more minutes.”

  Phil carried his full tray of food toward the round table in the middle of Steinbach Commons where Jimmy, Chris, Lucy, and Juliet were sitting. They were engrossed in conversation and seemed to be in high spirits.

  “Why, Mr. McKnight, so glad you could join us,” Jimmy said with characteristic mock formality.

  “Phil,” said Juliet, patting the table at the place next to her, “we saved you a seat.”

  “Thanks, Juliet. Hi, everybody.”

  Phil parked himself next to Juliet. Chris—without a word of warning, but continuing to chew a mouthful of spaghetti—raised a hand above his head, ready for a high five. Phil raised his hand to reciprocate. Their palms met with a robust thwack.

  “Juliet was just regaling us with an anecdote about her day,” Jimmy told Phil. He turned to Juliet. “Would you care to finish your story?”

  As Juliet picked up where she had left off, Phil began eating with alacrity the plentiful helping of spaghetti and meatballs on his plate.

  “And to make matters worse,” Juliet was saying, “I’m running around fifteen minutes late. When I finally find the Calhoun Humanities Complex, it turns out 201 is a lecture hall. The professor hasn’t shown up yet. There must be almost two hundred rowdy students packed into the place, and I’m thinking, ‘This is supposed to be an introductory philosophy course? There can’t be that many people interested in Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. I must be in the wrong place.’

  “But just then this funny-looking white-haired man comes hobbling into the hall, and I think, ‘This guy is the professor?’ He’s short and shabbily dressed and kind of hunched over. He looks as if he’s carrying around this great invisible weight on his back. He makes his way slowly through the crowd and up to the podium, and then he just stands at the lectern for a couple of minutes, wiping his glasses with his handkerchief, patiently waiting for everybody to calm down.

  “Finally h
e starts speaking and it wasn’t at all what I expected. I thought he would have this timid, inaudible voice and be incoherent, and I’d be struggling to take notes on all these complex metaphysical theories that I couldn’t even hear. But instead he was totally comprehensible and his voice was incredibly resonant. It was mesmerizing. The entire hall was silent. He lectured for forty-five minutes straight, without any notes and without a bit of ambiguity. Everything he said was lucid. And he was intense, as though he were bearing witness to some ordeal he had survived. I never really thought ideas could have so much significance and be so relevant.”

  “Sounds like your classic eccentric professor,” Chris said.

  “Or some kind of ancient oracle,” Lucy said. “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Professor Schwartz.”

  “Does this Professor Schwartz have opinions or is he just an illustrious orator?” Jimmy asked.

  Juliet ignored Jimmy’s facetious tone. “There were two main points to his lecture. He opened with the contention that the unexamined life isn’t worth living, that if you don’t really look at and choose what you do, then you’re just reacting slavishly to circumstance.”

  “Some people,” Chris interjected, “believe it’s the other way around—that it’s precisely when you examine your life and see emptiness and failure that you decide to jump out a window. To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, people can’t take too much reality. It’s better for them not to think, just to do.”

  “Ah, yes,” Jimmy cried, “to be or to do—that is the vexatious question that has plagued philosophers forever. Sartre said, ‘To do is to be.’ Camus said, ‘To be is to do.’ But I think Frank Sinatra had it right when he sang, ‘Do be do be do.’”