Fall Semester (3 page)

Chapter 3

Malcolm

M
alcolm recognized that there were some perks to teaching at a virtually open-admissions university that was understaffed and held low expectations. One distinct benefit was that curriculum in a literature course, so long as it remained within the genre suggested in the course title, was really a matter of a professor’s taste.

If one were teaching a course on Romanticism and wanted to spend a day on Wordsworth and two weeks on Coleridge, there would be no objections. Malcolm’s version of Realism and Naturalism was always a bit biased towards the Naturalists; he’d always had a preference for Dreiser.

But the best teaching opportunity was the special topics course. Professors set their own perimeters and designed their own curricula based on a tightly focused niche in their areas. Over the years, Malcolm and his colleagues had concocted some exceptional and refreshing offerings. Gus Russo had enjoyed the popular appeal of the students with his “The Dystopia in Science Fiction” class. John Costello had been filling sections each spring for his “Afterlives: Literature Beyond the Grave” course.

Malcolm’s choice epitomized his affinity for his area of expertise: “Magic Realism in Latin American Literature.” It was a 400-level course, so undergraduate seniors—as well as graduate students—could enroll.

Most of them were already familiar with a Lorca story or two and perhaps had read
Love in the Time of Cholera
, and surely, most of the undergraduate girls were hoping for a semester of
Like Water for Chocolate
, but occasionally, a student took the class simply to fill a requirement, and Malcolm relished his or her discovery of the mystical, the sexual, the primal souls of the genre. And Malcolm was careful to include as much history, geography, and folklore as he could. It wasn’t only the local students who fell short there. For most of his students, everything south of Mexico was a continental blur. Malcolm could count his Latin American courses as viable successes in contrast with much of the rest of his life.

And luckily for Malcolm, his Magic Realism class was his last demand on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it left him self-satisfied and gave him something to look forward to, which in the five day stretch from Thursday to Tuesday had tangible value.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he taught a 400-level American poetry class, from Bradstreet to Whitman. He counted it a great frustration that the semester started with a serious effort on his part to get some of his female students to acknowledge that, although Bradstreet was the first woman to publish her poetry in Colonial America, she was not a poet of extreme merit. As far as Malcolm could see it, being first was Bradstreet’s only real claim on American literature.

Of course, Helene Coulter insisted on an argument.

“But don’t you think, Dr. Vashal, that such a perspective sounds a bit male chauvinistic?” She’d shot her hand up and started her diatribe before Malcolm called on her.

Why were his brightest female students always harping on chauvinism and misogyny all the time? It made them seem so one-dimensional.

“Why should that be a chauvinistic observation, Helene?” he countered. “Had a female poet of higher caliber been published at the same time, Bradstreet might have faded into obscurity by now.”

Helene was shaking her head before he finished.

“Let’s not deal in hypotheticals, Dr. Vashal.” She dove right in. “Bradstreet is a product of her time, of Colonial America. Just look at the things she wrote about—the demands of the household, the children. She captures the voice of thousands of early American women.” Helene puffed up like a righteous matron herself. “What she lacks in style, she more than makes up for in content. To dismiss her as a poet in her own right, just because she was the first woman to publish seems petty and—if I may say so—sexist.”

Malcolm gritted his teeth.

“What is poetry without style? Without beauty? It is merely a record of trite and useless experiences. A journal. A grocery list. A weather report.” He wasn’t quite shouting. “To excuse Bradstreet her style is to concede a terrific handicap, and that, Helene, is sexist!”

Helene’s nostrils flared, but she was beaten. Saying that Bradstreet lacked poetic style was, to Malcolm’s glee, as good as admitting that she wasn’t a legitimate poet. He managed to move them forward in the syllabus.

His other two classes weren’t nearly as stimulating, sophomore-level American lit surveys. Most of the students weren’t English majors and harbored a kind of sluggish resentment at being required to fulfill 12 hours of English credits.

On the first day of the term, Malcolm warned them to drop out of his section while there was still time to enroll in another. Anyone who didn’t complete the reading assignments was bound to fail, he told them flatly. And anyone who didn’t know the difference between an essay and a Facebook post would be used as an example for the rest of the class.

This speech usually dispensed with a good seven or eight students, bringing his numbers down into the upper teens. And this worked to everyone’s advantage because he kept his promise—gave reading quizzes daily, read samples of their writing aloud, in short, forced them to learn something. It was effective, if occasionally unpleasant.

Two weeks
into the semester, two of his remaining 19 students in his 8 a.m. MWF section dropped the course.

“Man, you’re a dick.”

Malcolm looked to the back of the classroom to see a hulking frat boy-type scowling at him. The kid wore a Hog’s Breath Saloon T-shirt that was at least two sizes too small. The bangs of his bleach-blond hair curled in front of his eyes, held in place by the back strap of his baseball cap.

“Excuse me?” Malcolm asked in a voice that was patronizingly calm. He wondered if the kid had enough guts to repeat himself now that Malcolm met his eyes. If he did, Dr. Vashal wouldn’t kick him out.

This outburst followed the departure of one girl who’d become upset when Malcolm had read an excerpt of her response “paper” on Jonathan Edwards.

“’Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a wrong book,’” he’d read, halting over the girl’s pedestrian handwriting. “’No one should be treated the way this preacher treats them. This preacher should be fired and replaced with a new preacher because God is loving, like it says in Psalm 100.’ Come on, people,” he pleaded. “No one in his/her sophomore year of college writes this poorly. ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is a wrong book?’
A wrong book
?” He’d affected his most incredulous look and shook his head. “It’s not a book. It’s a sermon. Can a sermon be wrong? It’s
in-an-i-mate
. It can’t think or act. Your dispute—” he glanced a the name on the paper, “Ms. Derouen, is with Jonathan Edwards, who, please note, can’t be fired since he has been dead nearly 250 years.”

At this point, a girl in the second row bit her lip and sunk in her chair.

“Is this yours?” Malcolm asked, holding the paper over his head. The girl nodded, flushed from her neck to her temples.

“Well, it absolutely needs to be rewritten.”

He walked the paper over to her, and when she didn’t reach out to take it, he placed it on her desk.

“Summarize the sermon first, then state your thesis condemning Edwards for his harshness that you find to be counter-Christian,” he advised, standing over her, but she wouldn’t look up at him. “And use that psalm. That’s good support, but for God’s sake, you aren’t writing some absurd op-ed piece for your high school paper. Use a little effort and clarity. Go to the writing lab if need be.”

The girl continued to stare straight ahead until Malcolm moved back to the front of the class and resumed handing out the rest of the papers. But then she swept her books into her arms, crumpled the response paper in her fist, and headed for the door. She flung the paper into the wastebasket with enough force that it bounced out again as she crossed the threshold.

Malcolm pretended to ignore her dramatic exit and handed back the last two papers before Hogsbreath Saloon spoke up.

“I said you’re a dick.” The kid squinted his eyes, looking fearless. Malcolm placed his hands on his hips.

“Well, let me say, that is one of the most articulate, profound, and original observations I’ve ever heard in all of my 10 years in the classroom, Mr….?” Malcolm struggled to keep a straight face.

“Jenkins,” he said it like a dare.

“Jenkins?”

“Yeah. Mitch Jenkins. It shouldn’t be too hard to spell when you write me up.” The boy started to gather his books. Malcolm affected surprise.

“I wasn’t planning on writing you up. You’re entitled to your opinion. That’s your business. My business is getting you to deliver it with some semblance of sophistication.”

The kid rose.

“Dude, your job is to teach us, but all you know how to do is insult people.”

“You are incorrect,” Malcolm said, half glad that this punk was one less he had to whip into shape, half wishing he would stay. “Every student who has the will to improve in my class improves.” He cocked an eyebrow at his opponent. “Sometimes beyond even my expectations.”

Mitch Jenkins gave Malcolm a look of disgust and strode for the door.

“Do you have the will to improve, Mr. Jenkins?”

“Screw you, asshole.”

“Sheer eloquence,” Malcolm sang before forcing the class’s attention back to Jonathan Edwards.

Malcolm learned that the two students had officially withdrawn from his class the next afternoon—when Dorothy requested a meeting with him. He knocked on her open door sill after his Magic Realism class dismissed.

“You wanted to see me?”

Dorothy sat at her desk with her glasses at the end of her nose, reading what looked like an examination blue book. A straight plume of smoke from her cigarette rose up to Malcolm’s eye level before kinking sideways and joining a cloud at the ceiling.

“Why don’t you shut the door, Malcolm.” Dorothy said before taking her eyes from the booklet.

Malcolm gritted his teeth, blew a breath out of his nose, and shut the door.

“Sit down.” She gestured to the brown vinyl swivel across from her desk.

“Yes, Dorothy?” Malcolm droned, aware of the defensive tone in just those two words.

Dorothy took off her reading glasses and held them in her hands, eyeing him.

She’s such a power-happy old bag.

“I’ve received two calls—complaints—about you in the last 24 hours.” She leveled her eyes at him. “Do you want to tell me what that’s about?”

No.

Malcolm heaved a sigh as though already exhausted with the whole matter.

“I assume you are referring to the two sophomores who threw individual temper tantrums before storming out of class yesterday?” He folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head to the right. Dorothy frowned.

“What do you mean? Temper tantrums?”

“Well, the Derouen girl—”

“Angelica,” Dorothy inserted.

“Whatever. I guess she didn’t want to rewrite her paper, so she threw the damn thing into the trash and left in a histrionic huff.

“She said that you humiliated her.”

Malcolm shook his head.

“No, she did that herself. I merely read a passage from her response paper that needed serious revision.”

Dorothy glanced down at a pink phone message pad.

“She said that you said ‘nobody writes this bad in their sophomore year of college.’”

“’Poorly.’ I said ‘poorly,’” Malcolm stressed, using his thumbs and forefingers as asterisks. “And I said ‘his or her sophomore year,’ not ‘their sophomore year.’”

Dorothy narrowed her eyes at him but bit her top lip as though trying to wring out a smile.

“So, minus the grammatical errors, that’s what you said?”

Malcolm sat back in his chair.

“Yes,….yes, but that was before she was identified as the author of the paper,” he explained.

“And who identified her?”

Malcolm tried to recall.

“I did, mostly,…but I told her how to fix the thing, and I encouraged her to get some help at the writing lab. It wasn’t a totally hopeless case,” he defended.

Dorothy picked up her cigarette, tapped the ash, and took a long drag.

“What about Mitch Jenkins?”

Malcolm rolled his eyes.

“It had nothing to do with him. Maybe he likes the girl; I don’t know, but he really should have stayed in the class. He has potential.”

Dorothy sucked her cigarette again, letting the smoke out slowly, looking down at her desk before she spoke.

“Malcolm, I know that your teaching style is somewhat…aggressive—”

“Well, I have standards,” he interrupted, evenly.

She glared at him.

“We all have standards, Dr. Vashal.” She was going for authoritative, but Malcolm thought that now
she
sounded defensive. He suppressed a smirk. “As I was saying, your teaching style is aggressive, sometimes too aggressive for our student population.”

“It has to be to compensate for what they walk in here lacking.” He felt anger outweigh his disgust and was glad. “When was the last time you taught a 100 or 200 level course, Dorothy? It’s scary what they don’t know and don’t care to learn. If we let them coast, this school will be graduating students who are just this side of literate.”

She began shaking her head.

“Malcolm, I’m not talking about letting them coast—and it has not been that long since I taught freshman and sophomore courses.” Her eyes flashed when she said this, again on the defensive. “But it is your approach that concerns me.”

“So what do you want? Should I give out candy and gold stars to those who can actually write an essay and put little frowny faces on the papers that can’t even pass for bathroom graffiti?”

Dorothy pursed her lips and worked her jaw. Her eyes locked on his for what seemed like minutes. When she spoke, her voice was low.

“I would feel much more encouraged, Dr. Vashal, if you showed more emotional self-control.”

Bitch.

Malcolm stared back at her, fighting the urge to lash back. To tell her what a joke her English department was. To tell her that she should be ashamed of herself for cajoling students who wanted to be cheated out of an education. To tell her that what the school really needed was more “aggressiveness” like his in the faculty and administration—especially the latter. But he just held her gaze, waited for her to finish.