We leave at 7:00 pm tonight (Friday) and arrive in Brisbane Sunday 10:25 am. Two solid weeks of vacation. Whoopee!
I don't know until I get there what the blogging status will be, so in case you don't here from me, here's something from the archives to while away your time. From my first posts in January 2005, a couple chapters from my unpublished novel, for anyone interested in understanding why Shakespeare is great. Cheers!
****
Chapter 8****Professor Bendbridge was lecturing from behind a podium using lecture notes and did not look up when I entered. Only half the seats were taken. He wore a worn gray tweed jacket, faded blue shirt, and a darker blue, thin tie. His mottled gray-white hair splayed out in a classic Einstein. Seeing that, I was ready to submit a final report to his daughter and begin wining and dining her, but I thought it over and decided to gather a few more facts.
A handful of students watched me enter and sit at the back. They looked like first-year students. Bored, fidgety, a couple actually sleeping. One handsome young woman with short black hair, milk chocolate skin, wearing a black dress and black lipstick, had her hand raised, arm waving slightly, supporting it with her other hand. She looked like she had been waiting awhile.
"...presents the reader with many challenges, not the least of which is Elizabethan diction and Shakespeare's poetic compression. But every reader willing to take the time will discover a bounty of humanistic treasures." Bendbridge stopped and looked at her over his silver reading glasses.
"Yes?" One word conveyed his lack of good cheer. Questions were not encouraged.
"I'm sorry, professor, but I just don't get it," she said, exuding the sweet arrogance and mimicry of intellectual youth. "Shakespeare represents the view of the classic white-male eurocentric patriarchy, one that's hundreds of years old, in a dated vocabulary that's hard to understand. What's his relevance today? I mean, what could Shakespeare possibly have to say to me, a Black-Hispanic lesbian?"
As she spoke, Bendbridge's eyes glazed and his head lowered slowly until he was staring down at his podium. He gave every appearance of being an old man in constant mental and physical pain. Several students murmured at least partial agreement. The professor stood silent for almost a full minute before turning to the blackboard. He picked up the chalk with a trembling hand and wrote two words on the board—chair and stool. He turned and stared at her. He spoke softly.
"Would you say, Miss....."
"Ms. Powers."
"Would you say,
Mzzz Powers, that the words chair and stool distinguish two similar things?"
"Uh, I think...yes, of course."
"And do you think,
Mzzz Powers, that these represent a distinction worth preserving? For example, if I were to ask you to bring me a
chair and you brought me a
stool, would we have reason to believe there existed between us some failure of communication?"
"Yes," she said confidently.
"What would be the nature of the failure?"
"Uhh...a chair normally has a back for support while a stool does not."
"Good. So you concede,
Mzzz Powers, that vocabulary helps us more clearly distinguish the specific differences between like things?"
"Yes."
"Is it a good thing to distinguish more clearly the specific differences between like things?"
"I suppose."
"And that it would be better to possess a mind with a larger vocabulary than a mind with a smaller one?" Although he still spoke softly, the air began to thicken.
"But just because someone has a better vocabulary doesn't mean that they are a better person." She spoke less confidently now.
"
Mzzz Powers," he said a little bit louder. "If we are going to understand each other, it is best that you respond to what I actually say rather than what you think I am saying. I did not say anything about a better vocabulary or anything to do with being a better person. I asked if you thought it better to possess a mind with a larger vocabulary rather than a mind with a smaller vocabulary. Especially since you have already conceded that it is a good thing to more clearly distinguish the specific differences between like things. Or do you see another way of distinguishing specific differences in ways other than a versatile and specific vocabulary?"
"No."
"
Mzzz Powers, suppose you and I walked into a garden, and while I was a novice in gardening, you were an expert gardener who had a command of the technical language and knowledge of botany and gardening. Would our experience of a particular garden be any different?"
"Uh...." She was beginning to sense the trap being set for her. She tried to avoid it. "Yes, a little. We would both see the same thing, but I would probably be more knowledgeable about it if you asked me questions."
"No,
Mzzz Powers," he said preparing to close the trap. His face was reddening. His voice got louder. "I'm afraid you are entirely mistaken. We would not be seeing the same garden at all. I would merely see pretty flowers, maybe some trees and grass. I may be able to tell the difference between a rose and a tulip, but that is all. I would see the mere surface of the garden. It's mere appearance. But you, Mzzz Powers...You would see an entirely different garden. You would be able to penetrate its depths. You would be able to recognize not only the different flowers—the carnations and snap dragons and pansies and hyacinths and lilies—you would also recognize the relative health of each of those flowers. You would recognize any pests or diseased plants. You would be able to spot where each plant and flower was in its life cycle. By their arrangement and care, you would know their past. In some cases, whether or not they were recently planted. You would know how much the person who tends the garden knows about his or her occupation. You would also know the difference between annuals and perennials. And this knowledge would allow you to see not only the present garden, but the future of that garden. You could predict its course and suggest actions to alter that course. No,
Mzzz Powers, you and I would not see the same garden at all. Because a true and rich vocabulary opens one to higher levels of perceptual and conceptual awareness. A specific vocabulary rewards you with a greater awareness, and the possibility of a deep causal awareness. The ability to distinguish true causes and their array of effects. And, were you so inclined, you would naturally begin seeing the world in terms of the garden. You would begin constructing metaphors and similes, perhaps even analogies, connecting life to that garden through an array of subtle similarities."
He paused and surveyed the room. Here was the theater and the time was now for his signature solo performance that built in power. Mzzz Powers had lost the desire to respond.
"Do you know the number of distinct words in the average person's vocabulary,
Mzzz Powers? About three thousand words, assuming that all forms of a word—like
run,
ran,
running—counted as one. Three thousand words, enough to get an average person through the day, and through their lifetime. Do you know how many distinct words are in the King James Version of the Bible? Around four thousand three hundred, not counting names. That means that all of the history and philosophy and meaning, all of the variety of ideas expressed in the Bible, can be transmitted in a vocabulary of forty-three hundred words. Enough to challenge the average reader. Soon we will get to John Milton's Paradise Lost. John Milton commanded an incredible vocabulary. He mastered several languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and French. He wrote not only epic poetry but many rigorous political tracts. Some of his sentences are so powerful and complex in their vocabulary, grammar, and meaning that they contain several dozen clauses. John Milton was a genius who mastered and crafted meaning out of a vocabulary of almost eight thousand words, more than almost all living writers."
He paused, and looked out through slitted eyes.
"But Shakespeare," he said and chuckled. "Shakespeare exists in his own genus. When a rhetorician reads Shakespeare, she," he glared the sarcastic concession at Mzzz Powers, "points out that Shakespeare was a master rhetorician, who knew not only all the technical terms, ancient and modern, but was a master practitioner who applied that knowledge throughout his poems and plays, in ways that have stood as examples for generations to follow. When a gardener reads Shakespeare, she says that Shakespeare must have been a gardener, because he not only displays the technical terminology of botany and gardening and herbology, he demonstrates the kind of knowledge that comes from working in or studying closely a sophisticated English garden. When a lawyer reads Shakespeare, she tells us that Shakespeare must have had a legal education because he not only displays an astonishing range and accuracy with his use of legal terms, be he also commands an understanding of the history and philosophy of law. And you can point to other professions: actor, soldier, physician, courtier, historian, politician."
He paused, taking a breath, and when he began again, the tempo and volume increased.
"But that's not all. In his plays, he explores the range and depth of human emotions and experience. He explores love, but not just the young romantic love of Romeo and Juliet. He explores love between siblings, and parent and child, and comrades in arms, young love, middle-aged love, old love. Love between the low and the low, the low and the high, the high and the high, false love, true love, jaded love, betrayed love, self-love, love of good and love of indulgence. Like turning a diamond in the light, he explores every facet of love and hate and envy and greed and lust and jealousy and innocence and sweetness and revenge, and a hundred subtle emotional and intellectual states of which you have yet to take conscious stock. His capacious mind wandered everywhere, and in almost every way he has arrived there before you have, articulating it with a mastery that leaves later writers sick with wondering what territory of the human heart, human intellect, and human action is left to explore. He seems to have experienced the full range and depth of common human experience and encapsulated that experience more beautifully than any other. Shakespeare,
Mzzz Powers, displays a vocabulary of over twenty-two thousand words, almost three times Milton's vocabulary, and you wonder why you find reading him challenging, and you dare to wonder if Shakespeare has anything to teach you?"
She sat frozen, unable to respond to the blast that had everyone stunned. In the spacious silence, the professor began speaking softly again, with a sardonic smile.
"May I suggest to you,
Mzzz Powers, that you have a choice. You can continue to dwell on the surface of life, holding up external appearances as if they were everything, parroting the rhymes and rhythms of a politicized consciousness, flaccid and without true self-animation, smug in the knowledge that you have comfortably given yourself over to a group numbness, submitting to mere external authority—or maybe, just maybe, with personal effort, a healthy skepticism, and a sense of individual exploration, you may become your own authority, by expanding your mind in a constant effort to comprehend Shakespeare's. May I suggest that until you are well along into that journey, your mind and emotions will remain susceptible to every sophistic thought that knocks on your door, seeking to enslave you with its mere appearance of originality. It's time,
Mzzz Powers, that you begin feeding on Shakespeare rather than on that damned fast food."
He paused. The wall clock read 12:30 exactly.
"That's all for today."
****Chapter 9 ****The students couldn't get out of that room fast enough. I joined them and waited outside the door. Bendbridge came out and gave me a grim look.
"You must be the man my daughter told me about."
I caught a slight whiff of whiskey. "Mackenzie's my name, Professor. Can we speak in your office?"
I didn't offer to shake hands. He grimaced and gestured for me to follow. He walked like a man soon in need of a walker. Bent forward, somewhat lurching. We made our way to another building, passing Rodin's The Burghers of Calais, six life-size reproductions reflecting the soon-to-be-programmed aspirations of many new students.
He opened a ground-floor door into a stuffy, cramped office, overloaded with books and papers and other strange piles on his enormous desk that barely left room for a pair of wood chairs, his on rollers, the other without. One small window with slitted blinds allowed in slivers of sunlight. A petite, pudgy woman sat in a chair. She turned as the door opened. Black-dyed hair with stylish silver streaks on the sides, olive-wrinkled skin, no makeup around brown eyes. Her eyes were moist and red from crying, though her cheeks were dry.
"Tom, I...."
"I have a guest at the moment," he said, stepping aside to reveal me standing in the doorway. "I'll come to your office when we're done." He spoke sharply, impatiently.
She rose with her head down and stepped past me without looking up. Short and plump. Pale, translucent skin from spending too much time indoors.
I sat in the chair she vacated. Stepping around the desk, he sat in his chair, staring at me, waiting for some justification for my taking his time to view me through the folds of his slitted lizard eyes. Age makes time more precious.
"My daughter said she wanted to hire a private detective," he said. He said it with about the same respect I received from many members of law enforcement. "You don't look like one. They normally have enough sense to wear a suit and tie. But then, you're my first and all I have to go on is Bogart. Perhaps you can apply your ratiocinative skills and tell me what you thought of the short lesson I just gave to one of my students."
I guessed him to be in his late-fifties, not all that old, but his attitude added ten years of ugly. I liked him. His wall was one that required burrowing from the inside. I was good at that. It was a risk. But I suspected he had little tolerance for indirectness and sweet-talk.
"The stereotype is one of relying as much on fists as on brains." I smiled the smile of a military nurse readying an enema bag. "I understand. I'd be happy to tell you what I thought of your nuanced performance, Poorfessor. I enjoyed your brief exordium on vocabulary framed in the Socratic Method. But I must qualify my enjoyment by pointing out that you did what Socrates would never do. You turned his method away from a mutual exploration of truth and into a bludgeon of ridicule. While I would tend to agree with your implied assessment that the girl has been taken in by a rather jingoistic superficiality, how many young people her age have escaped that? I would presume, Poorfessor, that you subscribe to the classic definition of a liberal education, the education of a free citizen. That education leads one out of the slavery of ignorance into the freedom of knowledge. And that your job, Poorfessor, is to aid the ignorant, like that young woman, in a manner that enhances her self-examination, increases her desire to expand her scope, and puts her feet solidly on a path that leads out of mere ignorance and acquired superficialities."
I paused long enough to emit a short barking sigh.
"But I am afraid, Poorfessor, that today you have failed. Instead of opening a door, you may well have welded it shut. Through your ridicule, Poorfessor, you have provided her with an excuse, not only to dismiss you, an obviously insecure ethnocentric white male only interested in keeping women on eggshells, especially of the Black-Hispanic-lesbian variety, but also to dismiss Shakespeare as well. In my view, Poorfessor, you have committed an intellectual crime. Rather than lead her out of her ignorance, you have confirmed her in it. Unless she's made of sterner stuff than most freshmen living away from home for the first time. And because you ridiculed her publicly, you have effectively shut down the entire class. Who would dare put a thoughtful question to you now, after you have revealed yourself to be a rhetorical rocket launcher?"
* * *
His face grew red, his eyes slitted even more. I had achieved one mission objective.
"I know I don't look like a much of a sophisticated rocket launcher myself, Poorfessor. But I'm curious; how does it feel?" I gave him my patented sardonic smile.
He didn't answer. Several more creases appeared on his forehead. He stood up and walked over to the window, looking blasted. Good.
"But there is a way out," I said, transitioning to my second mission objective. "You could devote your next class to self-humiliation. Blow up your own authority. Allow them time to have at you with their explosives, which they will likely use, but more gently, after you have used your own on yourself more ruthlessly. Devastate yourself. You could then use the rest of your class to rebuild your ethos into one of openness and humility. You might actually get through to some of them. You can even rotate that diamond of Shakespeare to reveal the facets of humiliation and draw out some examples, since we already know that nobody has explored the variety of emotional states associated with humiliation and their consequent value in improving character with the exquisite precision of Shakespeare. Too bad the spring quarter is about over."
I waited. After a minute of silence, he looked at me with a raised bushy eyebrow. I'd won the first round.
"Where did you receive your education?"
"Redding, California."
"There is no university in such a place."
I shrugged. "When I was eight years old, my parents bought me an old set of Britannica's The Great Books of the Western World. You know, that 54-volume set you see in finer used books stores? The one that looks nice in the home but nobody ever reads? The first volume outlines a ten-year study plan. I'm the only person I know who has ever actually put himself through it. At first my mother tried to keep up with me. Later my father took over. I finished it by the time I was eighteen. You can imagine how out of place I felt in the small public schools in Redding. The local community college was no better. I tried Chico State University for a couple of semesters and then left for love and marriage. After a year of that, I joined the U.S. Army. I learned how to use my brains and my fists. I now have enough of an education to teach myself. I still read a great deal. And I pay attention."
He gave me an odd look. He didn't crack. He held on to his anger. I didn't tell him about my Master's at George Washington University. Security Policy Studies. It always led to questions that I refused to answer.
"You don't look military."
"I get that a lot." Members of my particular branch of the military preferred being underestimated. That perception has helped us achieve more mission objectives, often without our targets knowing who did what, or how.
"Let's get on with this," he said, abruptly sitting down. "What do you want to know?"
"Tell me why your daughter is concerned about you."
"Undoubtedly she has told you that. Why should I...? Oh, I see. Multiply your sources to crosscheck information. Fine. Keli is concerned that I am participating in a marginal group of zealots who see conspiracy everywhere. She thinks I have been sold a bill of goods and that they are taking advantage of my reputation in the academic community to make unwarranted inroads into the hearts and minds of gullible students. So I assume your job is to investigate me and them for signs of idiocy and senility and the kinds of mold that can grow in an intellectually insular environment. The fact is, Mr....?"
I handed him my card.
He read it and then eyed me in a way I'd seen countless times. "Mercedes Macintyre Mackenzie?"
"A literary collision," I said. "One survivor. Most people call me Mac."
He didn't laugh. "The fact is, Mr. Mackenzie, my daughter is partially correct in her assessment. I leave it to you to determine if she is completely correct."
Ugly but sensible. "She wants me to investigate this organization. What do you call it?"
"The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship," he said. "SOF for short."
I made a note of the name. "She also wants me to investigate Shakespeare. Ferret out the truth."
He actually attempted to construct a smile, but the architecture collapsed. "She believes that a private detective can determine the truth about who wrote the plays?" he said. "Amusing. I suppose you would like my help?"
"I'm sure you can recommend the most persuasive books to read. People to talk to. I'd also be interested in any critiques of your Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship."
"Your timing is impeccable, Mr. Mackenzie. There is an SOF conference this weekend in Carmel at the White Sands Hotel. I will be delivering a paper that will rock the Shakespeare establishment, and I will be engaging in a debate with Professor Raven Teagis of Harvard. He's out here doing research at Berkeley. Calling it a debate is rather misleading. He does not debate. He merely ridicules. Like all Stratfordians. That is what they have been reduced to."
I wrote as he talked. "Stratfordians?"
"Those who believe in the myth that Shakespeare," he pronounced it Shaksper, "of Stratford, that illiterate country boy, was the author of these magnificent plays. I number among the Oxfordians, who have demonstrated that only an educated Englishman of the nobility could have written those plays. Our man is Edward De Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, the first earl of the realm under Elizabeth." He had turned on his oration voice. Louder, deeper. He sounded snobbishly oracular.
"Elizabeth Tudor."
"That's right."
I decided against pulling out the paper at this time.
"She knew Oxford was Shakespeare?"
He gave me a Mona Lisa smile. "Oh, I would say Elizabeth knew more than history has chosen to record."
"Such as?"
"Let's just say that there is plenty of explosive material that would shock, not only your average Englishman, but also the English government. They would not be happy with that material becoming public."
I waited.
"Mr. Mackenzie, I realize you want to put me in the conspiracy nut box. But before I condemn myself in your eyes by explaining prematurely what I have discovered, perhaps you ought to do a little background reading first."
"Okay. If I were to read, say, two or three books on the subject, which do you think would be most helpful?" I asked.
He got up and pulled a book from a bookshelf. "I will presume that you return books that are loaned to you, Mr. Mackenzie. For background, you should first read Thomas Looney's Shakespeare 'Identified'." He pronounced it Loney.
The book was old and thick. I checked the date. 1920. "This seems a bit old. Has there been nothing more recently published?"
"Anything recent will be available at the conference. You're holding the true foundation of this movement. That will give you enough to chew on."
"Thank you, professor. I was wondering. What real difference does it make? I mean, we have the plays. If you are right, they've survived hundreds of years without the world knowing the true author. Does it really matter who wrote the plays?"
Bendbridge stood with his hands on his desk and took a deep breath.
* * *
"Does it really matter who you are, Mr. Mackenzie? Does it matter at all that others are able to attach your actions to you? I think it does. Identity clarifies reality. Confusion over identity causes many of the ills that plague our planet. Those who identify themselves and others primarily with skin color or ethnicity, or some other superficial characteristic that supplants their essential humanity, have caused horrible strife. People who have their identities captured with programmatic ideologies have voluntarily participated in mass slaughter. Millions of school children have been led to believe that their education, their life, and their experience make no difference when it comes to writing great poetry or great literature. In some areas, it is true that extraordinary things can be achieved without training. We have idiot savants who are math geniuses. However, no idiot savant has even written great literature. No one without extraordinary access to learning has written, not just one work, but a whole series, a whole lifetime of works that marks an experienced genius. To believe in the Stratford myth is to believe in a kind of divine grace that simply has no example in any other life lived in this world."
He straightened up and crinkled his face at me as if I were a student in his class.
"Great poets, great writers experience the life reflected in their works. Their works represent a kind of unconscious psychobiography. They have lived their ideas and the passions. And Shakespeare above all other writers has the ideas and the passions. His life must necessarily have been one of leisure, one that allowed him the time, the learning, the experience, to live the life we see reflected in the plays. To believe otherwise is to denigrate learning, to marginalize experience, to sideline the necessary ore mined for a great life lived. A life worth reworking into fiction. Look at all the great authors, Dante, Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, Faulkner, Joyce. Their works speak of their lives, reveal intimate glimpses into their experiences, expose the state of their being. A great author lives the life that in one way or the other is revealed in great works. Not literal autobiography, perhaps. Rather an autobiography of mind, experience, and learning. But if you listen to Stratfordians, Shakespeare is the one great exception. A man of no significant experience, no significant learning. In fact in all documented biographical details, he is an insignificant man, his an insignificant life. All I have to say to that, Mr. Mackenzie, is horseshit. Pure unadulterated horseshit."
Thus endeth the lesson.
"I see," I said. "Thank you. Your daughter tells me that you were converted to this new author within the last couple of years. Care to tell me specifically what made you change?"
"Do you like a good mystery, Mr. Mackenzie?"
"I'm a private detective, Professor."
"Then you should be able to appreciate this. Who wrote the works of Shakespeare is the greatest of all literary mysteries. He is acknowledged as the greatest writer in the English language, perhaps in any language. You will find him quoted more often than the Bible. He has influenced every art. And his plays are still performed everywhere in the world today, 400 years after they were written. And yet, many intelligent scholars still ask one simple question: Who was he?"
"That's interesting, Professor, but that doesn't tell me what made you change."
He sighed as he reseated himself. "Young man, I don't have the time right now to give you what has taken others years to deduce. If you are as intelligent as you seem to think you are, then after reading those books and listening carefully this weekend, you should be able to figure it out. Let's just say that I don't give a damn about academic reputations, mine or anyone else's. And perhaps because of that, I can see where other orthodox scholars are blind. Now run along and do your studies. We can talk in a week or two, after you have digested the basics."
I changed my mind. I pulled out the ripped note, unfolded it, and placed it on his desk. He stared at it before picking it up and putting it away in his drawer.
"I see my daughter has become a snoop." He looked up at me. "There are always cranks, Mr. Mackenzie. Cranks who refuse to let go of their cherished fixations. If you want to understand what this...disturbed person is concerned about, come to my lecture Friday. I assure you that there is nothing sinister here. I am in no danger."
"I'll do that. One last question, Professor." I pretended to look at my notes. "Would you say you have a drinking problem?"
He jerked out of his chair, uglier, redder, angrier. "That's none of your damn business. Now I have an appointment to keep. Get out."
Class dismissed.
