Professor X Read Online Free

healthier environment than college? A middle-aged professor in a polo shirt and Wallabees—Wallabees!—moseyed abstractedly past the car, open text in hand. He was trim and fitlooking. He exuded calm. What must be the state of his arteries? How unobstructed must they be? In my mind, I could hear the strong rhythms of his sluicing blood.
    Dr. Ludlow greeted me warmly. She was a petite woman, a flat five-foot-tall. She was attired exotically in a dark dress with slits through which I glimpsed a crushed red material, like coffin satin. She told me how much she had loved my journalism, and my ego arched with displeasure. I found her use of the term “journalism” just slightly, vexingly inaccurate: my essays had been published in newspapers and magazines, but the first way I would categorize them would not be journalism. Had I written accounts of Zoning Board of Appeals meetings, that would be journalism. But whatever. She was just being nice. She said she had laughed out loud at the humor in some of my pieces. Well, okay then. Now we were talking. She was flattering me. I knew immediately: she wanted me for the job. What they were looking for, she said, was someone to teach freshman English, known as English 101 or Introduction to College Writing, and English 102, Introduction to College Literature, to students in the evening program. She handed me the standard English 102 anthology, a big brick of writing from all eras, and asked me what approach I would take to teaching “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath.
    Suddenly, I was very nervous. I paged anxiously through the book, looking rather desperately for the poem. I had to get a grip. “Well, the first thing I would go over is basic study skills—the use of an index and all that, heh, heh.” She seemed unmoved by my self-deprecating humor. I finally found the poem and read it through quickly. I had read it in college. In fact, it was during this episode that I formulated the approach that would serve me so well with “Dover Beach.” I had gotten a poor grade on a paper about “Daddy” in one of my own freshman English classes because I had neglected to mention Ted Hughes. The simple explanation for this was that I hadn’t known about Ted Hughes. Never heard of him. Of course, he was mentioned prominently in the little biographical sketch of Plath that introduced her section of poetry in the text, but I hadn’t been assigned to read that, had I? But now I talked feverishly and passionately about Plath and Hughes, their symbiotic and consumptive relationship; I talked about the poem’s irony, about the way its foursquare rhythm comes at the reader like a drill press; I alluded to its childish rhymes, and of course its edgy metaphorical choices—the Nazis and all. I could see in Dr. Ludlow’s face that I was doing well. This is a poem, I said, that simply couldn’t be fully understood unmoored from its real-life circumstances. I talked about all I knew about the Hughes/Plath union, which really wasn’t much, and then I saw a small darkening of Dr. Ludlow’s features. Her brow creased; her mouth made a moue. I had taken my approach too far. I hit the brakes and backpedaled. “But of course, we don’t exactly know where the reality ends and the poetry begins,” I said. “It would be a mistake to confuse the speaker with Sylvia Plath. And that’s one thing I would want the class to be very clear about.”
    Dr. Ludlow smiled. She liked my answer.
    I was astounded at how well the interview was proceeding. I couldn’t quite believe that I would be teaching college. I was still frankly in awe of my own college professors. Their lives seemed purposeful and integrated—full of pleasure, and none too strenuous.
    A year or two after graduation, I was in the Strand Book Store on Broadway at 12th Street in New York City. I came upon one of my English professors: a woman who taught a class in