Lone Star Loner: Culture Shock in Lubbock, Texas

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December 2: Before we go to a movie, Julie and I drive out to the Strip to purchase liquor at Cecil's—outside the city limits and at the edge of the earth. There is nothing but a flat line of land covered by the enormous sky—except, in the distance, a power plant's spikes. The winds drive the clouds into long thin lines that could be confused with skywriting. On the way back to 63rd Street we pass billboards advising us to "Whoa down!"

December 7: Sandra is one of those I have tremendous respect for—she's raising an infant daughter, working 30 hours a week at an auto parts place, and making B's in most of her courses.

December 18: To the office for conferences: I talk to A., who plagiarized unconsciously and whose tears dripped her mascara down her face despite my attempts to comfort her, and to B., who plagiarized deliberately and went out smiling. Example of dialogue:

"What does 'unmitigated' mean, Mr. B?"

"How is it used?"

"You used it, Mr. B."

January 11: My student evaluations. One likes me because I was "humerous." Another was surprised at how much "grammer" he learnt. One of them—the farm boy from Cooper, I'm sure—said he liked me but that there was "no way on God's green earth" he was going to make more than a Cñ. Green earth? Where?

February 19: Graded short-answer tests in the evening. Favorite answer: the kid who fills in the blank to say that the Loisels, in the French writer Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace," live not on the rue des Martyrs but on the rue des Moines.

February 22: My enthusiasm for office hours is not what it used to be. I suppose doctors also get bored dispensing the same advice; instead of telling them to quit smoking and do some exercise, I tell them to watch their commas and firm up their paragraphs.

February 23: [An early-morning phone call from Vassar.] I'm offered the tenure-track job. I'm flooded with happiness. I fall into my beanbag chair, put headphones and music on, and feel glorious. Then I jump up, shower, and race toward school to spread my news. All at once I am a lame duck, a crown prince.

February 28: A couple of weeks ago part of the library roof collapsed. No one was injured. (That about sums it up.)

March 7: S. came to office hours—I had failed his last paper. It was less than half the required length and said that Cheever's character was damned unless he turned to Christ—he would "perish in the fire." When I told him that this was not literary analysis, he wanted to know if I had accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior; why I didn't assign works like The Hiding Place and The Cross and the Switchblade; why we read works with foul language. He left a tract on my chair before leaving. We spent the better part of an hour talking about the purposes of a secular university, separation of church and state, the need to listen to more viewpoints than one. He left with the same look of contemptuous superiority he had on when he came in. I spoke to the chairman about this afterward. He said he was sure I handled it correctly and that, in fact, he feels sure God was using me as his sensitive instrument in helping to temper the fire in a fanatic. We laughed over this.

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