Any person passing-by the silent room in which a score of bright but bored students of English literature sat today between four and five o'clock in the John Woolley Building of the University of Sydney might have wondered if the ghastly horror of an enormous, noisy fart had just ripped through the air inside, rendering all members of the class speechless, mortified lest their colleagues or the tutor might put the blame on them. But no, the silence was not born of guilt or knowledge of the guilty farter in the midst of such unspeakable agony. All that had occurred is that the pleasant, if inexperienced, tutor, sitting at the teacher's spot in front of the whiteboard, the sole occupant of the fourth wall of our makeshift group shelter, had asked that someone in the group read a short passage from
Vanity Fair before we started to discuss what it might tell us of the author's interests, style, themes, purposes ... who knows what? Eyes dropped to stare at the floor. A few reluctant students shuffled in their seats, feigning purposeful activity such as turning the page of a notebook, losing one's place in the text, breaking the tip of a pencil. Silence ruled while the great fart of engagement toured the desks in the forlorn hope that one of the assembled number might confess to an interest, a willingness, a liking even, for the act of reading from one of the greatest satirical novels ever penned in what was, when all's said and done, a university level course in English literature focusing on, of all unlikely things, the novel in English.
Interloper that I was, taking the class because I'll be in Perth on Friday when my usual tutorial is scheduled, I felt that one of the regulars might want to fill the gap. But no, it appeared not. Unfortunately I was unable to assist. Pretending to myself that I'm a modern reader I'd equipped myself with a Kindle version of the text on my ASUS Transformer. As the gods of anti-modernity would have it though my Tablet had died earlier in the day. That's an overstatement because Spike resuscitated the computer when I got home. So, unable to bear the painful silence I apologised for being without text, recounted briefly the sad tale of my defunct tablet and was on the point of asking the bored young women next to me if I could borrow her pristine, possibly unread, copy. Another young woman then interjected. She would read. I'm not quite sure if her threshold for pain at the awkwardness of our collective reluctance was close to mine or, perhaps, she felt sorry for the nice old man at the other side of the room who had suffered a not uncommon IT problem. Either way, she read. Between us ... her, the tutor and me ... we got a conversation going but it was hard.
I admit to puzzlement. We're students of English, aren't we? Who among us ... language barriers aside ... would not want to read out loud in the presence of such bright thinkers? I'm NOT taking the piss. It seems I'm a bit odd in this regard. I'll try not to let that stop me.
