Clever Magazine, Vol. llI, Issue #9 "English Majors Need Not Apply" (www.clevermag.com)

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English Majors Need Not Apply
by Pete Geary

Beowolf, War and Peace, Pride and Prejudice

Pete's bio: Life-long Memphis, Tennessee resident, married with three grown children, I am a middle-aged middle manager in a mid-sized medical center in the Mid-South. Favorite things to do include travel and crossword puzzles. I enjoy writing essays and hope to continue to do so.

During my last Creative Writing class at the local university, we had to pick a book, pretend to read it, and perform the ritual known as a Book Report. There was only one book that I absolutely refused to read. A novel that even now causes bile to rush into my throat at the mere mention of it's title. That book is The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Only twice in my twenty-four year attempt to obtain a bachelor's degree have I failed a course, and both failures are directly related to Nathaniel Hawthorne. The first time was in a sophomore English class. I was young (in a Metaphysical sense), and very impressionable. A mere cub awaiting the onslaught of knowledge that I could learn quickly, regurgitate at the appropriate time, and just as quickly forget.

At forty-two, I knew that I had an unfair advantage over my fellow students, all of them much younger than me. I could, through years of hard experience, actually forget things slightly faster than I could learn them. With time, I knew my fellow students would, no doubt, learn this important educational survival skill.

The first class session went very well. The professor named a number of books we would read that semester, beginning with The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Just before the class period ended, the professor warned us not to buy any books, because the University's Randomly-Generated-Education Computer had not yet finished assigning classes and teachers.

I ignored the warning, and rushed out and bought the book, read it over the weekend, and was planted in my seat - fat, dumb, and semi-literate, when class rolled around on Monday. The professor never arrived. Instead, a graduate student shuffled into the classroom and began what was obviously his first attempt at teaching, or maybe even speaking out loud. It was hard to tell at the time.

He mumbled, stumbled, and wandered aimlessly about the front of the classroom for a half hour or so before informing the class that we must rush right out and buy a very specific edition of The Blithedale Romance. Not the overpriced $27.99 edition that I had already purchased, but a spectacularly overpriced $49.99 college edition of the book that included several hundred extremely important literary criticisms of the novel.

Developing a true appreciation of literature does not come cheaply, as any college student can attest. It adds about $20 to $25 dollars to the appreciation process.

We learned very quickly that the focus of the class was not a concentration on the novel itself, but rather an in-depth study of literary criticisms of the novel. In hindsight, this was probably wise, since the novel was wretched enough to make men cry, and women to faint. There was a lot of both in the first few class sessions.

Over the next few classes, we dutifully read and compared article after article after article of criticisms about The Blithedale Romance. Often these articles would include many exciting themes: "The Importance of the Color Red as Worn on a Dress on a Minor Female Character in The Blithedale Romance" or "Why Johnny Can't Read - The Blithedale Romance Excuse."

I lasted four classes before walking out in disgust. In protest, I refused to withdraw from the class and so took a "F" for the semester. Herein lies one of the under appreciated dangers of The Blithedale Romance. I naturally assumed that when I walked out on a major Hawthorne class, the English department would understand that there must be something seriously amiss with this class. After all, if I was willing to blow my GPA to protect future students from being forced to wade through this soul-sucking sinkhole, the least the university could do was investigate. The fact that it took the school over ten years to re-design the course was, I felt sure, caused by the usual bureaucratic bungling common to a large university.

Two semesters later, I took the course again. (Occasionally, forgetting things faster than you learn them can be a serious disadvantage.) One bright sunny morning I sat in my English classroom awaiting the arrival of --, and there he was again! Same shuffle, same mumbling speech pattern. Oh, he had gained 6 inches and maybe 50 pounds, and his right arm was missing, but I recognized him immediately.

I lasted only three sessions this time before I stormed out of the classroom, and took another "F" at the altar of Hawthorne. My only vivid memory of either class was one of the criticisms we read. It was the one about the color red as worn by a minor character in the novel. The criticism was obviously written by a graduate student in English. The last paragraph of the paper stated: "There is absolutely no correlation between the color red as used in The Blithedale Romance and anything else in the known universe. Please give me my degree now. Thank you."

As a bitter former English student, I quickly walked over to the Business school and checked out the catalog for any sign of the words, "Hawthorne", or "Literary Criticism", and finding none, quickly switched to the ever-popular Quasi-Ethical Money Accumulation major. Only now, ten years later, can I enter the English building without experiencing an overwhelming sense of impending Hawthornian doom. I still keep my eyes wide open, though. Just in case.