The Green Revolution (6 page)

“But you say that things are better here now.” Bartholomew had brought along a sheaf of Rimini's letters to the
Observer
.

“Things are better. Because of the departmental hiring committees. We've been selecting good candidates for years. Do you think they really cared over there that few of them are Catholic?”

“There's a group of alumni who predict that the percentage of Catholics on the faculty will continue to drop.”

“Of course it will.”

“That doesn't bother you?”

Rimini rubbed his bald head. “Look, I was here when nearly everyone was Catholic.”

“Are you?”

Rimini's eyes narrowed, then again the great false smile. “I don't make a career of it.”

“You're in economics.”

“For my sins.” Rimini's eyes widened. “Now where did that come from? As the twig is bent.”

“How many in the economics department are Catholic?”

“Who cares? What has being Catholic got to do with economics?”

“Nothing?”

“Not if you want the department to rank high.”

“In one of your letters you say some pretty witty things about this obsession with rankings.”

“You want consistency, go talk to a philosopher. Besides, I was talking of football. The coaches are out recruiting kids who rank high on the basis of some national scale. Those rankings are about as reliable as rankings of colleges and universities by
U.S. News & World Report
. Who made them the bureau of standards?”

“If I understand you, you're saying that the percentage of Catholics on the faculty is irrelevant.”

“That's what I'm saying.”

“How about the student body?”

“Talk to Admissions.”

Well, as he said, if you want consistency, talk to a philosopher. Bartholomew switched topics and asked Rimini what he thought of the debacle of Notre Dame football.

“Weis is the first Catholic coach since Holtz. I think Holtz was Catholic. There's something for you to pursue. Catholicism and football. What difference does it make whether or not the coach is Catholic? You could make a case that we have done as well, even better, with non-Catholic coaches.”

“Interesting.”

“Or the football team. Is the administration concerned with the number of Catholics on the football team? Or Caucasians, for that matter? Don't quote me on that,” he said hastily. He meant the remark about Caucasians. “For that matter, how many of the Fighting Irish are Irish?”

Rimini was enjoying himself.

“Look,” he said. “The administration is pleased with the high percentage of Catholics in the student body. At least among the undergraduates. So how about the percentage in the group of students who bring in real money?”

“The football team.”

“Exactly. It's become a money cow. Millions. Millions! Look at what they're paying Mr. Ineptitude.”

“What do you think of Professor Lipschutz's suggestion that the time has come to abandon football?”

“He's crazy. But it's an interesting idea.”

“You go to the games?”

Rimini sat upright. “I
played
football. Under Ara. Way under. I got in as often as Rudy.”

“You don't mind if I mention that?”

“Why should I? I didn't play without a helmet, no matter what my enemies say.”

“Enemies?”

“Let's not go into that.”

*   *   *

What fun Baxter would have with such an interview. But what Bartholomew took back with him to the editorial offices was Rimini's suggestion that the administration's concern about Catholic representation should be applied to football, too, to the coaching staff, to the players. Baxter was delighted with Bartholomew's description of his interview with Rimini.

“I think we should pursue that.”

“What?”

“How many of the Fighting Irish are Catholics.”

“Or Irish?”

“That, too.”

And Bartholomew Hanlon went smiling off to Roger Knight's class.

8

Roger had read Mark Van Doren's
Liberal Education
in a serviceman's paperback edition during his abbreviated hitch in the navy. He was perhaps the only seaman with a Ph.D., not that he mentioned this to anyone. The boot camp at San Diego had been grueling, and Roger managed to keep off the weight that he had shed in order to pass the physical. The academic life seeming to be closed to him, he indulged his romantic fancies. He had enlisted on a whim, having just devoured the Hornblower novels, the lure of the sea having him in its grip. All he saw of the sea was San Diego Bay, which was full of gray naval vessels very unlike the one on which Hornblower had sailed. Roger had never been on shipboard either. After boot camp, he awaited assignment, in vain. Finally, his daily presence in the base library having been noticed, he was assigned as assistant to the librarian, a caustic lady, Miss Riggle, who might have inspired the phrase, common at the time, “She'd be safe in the navy.” Miss Riggle had regarded Roger as an intrusion on her domain, but when she saw that all he wanted to do was while away the day reading, she grudgingly accepted him. Among the many books he read during the months remaining to him in his country's service was that of Van Doren.

He went on to read others who had been involved in the revival of the liberal arts in the thirties and forties—Mortimer Adler, Stringfellow Barr, Robert Hutchins—a bold band of brothers who were convinced that American higher education had become a wasteland, the elective system their particular bugbear. On what basis was a student to select courses from the smorgasbord presented to him? Was any and every combination of courses the point of education? If a college did not know what the student might become, and how, what right did it have to exist? Even decades later, these revolutionary ideas, largely ignored, could increase the beat of one's pulse. The critique leveled seemed to fit Roger's own experience, although, he told himself, he had managed to use well the nondirective character of higher education. Princeton, however full of certitudes and opinionated professors, left him pretty much to himself. This might have provided a counterexample to the description of the pleaders for a return to the liberal arts and a planned curriculum, but this was not a thought that bothered Roger.

In his seminar, they were now reading Mortimer Adler's onetime best seller
How to Read a Book,
and Otto Bird sat beside Roger, full of anecdotes of what it had been like to work with Adler.

“Don't the requirements for a major provide direction enough?” Bartholomew Hanlon asked.

“What is your major?” Otto asked.

“I have a double major in philosophy and theology.”

“What is the aim of the philosophy requirements?”

And so the discussion was under way. Otto had always taught using the tutorial method, and Roger let his senior colleague guide the discussion. What was demanded of a philosophy major? Bartholomew stressed the required courses in the history of philosophy.

“Meant to acquaint you with the great names in your discipline.”

“Yes.”

“Descartes, Leibniz, Pascal.”

“And many others.”

“About whom you read secondhand accounts or listen to a professor tell you about their writings. How many of those books were you required to read?”

“It was a survey course.”

“Ah.”

Otto made the point gently. Why not just read those great works of philosophy?

“That would take a long time.”

“Yes,” Otto said sweetly. “A lifetime.”

Otto himself had spent his long lifetime doing what he indirectly recommended. Even if one concentrated on the great books, one scarcely began to plumb them during four years on campus. No matter. The process begun, it must continue.

*   *   *

Afterward, Otto invited Roger to lunch at the University Club, and they set off in Roger's golf cart. Otto was greeted with delighted warmth by Debbie, who took his arm and led him to “his” table. “Bob Leader and I used to have lunch here once a week,” Otto explained.

“The artist?”

“Did you know him?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

Debbie took their beverage order and then joined them, pulling her chair close to Otto's and casting on him a bewitching smile. Clearly, he was one of her favorites. Otto insisted that she should know his guest.

“I haven't seen you here before.”

“The door isn't wide enough.”

“You got in today.”

“Otto held it open for me.”

Debbie didn't know what to make of Roger; of course, that was an old story. He didn't know what to make of her either, but he liked the way she catered to Otto.

Otto's executive martini arrived—he had ordered “a bucket of booze”—and Roger lifted his coffee in response to Otto's raised glass.

“You never drink?”

“Alcohol? No.”

“Any reason?”

“I just don't like it.”

Otto accepted that, but he told Roger of the late Canon Gabriel's maxim. Never trust a man who doesn't drink.

“Well, you can trust him not to drink.”

Otto acknowledged this with a smile. Their food came, and over it Otto discoursed on the book he was reading. “The oddest memoir by Saul Bellow's longtime agent. No sense of language at all. I mean the agent.”

“What prompted you to read it?”

“I loved
Herzog
. And
Mr. Sammler's Planet.
”

“Which has lately brought a charge of racial prejudice.”

“Ah, the ironies of liberalism.”

Suddenly a compact man with a trimmed beard and a fierce look stood beside their table. “I must speak with you. Both of you. Lipschutz.” He thrust out his hand like a holdup man. “May I join you?”

It seemed a rhetorical question, He took the chair on which Debbie had sat.

“I want to enlist your support for a crusade,” Lipschutz announced. “This university has arrived at an historic moment. Our precedent will be the University of Chicago.”

“I went to school there,” Otto said.

“Did they still play football when you were there?”

“I didn't.”

“I mean the university. Did it still have a team?”

“I wasn't aware they ever had one.”

“Exactly. They regained their soul, and doubtless you were one of the beneficiaries.”

Lipschutz laid out the crusade he was embarked upon. The current collapse of Notre Dame football provided their golden opportunity. Like Augustine, Notre Dame had had to wallow in sin before redemption came. The time had come to follow Chicago's lead and abandon football. Let the intrahall games go on, that was fine with Lipschutz, but all the blather about excellence demanded a consistent policy. What a statement Notre Dame could make if it abandoned varsity football because it intended to take its claim to academic excellence seriously.

“Do you think that is realistic?”

“I think it is idealistic! What do you think?”

“It's an interesting idea.”

“Do I have your support?”

Later, when his and Otto's names appeared on the list appended to Lipschutz's proposal, Roger was never sure that either he or Otto had actually signed on to the crusade.

9

Ever since his wife left him, Iggie Willis had been trying to reconcile two warring descriptions of himself. Life on the domestic front, and in the office, too, was undergoing a rocky period, no doubt of that, but nonetheless Ignatius Stephen Willis stood craggy and unbowed above the tumbling tide. Much as he liked that picture of himself, there was something to be said for Miriam's portrait of him, a portrait to which she had given a final flourishing touch in the note he found when he had come home to an empty house three months before. “You are a selfish, thoughtless, pompous little man, and if you were tall enough to see into the mirror, you would know that. Good-bye!”

A low blow, that, but who but a wife could know how touchy he was about his height? Let's face it, he was just below five seven, and that was wearing shoes, slightly elevated shoes. Nonetheless, he had always been attracted to taller women. Miriam hadn't been able to wear heels since they were engaged, at least not when they were together. Even then, she looked down at him and, over the years, looked down at him in several senses. What is more perilous than a credit card bill, especially when scrutinized by a wife with the instincts of a CPA?

“There are some bad charges on this, Ig.”

“Let me see.”

She had checked the two motel charges and one from a florist she had never heard of. Iggie had shaken his head.

“I'll have Pearl take care of it.”

“Pearl?”

“It's one of the things she's very good at. Besides, all it takes is a phone call and off the charges come.”

“Then why can't you make the call?”

“What am I paying Pearl for?”

A wiser man would have known better than to send his wife flowers the day after that close call; only an idiot would have used the florist that had caught Miriam's eye on the bill. No, that wasn't fair. Pearl was no idiot. He should have done more than just drop the credit card bill on her desk, point to the check marks and roll his eyes. It was an hour or so later that he'd had the big inspiration to send Miriam flowers.

“Any message?” Pearl had asked, not meeting his eyes—but then she would have had to bend her head to do that.

“‘Just because…'”

Pearl wrote it on her little pad and went back to her office. Her legs were great with those high spiked heels. It occurred to him later that Pearl had used that florist with malice aforethought. Well, if she had, the effect had been delayed.

“Who's the tall girl you were having lunch with at Chesterfield's?” Miriam asked some weeks later, not lowering the newspaper when she said it.