The Questions

by Diana Senechal

Jacob Feil liked to sit at the end of the seminar table facing the window. His wardrobe seldom changed: a nominally clean shirt, a rumpled blazer, jeans. On the first day of class, everyone would be seated ten minutes before he entered. Getting into his class was a coveted honor, and he knew it. He used to savor the curious looks traipsing after his gestures. Now they embarrassed him.

He knew that he was on his last leg at Sedge. He had tenure and five years to go until retirement, but they had already hinted, in faculty meetings and job openings, that they wanted to modernize their pedagogy and curriculum. He saw no need for this. No new pedagogy could ever beat sitting around a table and talking about a good book. All these forty years, the tried-and-true methodology had never failed him.

He surveyed the wheely eyes and hairworks and started his usual speech.

“Good morning. I am glad to see everyone here. Let me begin by saying that every single one of you deserves to be here. The competition was tight. We reviewed each application carefully. I say ‘we’ because I always enlist a colleague’s help when choosing the students for this seminar. No royal ‘we’ here. Of the sixty or so applicants, about half lacked the prerequisites. Then we had to halve the number again. By the end, we were convinced that we had made the right selections. We never admit freshmen to this course. Sophomores we admit only on occasion; this time, we saw occasion for two. The rest of you are juniors and seniors, as I think you know. Some of you I know from previous classes (hello there Peter, Erica, Vinny). Others I am meeting for the first time.

“I teach a special seminar every year, but this is the first one devoted to Sandover and the Divine Comedy. Which leads me to my next point: the trigger warning. [Scattered giggles.] I assume that all of you will know that these works involve themes of the supernatural, homosexuality, a Ouija board, Lucifer, deception, love, the origin of things, the death of a cat. If any of this bothers you from the get-go, please speak to me after class. [More giggles.] But I assure you that the course will not be about most of these themes. It will be about poetry. You will find me rather old-fashioned in my approach. For that I make no apologies. An old-fashioned professor has a lot to teach you, and a lot to learn from you too. We will build something together.”

At this point he liked to stand up and start walking around the room for emphasis. “The requirements for this course are simple. Do the reading. Take part in discussion. Write a term paper. There are no exams. I will give you no quizzes. Some of you will be tempted to skip the reading, and some will get away with it. I ask you a favor, which is also a piece of advice. Plan to skip the reading no more than twice in the semester, and work it out with your classmates so that not everyone is skipping at once. If you coordinate it well, we can still have some semblance of a discussion (by which I mean no insult; everything is a semblance). At the start of each class, I will ask who has not done the reading. I ask you to be truthful. Then we can proceed.

“I have taught Sandover many times before. Students often ask whether it’s an epic or a lyric poem. Don’t worry about it. We will come around to the question of genre, but only after reading this massive hunk of verse on its own terms. I have a theory—don’t read my articles on the subject, we’ll get to them in good time—that the Coda changes the genre. But we’ll get to that after Thanksgiving. Just out of curiosity: How many of you have read Sandover before? [About seven or eight hands go up.] Good. That’s a good proportion.”

Throughout all of this he felt as though he were watching a cartoon. He knew his moves and contours; he anticipated the students’ reactions. He thought back briefly (sitting down again; he was a little tired) on his earlier days. When he began teaching, he sensed only vaguely that his students adored him. Then he caught on and gave into the burnished role of a sage. Later he came to crave the attention that it brought. He was always ethical with them—no seductions, no inflated grades, no false promises. But he needed them for a sense of existence, which their gazes offered up in spades.

“We’ll open up Sandover in just a moment. Before we do, I’d like to return to the question of doing or not doing the reading. You may think, at times, as many students before you have thought, that not doing the reading gives you a shortcut through the day. In the short term, this is indeed a shortcut. But over the years it means that you will be taking the long way around. I once had a student—let’s call him Ian—who managed to bluff his way through. He got through a whole course on the picaresque without reading Don Quixote. He received a B in his Russian lit course, even though he skipped over War and Peace. He was and is a legend. He graduated with honors in comp lit, went on to become an editor at a big publishing house, and you know what he told me, ten years later?”

No one asked, “What?”; they knew he would go on.

“He said,  ‘Professor Feil, I would give anything to have the kind of time for reading that I had as an undergrad. I’ve read all those books that I didn’t read back then, but it took me about three years. Almost all the reading I do is for work now. I used to resent having my reading all be for school, but what a treat it could have been! I also wanted to say—’”

Professor Feil did not get to finish “Ian’s” sentence, because there was a knock on the door. The English department secretary, who happened to be male, appeared with a frown.

"I am sorry to interrupt you, Professor Feil, but we have to remove you. Orders from above.”

Jaws dropped.

“What in blazes’ name? You mean a room change, correct?”

“No, a personnel change. I am so sorry.”

“I am tenured, I have never done anything remotely unethical here….”

“It’s not us. It’s not even the author. It’s the editor.”

“Jean, would you please stop talking in circles and tell me what in Pharaoh’s name you’re talking about.”

“This is all news to me too. Apparently you’re a character in a story that’s soon to be published. The editor decided that there has been too much of your type, so he’s working with the author to replace you with another character.”

The class started cachinnating.

“And the punch line is… the editor is Ian,”    quipped one of them.

“Who’s Ian?” asked Jean.

“A made-up name for a former student. Look, retirement is one thing, redlining another. Give me the editor’s name and phone number.”

“Oh, I can’t do that.”

“You sure as hell can! It’s the least you could do under these circumstances.”

“I’m just afraid that things could get really weird.”

“They already are. No turning back. Now give me that info, please.”

“All right, just a minute.” Jean left the room and returned with a slip of paper, which Feil pocketed. Jean nodded at him uncertainly and waited.

“Dear students,” he said, “this may or may not be our last time together. I am going to do everything I can to bring some justice to this situation. But in the event that I can’t come back—”

“Oh, I meant to tell you you will definitely stay alive,” Jean broke in. “You won’t be deleted completely. They wanted to make sure you knew that.”

“But where will I go?”

“I don’t know. Maybe ask your Ouija board?”

“I don’t have one. What, do you think I conduct séances in this class? Students, was I conducting a séance when Mr. Brou showed up?” Heads shook.

“Sorry, bad joke on my part.” Jean seemed almost sincere.

“Indeed. Ha ha.” He gathered up his pile of books. “Very well, then. So long.”

“Oh, I’ll wait, I’ll wait,” he told the security guard. He headed over to a green leather armchair and sank into half-thought, watching the comings and goings and listening to the swiveling door with only swiveling attention. Even if he had been in the mood for full-on thinking, he wouldn’t have known what to think about. From the armchair he had a good view of the clock, which had a minute hand.

At last his time came. “Mr. Swanson will see you now,” the security guard told him. “Just go down the corridor over here and take the elevator to your left. Twenty-fifth floor, Thoroughgood Press. Someone will help you when you arrive.”

Michael “Just call me Mike” Swanson seemed hearty if a little nervous. Young, fit, yet a little rumpled too. He welcomed Jacob (let’s call him by his first name now) into the office with a shake of the head and a press of the hands. “I’m terribly sorry about the mess,” he said, removing a stack of papers from the seat across from him. “Please do sit down.”

“A mess in more ways than one.”

“But you chose to come see me, which is good. I give you credit for your gumption. It isn’t often that I meet characters in person.”

“What else could I possibly do?”

“Oh, I don’t know. A lot of characters just accept whatever is done to them. Appearance changes, relocations, accents. This is a rare case where we have to remove someone from a work entirely.”

“But why?”

“Data analysis. Our statistics show that aged professor characters are no longer trending.”

“But must you really follow the data? Isn’t there any concept of artistic freedom?”

“Oh, there’s a lot of freedom, once you accept these things. You just work within the constraints. Like writing verse. Didn’t Merrill have something to say about that? How his feet went bare in verse, or something like that?”

“Yes, yes, we were going to talk about that today, until I was unceremoniously extracted.”

“Professor Feil, if you are going to be a curmudgeon about this, there’s not much I can do to help you. Also, I have some deadlines to hit today, so we will have to wrap this up.”

Jacob felt helpless now. “Where can I go? What can I do?”
            Mike raised his finger. “You have several options. One is to be rewritten into a story that will never be published. It will sit somewhere on a computer or in a drawer, and you won’t ever have to worry about being taken out.”

“But aren’t there disadvantages to that?”

“Yes, indeed. Life in an unpublished story can feel a bit wan.”

“Next?”

“Or you could be a minor character in a big novel. Even in a story, if you’re minor enough. We could have you pop into a room to get some pencils or something. That would be it.”

“But isn’t that just as wan an existence?”

“Not wan, just puny.”

“All right. What else?”

“The last thing we can offer you is the Characters’ Waiting Room. There you would wait for placement. It could take years, it could take just a day. But you would not die waiting, and you wouldn’t need to eat or sleep, though neither would be prohibited.”

“Boring, perhaps?”

“We supply you with a few board games. And pen and paper.”

A glimmer came into Jacob’s eye. “What if I went to the waiting room but wrote myself into a story while there?”

“You can certainly do that. But then you’d have to get it published, or else face the wan existence that I mentioned earlier. And all the publishing companies these days use the same data analysis methods, so you’d probably have the same outcome as now.”

“Still, at least I can try.”

“You can do that.”

The Characters’ Waiting Room was a terrible place for writing a story. The setup was all wrong: long benches where the characters sat, and low, long tables in front of them. To write, you needed a hard surface with enough space for your paper and arms. First, he tried a National Geographic book, then a Candyland board game box. Then he opted for sitting on the floor and using the table. However, when people started winding their way around him, he creakily got up again, sat back on the bench, and took up the book. Stalling and fumbling, he glanced around and saw someone familiar out of the corner of his eye.

Lear. It had to be. Sunken-eyed, long-haired, half asleep. But how did he get ousted? “King Lear? Is that you?” he called out.

“Our friend, our friend,” said Lear wearily, not because he recognized Jacob, but because anyone was a friend at this point who called him by name.

“It can’t be true! You mean they’re dumping your tragedy?”

“We likewise are amazed,” said Lear. “We had no inkling that we would end up in timeless tragedy. We thought ourselves completely gone. But they came a-knocking at our door, we’re taking the book off the shelves, they said, and banning all productions, and we could not figure out what they meant….”

“Cultural appropriation?” quipped Jacob. Seeing that Lear didn’t recognize the term, he tried again. “They didn’t like the fact that Shakespeare brought France into it?”

“No, that wasn’t it. They swore the readers had never seen a heath, or only the rarest reader had, so the story’s a hovel of nothing. They want stories that people can relate to, they said.”

“Well, I’m awfully glad to be in your company. I sure as hell could relate to the story, and I’ve only seen a heath once.”

“Thanks.”

“But you don’t sound like Lear to me.”

Dropping his hands, Lear dropped the royal “we” too. “Oh, I’ve been told I’m not the original Lear. I’m a modernized version, with easier vocabulary. For the classroom.”

“Ah, for the classroom. I teach.”

“Well, then, you’ll have to introduce me to your students.”

“Gladly, if I can get my job back. Say, who else do you think we’ll see here?”

“There’s a fellow over there who was ousted from a cherry orchard. I fail to recall his name.”

“Firs? Could it be Firs?”

“That’s the one.” Jacob turned his eyes and saw his favorite Chekhov character huddled in the corner.

Thank you for submitting your story “The Questions” to Brimstone. While we enjoyed reading it, we found it somewhat too dogmatic for our journal, which prefers to explore the complexities of the human condition. We wish you luck in placing it elsewhere, and thank you again….

But how could that be? thought Sandy Cope, author of The Overstory. Didn’t they read to the end? She rolled on her swivel chair up to her laptop and typed the following reply:

Dear Brimstone Editors, thank you very much for your thoughtful response. The story is initially dogmatic by intent. After Firs appears on the scene, everything changes. I would like to resubmit the story. If, upon reading it through, you still find it overly dogmatic, I will respect (yet internally question) your judgment. Sincerely, Sandy Cope.

They did indeed reread it; not only that, but they accepted it with joy. The ending changed their minds. We present it here for your possible mind-changing too.

After Firs treated Lear and Jacob to cherries from the orchard itself—cherries so tart and juicy that they spattered juice onto the table and floor, sending Firs on a hunt for paper towels, which he finally found, and in which he took awe, having never seen such absorbent marvels before—Jacob felt his spirits rise. Truly life was not bad, even in a waiting room. He watched Lear and Firs get called forward—apparently, the plays were being reinstated—and didn’t even mind being left alone, since eventually his time would come. The silliness would pass; there was no rush. At some point, a story would have him, a publisher would have the story, the world would have the publisher, and the universe the world.

Everyone has a place in a story, he mused. The story may be unpublished—it may not even be written yet—but it dangles somewhere in the fancy.

Five minutes later, this thought started to trouble him. If everyone has a story, he wondered, then what makes any particular story stand out? Why do we teach and study literature, if nothing is non-literature? And how can literary journals judge from among an infinitude? If everything is important, how can anything be?

He then heard his name called.

He had been selected for the title story of The Questions, a collection by Sandy Cope. For what was this, if not the ultimate question? All things are equal, nothing is equal. All stories deserve to be heard and read, but some get selected and others not, because without selection, how could we read in the first place? Where would attention come from? What is attention, if not selection? What is selection, if not unfair? Yet we strive to make the unfair fair; we try here and there to tilt our attention to something unsuspecting, something we might have scoffed at, postponed, skimmed through without reaching the end, or ignored altogether. The editors tilt now and then, not only saving Jacob and other story-bound beings, but thrilling in them and their encompassing words. Dear reader, we hope you will too.

BIO: Diana Senechal is the author of two books of nonfiction, Republic of Noise (2012) and Mind over Memes (2018) as well as numerous poems, stories, essays, songs, and translations. The 2011 winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, she has all sorts of adventures, accomplishments, and pursuits to her name, along with nameless endeavors. Since 2017 she has been living and teaching in Szolnok, Hungary. For more about her work, see her website (https://dianasenechal.com).