Lost in the Meritocracy (V5)
“I rented a room with a cot at the Terrace Club and took a job shelving books at Firestone Library. I also made a bargain with myself. If I couldn’t rebuild my brain within three months, I wouldn’t register for my senior year. And if my state worsened, I might kill myself. Should I decide that this was necessary, my model would be my favorite poet, John Berryman, who’d spent time around Princeton in the fifties but ended up, two decades later, in Minneapolis, teaching at the U of M, where he lea...ped from a bridge into the Mississippi. According to one account I’d heard, the river was covered with ice that day, so he’d actually jumped onto it. Either way, he’d succeeded. He met the silence.
Hoping to stave off this meeting, I bought a dictionary and a thesaurus and instituted a daily regimen of linguistic calisthenics. My alarm clock woke me every morning at five, and for the next three hours I’d lie in bed, with my reference books propped open on my stomach, and repeat aloud, in alphabetical order, every word on every single page, along with its definitions and major synonyms.MoreLess
Hoping to stave off this meeting, I bought a dictionary and a thesaurus and instituted a daily regimen of linguistic calisthenics. My alarm clock woke me every morning at five, and for the next three hours I’d lie in bed, with my reference books propped open on my stomach, and repeat aloud, in alphabetical order, every word on every single page, along with its definitions and major synonyms.MoreLess
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