A Jane Austen Education by William Deresiewicz Read Free Book Online Page A

wanted us to follow the plan that he’d laid out for us: major in science—he was an engineer himself—go to medical school, and start earning a living as quickly as possible. Don’t waste time, don’t get distracted. The world was a dangerous place, and the fewer wrong turns you made, the better. He’d figured out what you needed to do to ensure yourself a secure life, and there was no point in our figuring it out all over again for ourselves.
    When my father saw me struggling with something—whether I was ten and having trouble opening a jar or fifteen and trying to write a paper—he would rush in and take care of it instead of letting me work things out on my own. His intentions were good; he wanted to save me the pain and trouble of floundering around until I got it right. “I’ve already made those mistakes,” he would say. “I want you to learn from my experience.” But his strategy overlooked the fact that he wasn’t always going to be there to take care of me. So I never learned how to look after myself, how to deal with salespeople or handle money, how to make my own way in the world. There I was, twenty-eight years old and still staring at the shampoo.
    I hadn’t helped myself by going back to school at Columbia. My father was on the faculty, and because it had been free for us, I had already gone there for college. I could have gone to Chicago this time, but the prospect of moving to an unfamiliar city, hundreds of miles away from almost anyone I knew, was not something I could even begin to imagine. So there I was again, back in the same old place, living in an apartment that was practically around the corner from his office.
    I’d drop by every once in a while, and he would take me out for Chinese food. He wasn’t very happy that I was studying English—he figured he would wind up supporting me for the rest of his life—and we would struggle about it over the chow fun. “If I had my own business,” he would say, “I would offer to take you in. But you wouldn’t do it anyway!” I’d remind him that that was exactly what had happened between him and his own father, who had owned a little business in the Garment District (my father hadn’t wanted to sell zippers any more than I wanted be a doctor), but it didn’t cut much ice.
    The fact is, he never thought I’d get through graduate school. He hadn’t even thought I’d get in to graduate school. Whatever the next challenge was, he was sure I couldn’t meet it. After all—the logic was perfectly circular—hadn’t he always had to help me out with everything? He didn’t think I’d make the cut after the first year, and because I’d gotten C’s in high-school French—he spoke six languages himself—he was sure I’d never complete my language requirements. “I appreciate the support,” I’d say, and then I’d thank him for lunch and head back to my crummy apartment.
     
     
    I was living in that apartment when I read Emma and broke it off with my girlfriend, and I was still living there a year later when I read my way through the rest of Jane Austen. It was the summer after my third year in graduate school. I had finished my courses (and yes, completed my language requirements), and now I was studying for the dreaded oral qualifying exams, which I would have to take that fall. It was the ultimate academic endurance test. I had four months to read about a hundred books, and then I’d be shut in a room with four professors who would grill me about them for two hours. It was also a rite of passage. Once I got through it— if I got through it—I’d be one step closer, in professional terms, to growing up and becoming one of those professors myself. (My father, of course, was sure I’d never pass. “You have your work cut out for you!” he said.) As for growing up in any other sense, I still didn’t see that I might have a problem.
    I had the place to myself that summer—the second of the business students, a rich preppy