The Executor by Jesse Kellerman Read Free Book Online Page B

one point I had forty-two versions of the introduction alone. I would cut a paragraph but refuse to let it go, moving it instead to a clippings file that eventually grew to twice the size of the manuscript—itself nothing to sneeze at. As the poem goes, a little learning is a dangerous thing. And ambition is a perverse master, lashing hardest those who bow down.
    Aware that I was in way over my head, I nevertheless couldn’t stop, having staked so much of my self-worth on my success. Melitsky had once written, “In large part, excellence consists of the willingness to stomach monotony.” I printed that out in letters four inches high and taped it to the wall of my carrel. When I felt discouraged, I looked at those words and thought of good old Sam. All around me, my peers were toeing the line, staking out some picayune corner of the field for themselves. I scorned them, telling myself that what I was doing was not pointless but brave, clinging to the existentialist idea that one must learn not to fear solitude but to embrace it. They wanted job security. I had the courage to venture forth into the unknown. Each additional page acted like so much swaddling, helping to shield me from the chill fact that I was getting nowhere. When Linda asked how the book was coming, I told her that Hegel didn’t finish The Phenomenology of Mind until he was thirty-six. By that measure I still had eight years.
    She replied that—speaking as my so-called advisor—if I wanted to read Hegel, she would gladly write me a letter of recommendation for the University of Texas.
    It all came to a head one rainy day toward the end of my sixth year, when I went to Widener to do some writing and found my carrel cleaned out.
    I looked back at the elevator. Had I gotten off on the wrong floor? No: there was the blue mark on the wall where I’d dropped a Sharpie. There was the deep scar that ran the length of the desktop; I had wasted hours, days, if you added them all up, tracing it with my fingertips. There was the chair in which I’d eaten, read, written, slept. This was my carrel—my home—and yet everything that identified it as mine—the Melitsky quote—all the books—not to mention the work that had gone into collecting those books—months spent poring over the catalog, cross-referencing, mining bibliographies—the tape flags and marginalia— everything —was gone.
    For a moment I stood paralyzed. Then I rushed forward, as though to stanch the bleeding. There was nothing left to keep in. The sole remaining trace of me was a list of call numbers in my handwriting. I crumpled it into a ball, hurled it down the aisle, and stormed over to Emerson to confront my so-called advisor.
     
     
    SHE WAS THEN in the first of a three-year stint as department chair, which meant that before I was allowed to see her, I had to contend with her idiot receptionist, Doug.
    “One sec, please,” he said, simpering.
    While he was gone, I stole all his pens.
    “Joseph. What a nice surprise.”
    Linda’s office had been arranged to accommodate her wheelchair, all the furniture spaced a few inches wider than normal. Even when she was sitting, her personality was such that she could still seem to tower over me. I noticed, not for the first time, that her shoes were flawless—literally unused—whereas mine looked like they’d been fished out of the trash.
    “I was just finishing up an e-mail to you,” she said. “Would you like to hear it?”
    “I would.”
    “My pleasure. Although if you don’t mind, I’m going to make myself some coffee first.” She pushed her joystick, turning her back on me. By the window was a lacquered sideboard with a drip machine and several mugs. “Sit down.”
    I sat, dropping my bag as loudly as I could.
    “You seem upset,” she said. “Is there a problem?”
    “The problem, Linda, is that my carrel has been emptied.”
    “Really,” she said.
    “Really.”
    “Hm.”
    “It didn’t occur to you to warn