The Willing

"Where's Schulz?"

A student sitting ahead of me asks this question with real outrage. We have all been waiting for about twenty minutes for the lecture to begin, and there is no sign of the professor, Dr. Schulz. The crowd is predictably thin, as has become customary for in person classes since the pandemic. A quick look around confirms that about half of the forty humans on the books are present. I'm Schulz's TA, so I keep track of the numbers. He's never interested.

Once we hit the thirty minute mark, everyone files out, sulking and confused. I grab coffee and head back to the philosophy department offices. Our department administrative assistant, Debbie, reads my expression correctly, as she so often does, and says, "No one has seen or heard from him since Friday. I've tried everything: email, text, phone call--do you know if anyone in biology can help me find a carrier pigeon?" Debbie is funny, and wiser than half of the professors in the department. She's fond of ice cream and racy novels, which you ought to know if you want to remain in her good graces. The hand that fixes the copier runs the world.

I head to my office, which I share with two other exhausted, impoverished TAs, and find one of them, Rick, with his feet up on his desk, talking on his phone. When I walk in, he motions for me to close the door. He bids farewell to whoever he was talking to and asks, "Have you heard about Schulz's dinner party?"

I'm a bit salty about the party. Dr. Schulz occasionally invites favorite students, and one or two of the other profs he can stand, to small dinner parties at his condo on the south side. Despite the fact that I've done TA work for him for a few years running, he has never invited me.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure he knows my first name. He always calls me "Sawyer," then conjures some lame pun about woodworking: "Sawyer, get the sawdust out of your ears and help me find those Schopenhauer notes."

He's kind of a prick, but his dissertation made waves--possible worlds semantics and fiction, I think; I don't really remember--and he has a solid sinecure in this department, so I try to be cordial.

"No, did you go?" I sit opposite Rick and turn on the communal computer.

"No, but Tania went, and she won't stop talking about it. Apparently it got weird, even for Schulz." He glances nervously at the door, as if he's afraid that Debbie will burst in and give it to him hard for spreading gossip.

"How so?" I look at the desktop of the communal computer. Folders are everywhere, most with sarcastic labels like, "Undergraduate Profundities" and "Original Ideas," which we all leave empty and chuckle about.

Rick sweeps his hands through his abundant, wavy hair. It's a characteristic gesture that makes some members of the undergraduate population wild with desire. They have branded Rick a DILF in their anonymous evaluations of his teaching online. I am not fond of Rick.

"She just told me that when she and June [June is a bright, cynical TA from anthropology] turned up, Schulz was in a state. He told them that he had walked into his son's room the night prior and discovered his son, Snoop Dogg high, watching a pornographic film on his laptop and pleasuring himself with stylish vigor. Once the hysterics subsided and the kid's pants were in a polite state, Schulz started to interrogate him about his motives. You know Schulz. He couldn't just scold the kid and leave it at that. Schulz told them that his son had argued--the verb probably didn't fit the context, but as I said, you know Schulz--that the elicit substance exponentially augmented his aesthetic and erotic experience. When Schulz pressed him about how this effect had felt, the kid had replied that it felt like what he was watching was the whole world, and he was experiencing the inappropriate touching as if he was a direct participant, not an onlooker."

I was having fun parsing this out. This smelled like a game of telephone about a game of telephone. Schulz had embroidered his embarrassed son's confession in a pretentious, abstract way, and then Tania had polished the results for Rick's delectation over the phone.

Still, it's a nice mix of vulgarity and phenomenology so far. "What happened then?" I ask, wondering if Rick will do the move again when he continues.

He does.

"So Schulz tells them he thinks his son is an idiot, but that didn't shock them: they know Schulz. He adds that he gave it a try. They were stunned, and sickened. Then Schulz laughed and explained that he tried to replicate the experience, but listening to favorite texts--you know Schulz used to scoff at audiobooks, but he's on board now--instead. He then tells them that he has arrived at a fascinating, terrifying conclusion. A metaphysical conclusion."

Rick is really warming to his tale. He's leaned toward me like a cat mesmerizing a fat, juicy rodent. His eyes flash with zeal. I'm starting to understand why he can give a good lecture. I still hate the hair.

"So then Paul [precocious grad student who fawns sycophantically upon Schultz] and Jose [implausibly diligent, taciturn enigma who will probably be the only one of us to get tenure] show up. Schulz admonishes Tania and June to keep it to themselves; he tells them there will be some sort of demonstration later, in any event. Tania tells me that the look she exchanged with June contained a library of implications, none of them flattering to Schulz."

Rick has a pretty impressive ability to tell a tale, I think. He may also be out of his mind, but that's a pretty common mix.

"A demonstration? Nobody who does what we do gives demonstrations. I think Schulz has lost it." I shut down the computer, get up and draw the blinds. Yes, we have a window. How you react to that revelation will tell you a great deal about how much you care about such things.

"I know, right?!? But he gave it." Rick looked like he was about to burst. There are people who live for the opportunity to accumulate scandalous stories. I think Rick is one of these people. These people think gossip is the highest form of communication. Very little about current culture contradicts them. He probably gives good lectures because he gossips about thinkers.

"So things are pretty normal at first. They chat, Schulz rants a bit about the fact that pedagogy has become customer service; he asks if he should just ask AI to write papers and eliminate the bored, confused middle man--the usual schtick. Paul pretends every word is platinum and Jose just smiles and occasionally emits an earnest monosyllable. Then they sit down for the usual."

Schulz's elderly mother does the cooking for these gatherings. Her food is notorious. I did not say famous.

"Then the tea is served, and so is the schnapps. Lakes of schnapps. And then Schulz gets going. He basically repeats the earlier story about his son and his reaction verbatim. Then he says he thinks his idiot son got it the wrong way around. We shouldn't be striving to inhabit the character. If we are really trying to understand the narrative, we should be striving to inhabit the author, to contemplate the story from the perspective of its architect and engineer."

Wow. There are probably medications for what Schulz has got, but they can't be cheap. I hope his medical coverage is better than mine. Granted, it's easy to improve upon nothing.

"He tells them there are all sorts of narratives that liken our ordinary, everyday lives to a story, in which we are characters, with various narrators and only one, exceptionally talented author--often divine. The author sometimes narrates, but generally depends upon human beings to tell the story, which is why we are so perplexed, and increasingly bored by, these stories, sacred and profane. He tells them that his son should have been trying to engage in empathetic imaginative projection, beyond the narrative, to its author. He explained that he wasn't talking about the living or dead author, the flesh and blood historical personage. He insisted that he meant the mind of the work. Tania told me that he said something in German she didn't get. She also said that Paul made a remark at this point, to the effect that all of the best authors are dead. June knew that this was supposed to impress Schulz, and kicked Tania under the table."

I'm not sure I buy any of this.

"So you're telling me he had a demonstration ready?! How could anyone prove this gibberish to be true in any meaningful way, over dinner?!"

Rick laughed hard at that. "I know, I know! So anyway, Schulz says that what is required is simple: you just get to know the author by studying the story as it is, and then persuade the author to modify the story in a way that suits you, and the results come in. Not always in exactly the way you had anticipated, you know. We are characters. What we think and say and do changes the narrative in marginal ways, until it moves the author to significantly change the plot itself. Then Schulz pointed to his tea cup and got very quiet and serious. All of them had the same thought at the same time: this is what they mean when they say 'he had a nervous breakdown.' No one moved."

Rick's face is uncomfortably close to mine. The hair! Who describes anything as "auburn" anymore? He's breathing heavily. I think he had onions recently.

On he goes: "Then Schulz says, 'Suppose I impress it upon the author that it would be absolutely wonderful, and take the whole thing in a revitalizing direction, if I could will this tea cup to float gently heavenward and hang suspended before your unbelieving eyes for a little while? Wouldn't that hit this rather dull tale we are all plodding through and ripple through it with invigorating magic? I mean, we've been quite realistic--even a little vulgar-- up to now, but why does that mean we can't veer into, uh, magical realist territory?"

Either Rick has an uncanny memory, or most of that was improvised based on a breathless summary from Tania. It's a shame she doesn't have classes to worry about on Monday mornings, or she would be here to tell it. Must be nice.

Rick sweeps his hands through his hair with such force, I secretly want his wig to come off and reveal a desolate pate, possibly adorned with some kind of incriminating tattoo. I have no luck. It's real, I suppose. That makes one thing about Rick that is.

"So Schulz silently stares at his tea cup. They were all weirded out. Just when it seemed like even Jose couldn't keep quiet anymore, it happened. The tea cup levitated and just stayed there, hanging in the air for like a minute. And another. Tania said she would have soiled herself if she hadn't dutifully had a serious portion of the usual. She hopes to be clear by November."

I laughed, honestly, at that one. My envy was always blunted by stories about the usual, of which there were a few on the communal computer. They had titles like, "Schnitzel Causes Atheism" and "Hackepeter and the Origins of Fascism." What the hell is, hackepeter anyway? I'll bashfully google it later and pretend I read it somewhere important. Rick is taking off his jacket. I find that alarming for some reason.

Debbie knocks on the door. I know her knock. I know what I ought to be doing when she opens the door. She really does run the place.

"Thomas, Dr. Schulz has arrived. He is in his office, and has asked to see you immediately. Apparently he's especially worried about how his morning class reacted to his absence." She gives me a 'please help me to manage these strange animals' look. Rick looks like he'd been tasered. He also looks like he might have liked it, and been surprised by that, too.

I've only been to Schulz's office three or four times; we got used to doing most of the mandatory stuff via Zoom during the pandemic. Only one kind of meeting results in love.

It's as neat and orderly as you would expect it to be, which is to say that it looks a bit like a library got drunk and vomited in his office. It's pretty tidy now as compared to my last visit, as is Schulz, to my surprise.

"Sawyer," he says, from behind his black desk. His hair is sort of nuts, but his suit is smart and he'd shaved himself smooth. I can never get a perfectly clean shave, you know? Inevitably, I'll idly touch some point or other on my anxious face after the fact and find a little survivor.

"Sawyer," he says it again, so I assume the first was some sort of greeting, "what does the wood think it is like to be the carpenter?"

It wasn't just a weird episode after all. Did Rick say that the tea cup did actually levitate? What is in the usual, exactly?

"The wood can't think, Dr. Schulz. That may be part of its usefulness. Imagine if you had to negotiate with it to come up with a coffee table?"

I try to improvise things that will make Schulz treat me with more respect, not because I have flattered him, but because he enjoys thinking. He has paused. I'm waiting for him to levitate something on his desk.

"I was right to call on you. You see, I require your assistance with something. I am testing a hypothesis. I'm sure you fools have been jabbering about it since that ghastly dinner party. At any rate, I think you can tell me: what is true of all narratives, but not true of the reality which they are about, and in?"

I was doing some pretty quick calculations. He's still got tenure. I'm not sure anything can really take out an old man with tenure, other than death. Then again, there's the whole Biden debacle. But he's got it now, and he can get it for me, or write a letter that will make that much more likely. I must humor him, but not like smarmy Paul.

"Well, Dr. Schulz, I think it's really a matter of ending. Reality goes on. Stories don't. I mean, if we're just characters in a story, that story could end at any moment. The trick is to end it at just the right moment, in just the right way. It's a matter of what the author is willing to do, and what the reader is willing to accept."

Schulz nodded.