Beyond Harvard

By William Roger Jones and Ye-mi Kwon

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 19, 2007
• ISBN: 9781462821075

William Roger Jones

About the Authors This is William Roger Jones’ first work of prose that sets in the fourth through seventh decades of the twentieth century, and leans toward historical and documentary fiction. The author has submitted scores of freelance articles to “The Korea Times.” He also has published in scientific journals. Mr. Jones is presently an EFL/ESL teacher and lives on Jeju Island, Republic of South Korea. Ye-mi Kwon is an EFL/ESL teacher as well. She is from Seoul, South Korea. This is her first published work. Her favorite quote is: “Even if you can lear to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?” Clarence Darrow

Book preview

Chapter I

Harvard College (the undergraduate division of Harvard University) favored my application. I sold the selection committee solely on my essay reply to Why do you wish to attend Harvard, and how can you contribute to the Harvard community? I began by saying, I didn’t wish to go there, and I’m sure they thought this quite odd, if not supercilious, for who wouldn’t want to go to Harvard? I even listed my rathers, which no doubt piqued some, whom Father called goddamn highbrows. I mentioned the friction the whole Harvard thing produced in our household. I continued that I was not prepared to contribute to the Harvard community, that if in fact attending, I would be extracting from that community. For after all, wasn’t the whole intent and purpose for attending university to gain knowledge?

I told them I didn’t think the SATs (Scholastic Aptitude Tests) should serve as a barrier to be cleared in order to enter the realm of the elite, that I thought they punished intelligence with their exclusiveness. I explained that I had no avocational interests, that the pursuit of studies alone served as enjoyment and relaxation. I was not inclined and preferred not to engage in extracurricular activities, as I had put childish things away.

It is probable that I was perceived as a hubristic sort or a moronic-imbecilic idiot or else a borderline genius. Nevertheless, my response exposed that type of eccentricity that the Harvard people find attractive.

Rest assured, I was not then and am not now endowed with transcendent creative capacity. My childhood-cloned mud pies were proof of that pudding. And, had they known my belief in specters, they would have never permitted me to pass through Johnston Gate and step into Harvard Yard.

Now accepted, a scholarship search produced no results. However, I could be placed in a research laboratory for means and sustenance. Standardly, all freshmen must reside in dormitories; but due to my financial state of affairs, I was granted privilege to reside off campus, which proved considerably cheaper.

Chapter II

I responded to an ad in the Boston Globe for a roommate. The location was 1705 on Massachusetts Avenue itself, within walking distance to the research lab, of which later, I would refer to as the dungeon. I would require a four-month advance on move-in date. Yet there would be no extraneous expenses. Nanny told me not to worry, as she was in continued prayer for me, interceding on my behalf, as this peculiar aspect of religion had not yet formed in me. I had long ago set aside the trite Now I lay me down to sleep verses. Curiously, another of Father’s paintings was sold, one week prior to my move-in date.

Arriving slight and slender and spectacled, I rapped upon the door; and a towering figure appeared, who went by the unusual name of EmCee. I sure enough thought he once led the Crimson squad on court. He was a med student who commuted to the Longwood district of Boston every day. I tagged him EmDee in lieu of his intended profession. He kept a journal to which it seemed he gave much more attention to than his medical textbooks. He had an uncanny interest in dinosaurs as huge posters depicting raptors adorned his room. Other than this bizarre interest and the inordinate amount of time he was scribbling in his much-guarded journal, he seemed to fit the role of any other Ivy Leaguer.

The other roommate, Lee, greeted me with,

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace;

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

I recognized it as Richard Cory, the work of E. A. Robinson, who had attended Harvard as a special student. Lee was an English lit major, and he too adorned his room with posters, but in sharp contrast to EmDee’s taste; he exhibited an equestrian nature. You could always find him at Saunders Theatre in Memorial Hall performing soliloquies or else at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.

As I moved in my belongings without the slightest offer of help, they made inaudible remarks. I brought scores and scores of books. I thought I heard bookshop, bookworm, bibliophile, bibliomania. My room finally took on the appearance of Carl Sandburg’s study.

Why all the books? they curiously asked.

I didn’t want to forget anything, I off guardedly answered.

Books are ‘the true university,’ I weakly quoted Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and historian who had also done some time at Harvard.

I reddened as they informed me that the Widener Library was the world’s largest academic library with over eighty kilometers of bookshelves. I hastily defended myself by stating my books were highly selective and would not be recycled or someday serve as privy paper. I too wanted to say, but didn’t say, that I thought Harvard was rather self-serving in that even though they produced the first official academic publication, they probably egocentrically filled their bookshelves with several copies of their preceptors and professors’ authorships.

I’m sure they were amused by my amassed collection. If for nothing else, the constant moving, shoving, unburying, and picking up of the volumes provided minimum exercise.

Chapter III

I didn’t see much of my roommates, as I practically lived in the dungeon, the basement of Massachusetts Hall. Often, I rolled out my sleeping bag and spent every weekend competing for floor space with Croton bugs, which were drawn by our animal room. Part of my duties as lab assistant was to breed and maintain a three-hundred colony of Swiss Webster male and female mice. One of the late weekend nights, I entered the colony room and observed a curious phenomenon. In the cages of twenty-five to fifty animals, they were standing on their hindquarters with paws reaching upward and heads and noses sniffing in the air. I had observed cleansing and grooming, birth and weaning, and primitive territorial markings, and sex, including attempts with the same gender that caused much combat. But never this seemingly praising or prayerful stance did I see before. I was suspicious. Was it taught in my absence? What brought it on?

Upon completion of experiments, I would slaughter hundreds. I would cull the colony. I assassinated initially by chloroform that would cause fetal-like contortions. Ether was kinder. They stampeded each other to get to the rim of the killing jar, futilely attempting to escape. I would then wrap them in foil and deep-freeze them for later incineration disposal. Perhaps they sensed impending doom. In this instance, I could not but help think of human-killing chambers. I was sacrificing and slaughtering these animals in the name of science, in experiments gone awry. No matter the parameters you set, the animals and organisms damn well did what they wanted to anyway.

We would infect the animals with a virulent strain of trypanosomes, which caused death in livestock and sleeping sickness in humans. Then we looked for a silver bullet that would wipe out the infection. We tried everything: chemicals squeezed out of sea animals, chemicals squeezed out of plants, and even synthesized compounds in corroboration with the department of chemistry. Not a thing worked, nothing was efficacious, yet there was some slowing of infection rates. Statistics were twisted and papers were published, and thus, the scientific literature was as ever polluted with insignificance. Seminars were given, and egos were assuaged. Participants were proud of their scientific jargon, communicating trivia amongst themselves and excluding the world. ‘Intellectual impostures or fashionable nonsense’, truly academia BS. A well-kept secret that guaranteed funding, for one must fund something one doesn’t understand, lest those requesting think you the dunce.

So this went on and on in the dungeon of Massachusetts Hall. I initiated newcomers to techniques and methods. We were afforded the best of laboratory equipment; however, out of necessity, we did many things manually. We harvested organisms from donor mice, gave intraperitoneal injections, waited for rises in infections, obtained peripheral blood, and counted the stained organisms in hemacytometer counting chambers. This was an endless process, training students in the handling of small lab animals, which they eventually sacrificed.

Dr. Censor was the primary investigator, and we underlings were often expunged from the publications as we were considered merely hired workers, and what did we know anyway?

Chapter IV

The discontinuity of memory curses; the blanket gaps gnaw at me. My past is blurred; perhaps this northeastern sojourn shall eventually give rise to nostalgia, which might instill and restore the past recesses of my mind. Wintered once now, and approaching another; yet there is no desire to return, to return to my origins.

Permit me, now, to introduce myself; my name is Bugs.

Upon crawling across the floor, it was noticed how indeed small you were, and decidedly we began calling you Bug; you see, you were very, very small, it was said.

Later, it was pluralized, perhaps because early on there were exhibited signs of an unsettled mind.

Recollecting, Mother and my brothers were going away.

Why?

Stop crying, Father said sternly.

No longer does why plague me; the causes have surfaced to my understanding, for patience and endurance has human limits. Father slowly excised Mother’s love and erased her devotion by chronic intemperate imbibing with accompanying inveterate behavior. Her beatings were one thing, but mistreatment of the children was another.

Oh, Father! You have left me forlorn. And that’s the way it was. I was Father’s first son. He kept me and released the others. In those