|
|
Article: I Was a Teenage Beatnik.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- The Southern Review
- Article date:
- September 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Louisiana State University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
I WAS EIGHTEEN AND ATTENDING the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Attending may be too strong a word. I was more often absent from than present in my classes, which included Nuclear Physics and Symbolic Logic, both of which I was flunking. In Nuclear Physics students perched high on bleachers and stared down at the Oak Ridge scientist onstage, whose accent was untranslatable to my ears. The Symbolic Logic professor had a floating eye and bounced on sponge-soled shoes in front of the room. In my literature class (which I must also have been flunking), we were reading Cervantes's Don Quixote and Joyce's Ulysses, both of which were over my junior-year head, although I ...