Cori's Reading List and the Haughty Professor

A Short Story by Cleo Bell

I waited patiently as the professor went around the table telling each student what he thought of their short story. He was kind to all of them. Then he got to me.

“This, class,” he said with a touch of anger, “is the perfect example of a writer misleading the reader into believing something that is not true. It isn’t until a page later that she reveals the 'he' is actually an 'it'.”

Looking back I wish I would have said, “I am the writer here. It’s my character’s perspective. She happens to see creatures for what they are rather than an 'it' as you put it. She felt a connection with the animal who happened to be a male animal. If Bram Stoker can refer to a child as an 'it' why can’t I refer to an animal as a 'he?'

This dude just didn’t get it. I don’t remember what grade he had given me in that creative writing class, but I worked my ass off in his other class to get a C. That class had been about writing critical essays about other writers’ stories. I did mine from a psychological analysis of the writer’s life. I think there’s a bit of irony in that.

I saw the haughty professor smoking with some of the students after class. I went downstairs, out another door, to have my ciggy. I was a senior, I think. Maybe a junior. Until then I had liked each one of my professors. I felt this particular one did not like me. I knew I didn’t care for him. He loved the word milieu. I preferred 'genre'. He was extremely good looking and he knew it. Before, during, and after college—all my life, I have been turned off by snobs. Well, you can be a snob if you’re truly kind. But, that’s rare for snobs. I’d prefer they stay away from me. However, it’s best to try to learn from each person you meet.

He could have been prejudiced against blonde girls. Or maybe I simply couldn’t take constructive criticism at the time. I tried to learn from him. I did my best. His dislike toward me made me work even harder to prove myself to him. How stupid is that? I was young, not stupid. Others are motivated by such a thing, but I’m way over that now.

He was intelligent in other ways. Everyone is smart in their own way. So, after lecturing the class on how unread we all were, he gave us a reading list. I thought it might be helpful for my future so I kept it. I’ve read works by at least seven of his 23 suggested authors, and I will likely read more. I think he wanted us to learn more about other cultures. We were midwesterners, all white. I’m sure most of us grew up in the suburbs, some maybe even reluctant to drive in city traffic. This was a multidisciplinary university. That means that all subjects are somehow related or taught that way. I’m not exactly sure, but it sounds cool. Maybe that’s why they hired him.

Anyway, I know I had a lot to learn. And I sure as hell did learn. The more different a person was from me, the more interesting I found them—as long as they were nice. No snobs. I’ve always been that way—seeking out the weirdos. Or perhaps they just gravitated toward me because of my empathy. I don’t know. Perhaps they were actually not so different than me.

Perhaps, even, I was a snob! No wonder I disliked them so much. See, there’s always something to learn.

I still have the reading list, but I have my own as well.

His list contained the following recommendations:

Milan Kundera, Donald Barthelme, Charles Johnson, Italo Calvino, John Cheever, Eudora Welty, John Gardner, Samuel Beckett, Julio Cortazar, Jorge Luis Borges, Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie, Stendhal, Raymond Carver, Simone de Beauvoir, Wole Soyinka, Frederick Exley, Clarice Lispector, Mary Robinson, Denise Chavez, Philip Roth, and Hemingway.

My reading list turned into something like this:

Piers Anthony, Robert Asprin, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Debra Magpie Earling, Sara Gran, Judith Hawks, Hippocrates, Dean Koontz, Elizabeth Nunez, Danielle Steel, Antoinette Stockenberg, Robert A. Heilein, John Saul, Leslie Brenner, Catherine Temma Davidson, David Martin, William Burroughs, Rupert Brooke, Siegried Sassoon, and Ralph Ellison.

No matter what grade I get or who likes or dislikes me, it’s important to be kind to myself and read what I want to read. I keep a reading list always. Even if it takes the rest of my life to read everything on it, so be it. I add to it and subtract from it (finished books and changing my mind about books). This makes it alive and me active in my reading which is also good for my writing.

I’m pretty sure the animal in my short story doesn’t identify as an it. And I should have given him a name. Maybe in the rewrite.

The End

Cori's Reading List and the Haughty Professor

a short story by Cleo Bell

#weirdos

#CleoBell

#FlashFiction

#readers

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