Dark academia – Robert Garnham

Professor Zazzo Investigates 11- The Conception and Execution of the Collard

THE CONCEPTION AND EXECUTION OF THE COLLARD

1. My name is Professor Barry Worthington.

2. My office is accessible only by a labyrinth of corridors and hallways at the University where I work, a gothic, stone structure with courtyards and spiral staircases which, if viewed from above, would resemble the inner workings of the human mind. My room has no windows, and no decoration except for a large desk, a book shelf, a radiator, a chair, a coat-stand. The green carpet is held in place by masking tape, while the walls, which long ago were painted cream, have now been reduced to a stale grey.

A colleague and I have, for some months now, argued over the validity of a certain punctuation mark known as the collard. Its use and development began two years ago in the metafiction department downstairs when a simple typing error resulted in a random mark which, when viewed on the page, resembled nothing more than an unvoiced break in the flow of the letters on the page. The collard then, in the manner of all great fashions, was adopted by the most cunning of the students in their essays, and then by one or two trendier professors, until its proliferation was declared an epidemic in the end of year report. We have now reached the point where the collard appears in everything, from the deepest, most academic report into symbolism in the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to the sign in the corridor outside which reads Fire E°xit.

My eminent colleague, Professor Zazzo Thim, celebrates the collard as proof that the English language is evolving before our eyes, and that the necessary acrobatics needed to type this meaningless symbol are suffered willingly by writers and students alike just to see it grace the page. Thim is excited by the collard, and has even published a short paper on how the collard can be represented in different type fonts for maximum effect. Yet I do not share his enthusiasm. The collard has spread throughout our department like a virus, infecting even the most mundane hand-written note, to such an effect that the whole of the east wing has been quarantined until a solution is found to the problem at hand. Yet Thim is hostile towards me, a representative of the pre-collard world who has, so far, managed not to infect my writings with that bizarre, inconsequential symbol.

‘A solution must be found’, I tell him.

He is nonplussed, he waves his arms like the sails of a windmill and he says: Let the collard live! Writing has never felt so vibrant as when it is affected by this mark!’ Excitedly, he pounds his fist upon the dining hall table.

‘Our output will be scorned by the world’, I whisper.

‘Nonsense! We will be adored! The collard will escape the stone boundaries of this institution and take over the world! Our future will be assured!’

So enthusiastic is Zazzo that he twirls his cane around in a circle which disturbs the cobwebs hanging above our heads.

‘The collard’, I whisper, Will be our ruin. The whole department will be ruined. The collard will die within a couple of years and reduce everything we have written to that of an unfashionable age’.

‘It will give our work style and substance! No other work will be confused with ours! The collard will be our call sign, we shall be the envy of the world!’ I have no choice but to challenge him to a duel.

3. The department is a-buzz with our feud and groups of students congregate around our offices to offer their support and opinion on the merits and the dis-merits of the collard and our positions thereon. Yet despite the controversy, the proliferation of the collard continues. It seems th*at there is nothing I can do to stop its advance throughout the building, while the conditions of the quarantine demand that the students sleep in the hallways, or crowded in my office around the radiator. The whole university is a breeding ground of bad punctuation, a crazy fad with Zazzo Thim as the high priest.

And oh, how he loves his position among them! Thrice weekly he holds seminars in his office in which the collard is deba*ted, dissected, put back together again, even copyrighted in case another, unscrupulous university might come along and steal his precious gem. Like a crazed scientist, he spends hours at his desk, inserting collards into the most famous texts: the Bible, the Canterbut°ry Tales, the Koran, until, with a childish glee at seeing the even lines and narratives of these great works spoiled forever by that hateful symbol, he sits back in his desk with a big smile on his face.

How I look forward to our duel! Whatever the outcome, I know I will be acting for the best interests of the English language, and for literature in general!

4. There has been a development. Last night, a group of students managed to evade security, and this afternoon there was the first report of a collard inserted deep in the thesis of a biology student from the west wing. Pandemonium ensued; the whole building has been buzzing with a slow panic, the hushed whispers of those who aim to see the collard take on the world, the frightened scampering of those who, for fear of their grammar, refuse to stay still for too long. And all the time I can hear Zazzo Thim in the room next to mine, laughing, interlacing his fingers and cracking his arthritic knuckles, drumming his fingertips on the desk in front of him as the collard takes another victim.

Zazzo Thim must perish.

5. There have been moments in my I°ife when I would have welcomed any advance in the language which we use, for proof that it would adapt to certain conditions under which we live, yet the last few years have been particular repellent in that grammar and spelling have suffered at the hands of mobile telephone text devices and the common E-mail address. Enraged by the compacted, lower-case stylings of my first E-mail address, in which I was unable to print my name in the manner in which I have long used it myself, I decided would embark upon a programme of protection, in order that the language we use should never be defeated by modern technology or, even worse, vulgar Americanisms. Such thoughts come to me now, as I sharpen my pencil and plot the best method by which I shall slay the devious Zazzo Thim. can hear him now, giving a lecture on the poetry and exoticism now evident in our writings since the collard was adopted. How excited he is that a Japanese student, in an E-mail home to her family, managed to secrete two collards into her dense Japanese script and, thereby, spread its beauty to the far east. I groan as I hear this news, to think of that beautiful, artistic language sullied forever. Zazzo Thim must perish!

6. It is time now.

We are gathered in the quadrangle, surrounded by the grey walls of this once-esteemed centre of learning. Students surround us, youngsters wearing T-shirts, many of which are decorated with that hateful device. The manner by which our duel will take has been decided by a council of impartial observers, students with no strong leanings one way or the other, who may or may not have dabbled with the collard. Professor Zazzo Thim grins as he meets his entourage. The old man, I note, has become more sprightly of late, a spring in his step as he +° traverses the endless corridors of this institution. How I shall ache to put him out of his misery, yet it is a duty, a solemn duty which I must perform.

The rules of our duel are simple: we shall both, on the count of three, sit down on opposite sides of a desk and write a haiku which explains, in simple language and observing all the rules of that genre, whatever position we take on the collard. I know I have the advantage; Zazzo is a man of blasé taste and artless fortune, a man for whom poetry is nothing but a blowing of the nose before the pen commits to proper literature. Yet I am a romantic, a strong believer in the power of words.

We stare at each other across the table. He glowers with a fool’s intent. The leather patches on his elbows glisten in the sun where he has worn them leaning on desks, against the walls of his classroom. His white hair is illuminated by the sun, and, with a desperate claw, he pats it down as if conscious of my gaze. At last the count of three is heard

He writes first, bends down, I hear his pen scratching and the table move as, with energy, he marks the page. I notice the acrobatics of his hand as he adds a collard or two to his lines, the bony flesh, the thumb and forefinger shaped around the shaft of his pencil. At last he finishes, looks up, hands the paper to a nearby student, who coughs once, holds up the paper for all to see:

‘There once was a ma®n from Dumfries

Who one day said to his niece

‘It°f you remt°ain a dullard And fail to use a collard,

It will have to be °a matter for the police.

The quadrangle is alive with the sound of laughter. Oh, sweet victory! That the old fool should have, in his moment of prime, mistaken a haiku for a limerick! Oh, the beauteous euphoria! Yet I must perform my duty, I must actually set to writing my haiku for the contest to remain valid. A calm comes over the crowd. I start to write the first line:

evening glories of

My senses heightened, I felt a rush within me from the power of literature. The second line comes, and I write on the page:

unquestionable faith in

only for the moment to become dizzy, the victory, scented by my fair hand as it grips tighter the pen, that magic tingle which comes from knowing one has been proven. Yet the tingle persists. look up, worried that things may be going astray. On the air, from the grey head of Lazzo Thim, and sparkling in the afternoon sun, curling on the slanted beam shot through the surrounding trees, a dust, a dandruff, a remnant of chalk from the old man’s jacket as a sneeze builds up in my nose and I strive to complete the last line:

divine poetry

only for the sneeze to escape me on the completion of the last letter, causing the pencil to slide, crazily, across the page

divine poetry__________________________________

I am given a round of applause, of course.

7. The Worthington becomes the latest craze. It appears everywhere, from official documents to the dining hall menu. Delighted by this latest turn of events, the paper industry, sensing the amount of paper that might be consumed by the extraordinary length of the Worthington, celebrates our achievement with a healthy grant, while the anti-collard quarantine is lifted.

Professor Zazzo Thim comes to my room. Sheepish, he looks down at the carpet. ‘I am’, he says, ‘A humble man in such matters. But the conception of the Worthington, and its appearance at the duel, was a masterstroke’.

‘Unintended, I can assure you’, I reply

‘Yet the Worthington has put this college on the world map. It has spread around the world, into every place where English is written. And you know, children world-wide have even developed a vocal Worthington? It sounds, I am told, very much like a sneeze, and it peppers conversations everywhere. If you turn on MTV, you’ll hear it all the time’.

‘I’m flattered’, I whisper.

‘Though of course’, the Professor continues, ‘I can’t say that I totally agree..:

We stare at each other for a while. Eventually he leaves the room, and 1 hear him next door in his office, cracking his knuckles once again. He still has an affection for the collard, I believe, though he sees the Worthington as its natural progression. He says he even foresees a time when the whole page will be taken up by Worthingtons, the true meaning of the page lost forever, concealed, heralding a new age in communication only by grunts and hand signals. He says he can hardly wait __________________________________

Professor Zazzo Investigates – 9. Thiim’s Theorem of Constant Recursive Footnotation

THIIM’S THEOREM OF CONSTANT RECURSIVE FOOTNOTATION

*There has been much speculation lately about the concerns of a certain Professor Zazzo Thim. Those close to his entourage have hinted of great discoveries coming from his academic research, although the actual manner of these advancements have not, as yet, been made public. However, mindful that the majority of my readers will not be familiar with the particular branch of literary extremism, of which Thim is an expert, let me condense the findings of his research into one simple paragraph: Professor Zazzo Thim has discovered that we are all living in a footnote.

For the last few weeks this pronouncement has vexed me greatly and I have been unable to conduct my life normally, that the entire world around me and all the people in it – and that everything we have done and everything our civilisation has achieved – is nothing but a mere academic footnote at the bottom of a non-existent page. To think that the vastness of our reality should be condensed as such – into smaller script, denoted with a tiny star at the beginning of the first sentence – not only cheapens the act of living, but hints that we are missing something within the main body of the existential text. My mind, this last week, has positively been buzzing.

This morning I decided I would seek out this eminent professor and perhaps divulge from him the exact manner of his discovery. When I arrived at the facility where he is employed, however, I was told that I would only be able to enter if I had the correct security details and paperwork stamped by the relevant departments. The staff of the facility were loath to let me enter, that I might stumble into some literary laboratory and blunder against some experiment, thereby ruining years of precious work. Yet when I explained that I had come to see Professor Zazzo Thim, they were only too glad to let me enter. ‘Don’t bother knocking’, they said, ‘Just walk straight in’. Something about their manner told me that Thim did not command the greatest respect from his colleagues.

I was guided to his door at the end of a corridor and the receptionist wished me luck before running quite smartly back the way she had come. Hesitantly, I knocked on the wooden door quite feebly, and was surprised when the door opened immediately and Professor Zazzo Thim stood before me. ‘Come in!’, he said, ‘Come in! I don’t care who you are, come in! His old hand gripped round my upper arm and pulled me, physically, into the room. ‘Dear boy, dear boy!’, he said, enthusiastically. ‘How honoured I am that you have come to visit me! Sit down and make yourself at home! And mind the bomb in the corner…’.

I did as he said and cleared a space on a wooden chair next to his radiator. The small office was windowless, and dominated entirely by a desk in the middle, which was piled with papers and folders which seemed destined at any moment to tumble to the floor. Thim himself was an energetic fellow, despite his advanced years, with white hair and a confused expression offset by a long woollen scarf which almost reached to the ground. ‘I suppose’, said he, ‘That you have come to ask me about my new theory?’ As he spoke he walked round the desk, picking up papers at random and throwing them, disgustedly, back on the desk or even the floor. ‘I suppose, like others in this institution, you regard me as a mad man? Or have you come to write one of those sarcastic pieces for a Sunday tabloid? I may be a learned man, dear boy, but, gosh!, I ache just as much as the next person.’

‘The truth is”, I said, standing, That I am intrigued by your hypothesis, that the whole of our existence is nothing but a footnote at the bottom of a page. The very idea of it strikes me as philosophically redundant, yet at the same time, who would not deny that existence was – shall we say – not as important as we had otherwise thought? And who hasn’t once had the sensation of missing something more interesting, that our whole lives are relevant, yet not quite as integrated as we had once thought? In other words, just like the information contained in a footnote. Professor Thim, I have become so interested in your hypothesis that I just had to come and hear it from your own lips’

The Professor stopped what he was doing and looked at me. ‘No!”, he said. ‘No, no, no! You’ve got it all wrong! Completely and utterly wrong!’ At this, he threw his hands in the air and stood with his back to me, his nose almost pressed up against the wall. At last he turned around and regarded me with a suspicious stare. ‘Just like other tabloid journalists, you twist your words to suit your own bitter ends, and make me look a fool in the process. I expect you haven’t even read my hypothesis, that you got the details from hearsay and gossip’.

‘My research’, I told him, ‘Depends on facts.

‘So where did you learn about my hypothesis’.

I swallowed, and told him the truth. I read it on the back of a packet of corn flakes.

‘Indeed’, the Professor said, whirling round and facing me, an act which sent the end of his scarf in a wide arc, flicking pages from his desk on to the floor. ‘Come with me’, he said, ‘And I will explain in more detail.

‘And you will tell me everything?’

‘Everything that needs to be said. You will find me harmless, I am sure, and quite safe. Oh, and mind the bomb as you get up’.

The facility in which Thim works is set in an area of wooded park land and gentle slopes. We walked among the trees, the Professor and I, and he explained to me the finer points of his philosophy. ‘Everything is a footnote, that is true, said Thim, ‘If one considers existence as a cohesive narrative. At the beginning – whenever that was – there was but one story, but each nuance of that story has sprouted a footnote, and all the footnotes themselves have also sprouted footnotes. Indeed, there is a line of footnotes spreading almost to infinity, millions of them, like the roots of a massive, colossal tree. The Professor stopped, and fingered the leaf of an overhanging branch. This leaf, said he, ‘Is a footnote. It’s a footnote to a footnote, which in itself is a footnote to a footnote to a footnote, times a thousand, times a million. The fact I have touched the leaf is a footnote in itself. And this footnote – the one about me touching the leaf – would also beget footnotes describing other leaves I have touched, and perhaps even the fact that we are having this conversation. On the other hand, the leaf itself is a footnote to the story of the tree, and perhaps there will be other footnotes describing the millions of other leaves that this tree has grown. Don’t you see? This could go on forever. There are footnotes everywhere, superfluous pieces of information which we maintain merely for private interest or later study.

One could go crazy just thinking about it.

‘Then why do you think about it?’ I asked.

The Professor frowned. ‘Because it’s my job, I suppose’.

We carried on walking and a spring breeze ruffled the old man’s scarf. ‘I call it my Theorem of Constant Recursive Footnotation. And because of it, one could track any event, any thought, any aspect of our living world, back through the footnotes to the original event, the main narrative of the text in which we exist.

‘Which is?’ I ask.

‘The big bang’.

‘Ah!’

‘An event so catastrophic, and so powerful, that everything which happened after it was, quite literally, a footnote.’

‘I see.’

We continue walking and a squirrel clambers up the side of a tree. It gets to the top and regards us with suspicious eyes. I consider pointing this squirrel to the Professor, but I already know where it will lead, and that he would feel compelled to give a commentary on the squirrel’s parentage, the introduction of grey squirrels to the British Isles, the evolution of the squirrel from some more slovenly, ineffective mammal. So I don’t tell him about it. We walk in a wide circle and come back to the walls of the facility.

‘So you see,’ he says, ‘Everything we do is connected, by various lines, back up to the main event and then down a different line to something completely different. A yak on the slopes of Everest munching at grass. A wave rolling up a sandy beach in Thailand. A Hong Kong taxi driver picking his nose. Each event has its own history of footnotes, and we are all connected as a result. Makes you think, doesn’t it?’

I nod. I have already decided that the Professor is a nut. I cannot wait to get back to my car, and thence to the city.

‘The Theorem of Constant Recursive Footnotation’, he says, somewhat grandly, Takes everything into account.’

It is clear that the Professor sees himself as a literary Einstein, that his theories, he hopes, will change the way we look at the world. We enter the facility and I ask him if he has a mathematical equation which will formulate his theory for the uninitiated, but he just laughs and says, Tell them it’s all in the footnotes’. And when I get to his office, that I might retrieve my briefcase, I ask what he intends to do next.

‘Alter the footnotes’, he says.

‘What do you mean?’

‘We need to get back to the main narrative. We need to start again. Don’t you see? Humanity has done too much, it needs a rest, a clear conscience, if you like. There’s too much history around us. Imagine how fresh we would be if we approached each day with an unhindered view of what we should be doing’.

‘And how are you going to do this?

He picks up the bomb which, I only now notice, has been sitting in the corner of the office the whole time.

‘Like this’, he says, pressing the button on the top of the device

Panic! A grin spreads out on the Professor’s face as a clock ticks down the seconds of a half-minute.

‘Good bye!’, he says.

But I move quickly and grab the bomb from his arms, then start running down the corridor to the fire escape at the end. Incensed, the Professor runs after me, his scarf flying, though he has to stop halfway and lean against the wall. At the fire escape, with seconds to spare, I lob the bomb through the air and watch as if sails out of the facility, bouncing on the ground amid the trees just the once, to explode with a mighty detonation, ripping shards of tree and leaves and causing a shockwave which smashes several windows. I watch, aghast, as several deceased squirrels fly through the air only to land with a thud around us, before the smoke engulfs the building, and a distant, urgent fire alarm sounds throughout the facility.

‘Uh-oh’, Professor Zazzo Thim says, standing next to me. ‘I think I might be in some trouble’.

I leave it a couple of days before calling him. His voice, on the phone, is unrepentant, though I have heard through several channels that he has been fined for his exuberance, even if it was conducted in the name of literary exploration. I ask the Professor if he is okay and he replies enthusiastically, that his belief in the Theorem of Constant Recursive Footnotation is undamaged, indeed, heightened by the explosion, although he has received several threatening letters from animal rights extremists over the shocking numbers of squirrel fatalities. I ask him if the explosion was enough to obliterate the footnotes and bring us back to the main narrative.

‘No such luck’, says he.

‘But the explosion? Would this have been a footnote in itself?’

‘Quite possibly’, says he, ‘Although it depends, of course. If someone were to write a story about it, I suppose it would be a pretty major event. But in the history of – say – the evolution of squirrels, it would be more a minor detail.

‘Minor detail?’ I ask. ‘It was a positive massacre!’

We both laugh at this joke.

‘On the other hand’, says he, There has been a startling development. Indeed, the explosion was not enough to cause a return to the main narrative, and would therefore be considered a footnote of its own. However..:

‘Yes?’

‘The explosion itself would be – I don’t quite know how to put this – a piece of punctuation, superfluous to the footnote itself, like a grammatical error in the middle of the sentence.

‘My word, I whisper.

‘More of a smudge, actually’, he continues. Right in the middle of it. And visible even from other footnotes.’

A dry chuckle escapes from the Professor.

‘So what does this mean?’ I ask.

‘It means, dear boy’, the Professor says, ‘That we have changed, very slightly, the whole character of the page. It is imperfect now! And there are no explanatory notes to tell the reader why this should be..:

He laughs again. I replace the receiver and walk to the window of my flat. The sun appears from behind a cloud. In the street, a woman walks past wearing a blue hat, tilted, at a jaunty angle.