Chapters (29)

50% of the locals have VD

Screw the ones that cough.

I didn’t know how this academic community could ever find sex droll again. It – or rather the imputation of it – had put an end to Orr’s career, and prematurely to his life. Before I left Hobart I met somebody who had been a student at the time of the fracas and had written a little poem, while it was happening, in the Prof’s support. He still remembered it. It went –

Here’s to the man

Who knocked off Susan.

Good old Orr.

There should be more.

When I wasn’t tearing across, across, across Tasmania I sat in libraries. I bought wildlife posters and collections of songs that had been sung by blockaders on the Franklin. I bought official publications relating to censues and megawattage. When I climbed on to the plane at last I was laden with reference books.

‘Well?’ Ros asked when I returned.

‘Tasmania? It looks like a large golf course,’ I said.

She waited for more but there wasn’t any. That was it. That was all I had to say.

I’d learnt a truth about myself. I couldn’t travel on my own. I actually didn’t see anything unless I was talking. Or listening. There is of course no world that is purely and objectively out there. Every voyager paints and peoples his own landscape. One sees only trains, another only history, another only himself. Now I knew what kind of traveller I was. I journeyed to the centre of dialogue; wherever it was I thought I’d been I’d never in fact set a foot outside conversation.

About the Author

About the Same Author

An award-winning writer and broadcaster, HOWARD JACOBSON was born in Manchester, brought up in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Kalooki Nights (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), the highly acclaimed The Act of Love and the Man Booker Prize 2010-winning The Finkler Question. His most recent book is a work of non-fiction, Whatever It Is, I Don’t Like It. Howard Jacobson lives in London.

By the Same Author

Fiction

Coming From Behind

Peeping Tom

Redback

The Very Model of a Man

No More Mister Nice Guy

The Mighty Walzer

Who’s Sorry Now?

The Making of Henry

Kalooki Nights

The Act of Love

The Finkler Question

Non-fiction

Shakespeare’s Magnanimity (with Wilbur Sanders)

Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews

Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

Whatever It Is, I Don’t Like It

Copyright Page

First published in 1987 by Hamish Hamilton

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc