When Oglesby came to Dan’s desk he plunked his journal down on his desk with no hitch for regard or comment. Dan leafed through to the final piece he had done on “Shadows and Tall Trees.” He had tried to find a connection between the chapter in Flies and the U2 song of the same title, but he was straining. Dan had ended by quoting the best part of the song:

Do you feel in me anything redeeming?

Any worthwhile feeling?

He thought it through, or had tried at least. Did that mean anything—or was it just another jumble of human nature? He turned the page to Oglesby’s comment:

You’re taking your point for granted. Show, don’t tell.

“Gentlemen, with the exception of Mr. Humphrey, who did a song-by-song exegesis of The Wall, these journals are quite unremarkable.”

Humphrey raised his arms in a moronic concert salute. “Floyd rules!”

“Mr. Roger Waters thanks you. Remember, gentlemen, rule number fourteen: writing is revising. Don’t just fill the blankness of the paper with pen marks—think. Then write. Then think again. Then revise. Remember, revise is re-vision, re-seeing the argument through the writing process.

“Gentlemen, writing means using your brain. Writing is a muscle—you must train it, and each time you do it gets bigger and better.”

The sophomores looked on blankly. Oglesby dropped Thumper on the floor in a bit of rehearsed pique and exasperation. He grabbed his own lapels and scowled.

“And so let me put the challenges of this class before you now. There is the Game, which we will discuss in due time. But there’s another trial some of you will undertake this year.”

Oglesby went to the blackboard and wrote the same word twice.

Rattus rattus.

“What is this? Mr. Indovina?”

“Does it mean ‘write and write’ in Latin?”

“No. Rattus rattus is the common rat. The average black and gray rat is no more than six inches long. Nothing special about Rattus ratti. They live, they breed, they die. Now . . .” Oglesby returned to the board.

Rattus norvegicus.

“There’s another kind of rat. It’s a brown rat. It’s bigger, a foot long at times—some in the subways of New York and London grow to the size of cats. The brown rat, the Norwegian rat, is smarter—all lab rats are descendants of the Norwegian rat. It adapts to everywhere. It’s fiercer, it’s more resilient. It will gnaw through a metal trash can if it has to. It is smart enough to figure out any maze, and it communicates with other rats by ultrasound, chirping like a bat or a dolphin. The Norwegian rat is special. Exceptional.”