(The student hovers by the teacher’s desk, waits patiently for the teacher to acknowledge him. But the teacher carries on staring at his phone, apparently oblivious. Eventually the student realises he could end up stood there like a lemon, as they say, for a long time, so he makes a fist, places it in front of his mouth, coughs. Nothing. The student coughs again, says excuse me. But still the teacher doesn’t look up. Fuck this guy, thinks the student. Hey, you! he says in a voice that comes out louder and higher pitched than he perhaps would have liked. The teacher looks startled, then annoyed. Yes, he says, what is it? The student hands the teacher his paper.)
Student: I wonder if you could explain why I got a B minus? I mean, I felt it was an authentic piece, not as technically accomplished as I’d have liked it to be, sure, but certainly a notch or two above the derivative pap my peers routinely turn out, peers by the way who all seem to have gotten As for the assignment, which I can’t help but find baffling.
Teacher (face scrunched into fierce incomprehension as he leafs through the student’s paper, until finally he puts it down, stares straight into the student’s eyes with unnerving steadfastness): your writing is too baroque, I’m afraid. Also, I would caution against stigmatising the writing of your peers. Not a good look.
Student: baroque how?
Teacher (frowning): I feel like you know what baroque means in the context of writing.
Student: I do but do you is the question. Because from where I’m sitting my prose is, if anything, an antonym of baroque, for example, austere.
Teacher (laughing in a condescending manner, leaning back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head): your writing, I can assure you, is not austere. I recommend you go read Beckett and come back to me.
Student: I don’t need to read Beckett. I mean, I could maybe have understood if you’d recommended I go read Hemingway or even Borges, but Beckett I do not consider to be an exemplar of austere prose. And for the record, I’ve read plenty of Beckett, perhaps too much.
Teacher: the very fact you are quibbling with me over such pettifogging details amply demonstrates my point I think.
Student: sorry, quibbling over petty details, which by the way is a characterisation I strenuously refute applies to me in any shape or form, is decidedly not the same thing as writing in a baroque manner, which again I strongly repudiate applies to me.
(The teacher looks up into the auditorium, sees that all of the other students have left, realises he is completely alone with the irate, possibly insane student.)
Teacher: okay, you really want to know why I think your writing is baroque?
Student (arms crossed, nostrils flared in a horse-like manner): er, yeah!
Teacher: fine, well it’s your use of adjectives, okay, which borders on the incontinent. I’m sorry but it’s true.
Student (face arranges itself into a quizzical expression, which suits him somehow): hm, adjectives you say?
Teacher: right, every sentence is literally bursting at the seams with them.
Student (stroking goatee ruminatively): okay, you maybe have a point.
Teacher (relieved voice): so, are we good?
Student: of course not! I come from a long line of distinguished writers. My otiose usage of adjectives brings shame on that lineage. And when shame is brought onto that lineage.
(The student pulls a chrome scimitar from his burlap satchel, his eyes brimming with tears.)
Teacher: come on now, put that thing away will you.
(But the student does not put the scimitar away. Instead, he uses it to disembowel himself. For a while, the student stands there gawping at the aperture in his abdomen, then he totters, falls over and dies, though it takes a lot longer than he expects.
The teacher quits teaching and dedicates the rest of his life to the practice of the Tao in a remote mountain village that can only be accessed by a notoriously unreliable funicular. He marries a one-eyed woman who begets him a child. That child grows up to become a famous, albeit impecunious, writer.
