Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses

Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd.

1975

"Each morning for the next ten days he bore his precious vessel to the examination halls and poured a measured quantity of the contents on to the pages of ruled quarto. Day by day the level fell, until on the tenth day the vessel was empty, the cup was drained, the cupboard was bare"

Philip Swallow had been made and unmade by the system in precisely this way. He liked examinations, always did well in them. Finals had been, in many ways, the supreme moment of his life. He frequently dreamed that he was taking the examinations again, and these were happy dreams. Awake, he could without difficulty remember the questions he had elected to answer on every paper that hot, distant June. In the preceding months he had prepared himself with meticulous care, filling his mind with distilled knowledge, drop by drop, until, on the eve of the first paper (Old English Set Texts) it was almost brimming over. Each morning for the next ten days he bore his precious vessel to the examination halls and poured a measured quantity of the contents on to the pages of ruled quarto. Day by day the level fell, until on the tenth day the vessel was empty, the cup was drained, the cupboard was bare. In the years that followed he set about replenishing his mind, but it was never quite the same. The sense of purpose was lacking--there was no great Reckoning against which he could hoard his knowledge, so that it tended to leak away as fast as he acquired it.
(pp. 16-7)

Container::Vessel Liquid::Pouring Container::Cup Container::Cupboard

Reading

David Lodge, Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (New York: Penguin Books, 1992).

07/01/2012