Fast Fiction: Tolson's Creed
In this story of surprises Richard Mallinson tells how Tolson startled the students in his Eng Lit class.
‘The unique significance of every individual human being - that is what I believe in, that is my creed,’ said Tolson in one of his Eng Lit lectures.
‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘other people think this way, too, but often in a purely negative sense. They say that we are all separate, isolated, very much on our own. Well, that’s not how I see it because - ‘
A blonde girl in the front row said, ‘I don’t feel uniquely significant. I feel just like most other girls of my age. We are very similar.’
‘Ah,’ said Tolson, ‘you are merely proving my point - similar, yes, the same, no. Indeed how could you be? Think about it.’
The following week he asserted, ‘We read fiction not for stories, atmospheres, environments, styles, philosophies, facts and figures but in order to meet individuals.’
A youth with a punk haircut said, ‘Nabokov says that readers should not identify with characters in fiction.’
‘Ah but,’ said Tolson, ‘I am simply talking about meeting those characters, getting to know them as people, not identifying - ‘
The blonde girl in the front row raised her hand. She said, ‘I think that anyone who reads fiction to meet people must be seriously lonely.’
‘And seriously sad,’ added a grey-faced youth behind her.
Then a girl with straight yellow hair stood up and said, ‘We want to hear about literary theory not all this crap about the individual.’
‘Well, folks,’ said Tolson, stepping down from the dais, ‘you will not be hearing any discourses on literary theory from me.’
And with that he left the room, never to return.
A few months later he saw the girl with straight yellow hair in the street. ‘All that literary theory,’ she said, ‘it’s crap, isn’t it?’
