Read Online Eureka Man: A Novel by Patrick Middleton - Free Book Online

personal
into the lives of his students; he merely planted seeds. His goal
for the semester was to introduce them to the art of juxtaposing
old points of view and new ones, and then determining for
themselves which perspective has greater personal value. Professor
Stanley Manners had Oliver sitting on the edge of his seat not just
because he was blown away by the man's elocution. Oliver was also
stunned by the man's physical appearance and one unusual tic he
possessed. He was fiftyish, tall and lean, with round shoulders.
His gray hair was long and ponytailed and his cheeks were sunken.
He had a waxed mustache fanned across his bony face, and chin fuzz.
He wore a wrinkled cream linen suit, a pink button-down shirt, and
a bottle green bow tie. Cordovan leather wing tips graced his
narrow feet, and when he was standing before the chalkboard his
left foot never stopped tapping the floor. Rapidly. The tapping
seemed as natural to the man as the hand he waved in front of him
to emphasize a point. Oliver had enough natural elegance not to
stare directly down at the man's foot, but it didn't matter. As he
looked intently at the professor's face, he developed a temporary
tic of his own. He couldn't stop himself from looking rapidly at
the man's foot and then back up at one of his facial features--the
chin fuzz, the bright gray eyes, the sunken cheeks, the waxy
mustache.
    Then he said something that shook Oliver to
his core. “The stories we're going to read this semester can touch
us as gently as a baby's breath, and, if given the chance, they can
encourage us to extend our boundaries and comfort zones, and rattle
these bars as fiercely as a caged lion.” Oliver was smitten with
inspiration.
    For the first three weeks of class Oliver
listened to his fellow students and learned how the upperclassmen
responded to Professor Stanley Manners' questions. He liked the
fact that most questions required reflection and elaboration, and
some had no right or wrong answers. When the professor asked about
the central conflict in D.H. Lawrence's “The Blind Man,” Oliver
raised his hand for the first time. The professor nodded to him and
he rose from his seat but sat right back down after the professor
told him he didn't need to stand. “Well, actually,” he began.
“Isn't there really more than one conflict in this story?”
    Professor Manners extended his hands, palms
up, his left foot tapping spasmodically. “You tell me.”
    “Well, actually, yes. You have the conflict
of man versus the environment in that Maurice struggles in the
world every day with his blindness. Then there's the conflict of
man versus self with Maurice's friend Bertie who is very
uncomfortable with intimacy.”
    “Yeah, but that's the central conflict,” an
upperclassman chimed in. “Not the environment conflict. That's a
given. There's only one real conflict in this story, Professor
Manners, and that's man versus self.”
    Oliver had no intention of arguing with a
third year college student.
    The professor pointed at him. “You're Mr.
Priddy, right? I take it you disagree with what the gentleman
said.”
    “Actually, sir, I wasn't finished. I don't
know if I agree with him or not, but I think there may even be
another conflict at work in this story, and that's man versus man.
Once Maurice exposes his vulnerabilities to his friend, there's
tension between the two of them.”
    Discussions like this went on for the next
twelve weeks and Oliver's confidence soared with each one. He lost
his lunch before every exam and bit his nails to the quick after he
turned in each paper and while he waited for their return with an A
scrawled on top. His final essay called for a lengthy discourse on
Kafka's notion that a story serves as “an axe for the frozen sea
within us.” Not only did he earn a perfect grade on the paper, but
the professor said it was so well written that he wanted to publish
it in the undergraduate literary journal of which he was in charge
on the main