Read Online First Papers by Laura Z. Hobson - Free Book Online Page A

common sense nor human understanding. I see.”
    “Are we going in for heavy sarcasm,” Eli asked, “or can we stay in the field of reason?” Beside him, Joan put a restraining hand on his arm, but he shook it off.
    “Reason,” Stefan said, raising his voice, “is not bandied about so easily. Your ‘idiom of one’s surroundings’ is based on trembling, not on reason.”
    “Stiva,” Alexandra said, “please don’t get excited.”
    Stefan ignored her. “Let me tell you,” he said to Eli, “that the protest which is made ‘only in the idiom of one’s surroundings’ is so polite and colorless that the surroundings do not suspect the protest exists.”
    “On the other hand—”
    “On the other hand, the idiom itself may be so vicious that it cries aloud for protest. Why, right now there’s a case in Virginia, a perfect example, I wrote about it. A Roanoke College down there has been using a certain history of the United States—”
    “Stefan,” Alexandra murmured, “some other time. Your face is getting red.”
    It was as if she hadn’t spoken. Ivarin’s gaze stayed fixed on his son’s. Vaguely he was aware that the girls both looked fearful; he forced his voice down to a quieter tone. But in the next moment he heard it as loud and sonorous as if Eli were seated in the last row of the top gallery of a large lecture hall.
    “This history book, mind you,” he went on, “has been in use for years, but suddenly a group of Virginia’s citizens discover they don’t approve of it. Why? The author, it appears, a man named Somebody Elson, not only writes of the bright side of slavery, the bright side, remember, but dares also to include the dark side of slavery. This ‘dark side’ admits there were sometimes illicit relations between white masters and black slaves. You follow me?”
    “What’s the connection?” Eli asked impatiently.
    “Why, need I spell that out?” Stefan sounded baffled, amazed. “Those citizens of Roanoke, speaking only in the ‘idiom of their surroundings,’ mind you, now demand, righteously demand—”
    Alexandra said again, “Stiva, please.”
    His glasses had begun to steam over. He seemed to see those far-off citizens of Virginia, see the author, so much one of them that he called the Civil War “a slaveholders’ rebellion,” and yet a transgressor they had to punish.
    “Righteously and idiomatically,” he continued, “those Roanoke citizens demand that such an unidiomatic history book be banished by the college. Suppressed. Abolished.”
    “For God’s sake, Pa, nobody means banishing books.”
    “Conformists always mean banishing books, people, ideas, that do not conform to their own special familiar idiom. And if Roanoke College now gives in, no book in any college will be safe from the next group of citizens with its own pet idiom.”
    “So one bunch of fools in Virginia,” Eli said, “is enough to make every book in every school unsafe. For God’s sake.”
    “You are right; you have a point: this is America, not Russia. And if you thought a little more deeply about what that means, Eli, let me tell you, you would not speak so authoritatively about ‘idioms of one’s surroundings.’ In America, any opinion—”
    “Oh, Lord,” his son said wearily, “here we go again about the greatness of America.”
    Stefan Ivarin banged his fist on the table so that the dishes jumped. “You will not,” he shouted, “not while you live in this house, take that tone of contempt.”
    “You want me to knuckle down to everything you say!”
    “If you’d knuckle up, fork up, stand up, with some thinking one can take seriously. Years ago, I warned your mother, she was letting you grow up into a spineless Adonis.”
    “Stefan,” Alexandra cried, springing up from her chair.
    “Eli,” Joan said softly. “I don’t feel very well.”
    Stefan Ivarin muttered, “I’m sorry, Joan. I get too excited, it’s true.”
    “Oh, poor child,” Alexandra said to her.