excerpt: \'pym\'

I always thought that if I didn\'t have a term, I would shoot myself or tie the bomb to my chest and walk into the teachers\' canteen, but when it happened, I drank bourbon and cried a lot, rolled into a ball on the floor of my office.
I couldn\'t take it these days, so I ended the class a week early, checked into the Akwaaba Bed and Breakfast in Harlem, took part in my own game and eliminated the pain.
But mostly, I found myself back in the same ball, still on the floor, just in a more historic resonance address.
My friend Garth Frierson was fired about six months ago and was happy to drive from Detroit to help a childhood friend.
This help mainly includes him sitting on the bus driver\'s ass on the bed I rented, before I had enough shame to put down my own Duff and try to do something for myself again,
By that time, the semester was over. After graduation, the campus was empty.
I don\'t want to see anyone.
The only thing worse than those things that were happy with my dismissal was those unhappy things.
Condolences, condolences.
It\'s all so white.
I\'m the only black male professor on campus.
Professor of Black American Literature.
Professional Black
For years since I was first hired, I have been away from this, insisting on teaching American literature, and on my way to passion, towards Edgar Allan Poe.
Specifically, I offer the \"dance with darkness: White in The Literary Mind\" course twice a year, regardless of enrollment.
Regarding the number of students choosing to attend the workshop, I have to defend myself that the greatest ideas tend to appear in empty chairs.
However, in the president\'s denial letter I cited a different theory about the appropriate class size and gave reasons to overturn the faculty approval.
To cure racial discrimination in the United States, it cannot be done in good faith or in presidential elections.
Like all diseases, it must be analyzed on a micro level.
I found in the study of Poe and other early American texts that the intellectual source of racial White.
Here, in these pages, is a fossil record of how this strange and illogical disease is formed.
This is the mythical basis of the distortion of modern racial thought, because we stand on them, so it has never been removed before.
You can\'t cure the disease by ignoring the disease or simply fighting the symptoms.
Paper towels never eradicate colds.
I am doing important work that affects the domestic policy, foreign policy and social structure of the world\'s most powerful countries.
Work directly related to the way we live and perceive reality itself.
Who cares about a group of super privileged 19-year-
The health problem of the elderly may be increased by 8 a. m. class?
Who would care if I chose not to waste more valuable research time on the toothless diversity committee?
\"Bring your book, Dog.
Then leave there.
Pack up your position and focus on what you can do.
You can go back to Detroit with me if you want.
Cheap, I have a big crib.
There is no job, but there is still a job.
\"Gareth and I were driving the taknik in the rain.
I\'m still drunk, wet roads are like lines on the back of a snake, and my stomach is about to spill.
Even drunk, I know that any escape plan to Detroit, Michigan is a sign of doom.
Garth Frierson is my son, from the time we were boys, from the time I lived in the basement apartment in Philadelphia, he lived in the laundromat next door.
Gareth didn\'t even ask me a few books, but he must have been suspicious.
Because I have books.
I have a book like a professor.
Then I have more books, better books. First editions. Rare prints.
A copy signed with both hands was already dead.
A long time ago, Angela abandoned me, and the chances of my child walking with her also increased, but I increased in my own way.
I built bookshelves in my office for these books, which are 10 feet high and completely lined with dry walls.
The campus is dead.
Dark and huge pine trees are hidden in an open space on the road.
The gravel parking lot is empty, but I did Garth park where the president said?
Violators will be dragged away in principle.
When you are denied employment in a university like this, your career is over.
Ten years of work preparation, no one will hire you.
If you don\'t make enough articles, people think that denying tenure means you will never make them.
If you post and still get rejected, people will think you\'re a jerk.
No one is willing to give a life-long job to a jerk.
They do not have to do so in this economy.
In addition to the miracle, after the denial, I was lucky enough to find part-time teaching at a cold, barren, ocean-free community college.
Life of small health insurance, phone calls from bill collectors, and classrooms with metal detectors are all compliments of the university presidentBowtie.
I can spend at least an hour in his space. We trudged.
The building looks like an old church that has lost faith, and every step of the way is profanity.
Garth was panting but followed.
I chose the office behind the top floor to discourage the students, but my lecture did a better job.
My office is narrow.
Framed Cathedral with matching windows.
This is a holy place around the walls and my own lonely books.
\"I won\'t lie to you, brother.
\"I have a lot of books here,\" I said. Let him come first. \"You do?
Ask me.
Because I don\'t. It was empty.
I should have been welcomed by hundreds of literary lovers, but nothing.
My book is gone.
My office has been cleaned up.
Everything is gone: my pictures, my lights, my Persian carpets, everything that is not the property of the school, or something nailed down, are gone.
I opened a blank painted bookshelf in front of me.
Copyright 2011 by Mat Johnson excerpts from Pym.
Extracted with Spiegel & Grau permission, this is a department of Random House Company
All rights reserved.