The Devil's Syllabus

Abstract

HIGGINS, OUR COMPOSITION COORDINATOR, likes to tape his memos. I, eager to learn how writing should be taught, sometimes go into his office and listen to the tapes instead of waiting for the transcriptions. Lately, I have been particularly anxious to hear what he has to say, because he has been preparing a syllabus for all teachers of composition. One day, I was alone in his office playing tapes when I discovered a spool beneath the coffee urn, as though someone had forgotten it or hidden it there. Thinking this might be the long-awaited syllabus, I immediately put it on the machine. Almost at once I was struck by something I could not readily identifysomehow, the sound was different. Then I understood. There was no background noise-no clacking typewriters, no secretarial chatter. Our department office is a bustling clamorous place, and even with Higgins's door shut, the din of the next room comes sauntering in. Nor were there any street sounds. It was as though the tape had been made late at night. And Higgins's voice was different too. There was a strain to it, a faint creak of desperation. It was the voice of an insomniac, I thought, driven from bed to record those illicit nighttime thoughts which, in cold daylight, he will think better of-what my wife calls three-inthe-morning wisdom. The tape was, I discovered, a syllabus of sorts, but hardly what I had expected. At once I seized a pencil and, astonished by what I was hearing, began furiously transcribing. That transcription, though no doubt not entirely accurate, I append below. It consists of a series of numbered theses-or antitheses, one might sayaxioms, aphorisms, or whatever you like, utt red in the black of night amid a silent and uncomprehending campus.