The Ancient Port

It being Wednesday morning, I’m set to lecture on Don DeLillo. And I’m in a child’s playroom. This room, you see, is the quietest in the small apartment that my partner, Anna, and I recently rented from another professor, who’s on sabbatical. My plan is to explore with my students some ethical quandaries in recent American literature. I did not plan for the colourful posters: a pistol-brandishing, red-bearded pirate is hovering over my left shoulder; a prancing chimpanzee is hovering over my right. Surrounding each, and lending an air of spookiness, are purple and orange Halloween decorations.

I recall the Simpsons episode in which Homer, under repeated questioning, admits that he did not in fact spend his evening discussing Wittgenstein over a game of backgammon but instead spent it eating mustard packets in Barney’s car. Suddenly forced to teach from home, it’s harder to hide the mustard-packet sadness of real life from my students. I shrug and turn on the...