The Paradise War Read Free Page A

academic work but no real need to succeed at it. As a result, he did not take his work seriously enough.
    He wasn’t a slouch. Nor was it a matter of simply buying his sheepskin with Daddy’s fat checkbook. Simon had rightly won his pride of place with a particularly brilliant undergraduate career. But as a third-year doctoral candidate, he was finding it too much work. What did he want with a degree in history anyway? He had no intention of conducting any original research, and teaching was the furthest thing from his mind. He had no higher academic aspirations at all. Two years into the program, Simon was simply going through the motions. Lately, he wasn’t even doing that.
    I had seen it happening—seen the glittering prize slipping away from him as he began to shirk his studies. It was a model case of graduate burnout. One sees it often enough in Oxford and comes to recognize the symptoms. Then again, maybe Simon just aimed to protract his university experience as long as possible since he had nothing else planned. It is true that with money, college can be a cushy life. Even without money it’s better than most things going.
    I did not blame Simon; I felt sorry for him. I don’t know what I would have done in his place. Like a lot of American students in Oxford, however, I had to justify my existence at every turn. I desperately wanted my degree, and I could not be seen to fail. I could not allow myself to be shipped back across the pond with my tail tucked between my legs. Thus, I had a built-in drive to achieve and to succeed that Simon would never possess, nor properly understand.
    That, as I think of it, was one of the principal differences between us: I have had to scrape for every small crumb I have enjoyed, while Simon does not know the meaning of the word “strive.” Everything he had—everything he was —had been given him, granted outright. Everything he ever wanted came to him freely, without merit. People made allowances for Simon Rawnson simply because of who he was. No one made allowances for Lewis Gillies. Ever. What little I had—and it was scant indeed—at least was mine because I had earned it. Merit was an alien concept in Simon’s universe. It was the central fact of mine.
    Yet, despite our differences, we were friends. Right from the start, when we drew next-door rooms on the same staircase that first year, we knew we would get on together. Simon had no brothers, so he “adopted” me as such. We spent our undergraduate days sampling the golden nectar of the vats at The Turf, rowing on the river, giving the girls a bad time, and generally behaving as well as anyone might expect untethered Oxford men to behave.
    I don’t mean to make it sound as if we were wastrels and rakes. We studied when we had to and passed the exams we had to pass with the marks we needed. We were, simply, neither more nor less serious than any two typical undergraduate students.
    Upon graduation I applied for a place in the Celtic Studies program and was accepted. Being the only student from my hometown high school ever to attend Oxford, let alone graduate, was A Very Big Deal. It was written up in the local paper to the delight of my sponsors, the American Legion Post Forty-three, who, in a giddy rush of self-congratulation, granted me a healthy stipend for books and expenses. I hustled around and scrounged a small grant to cover the rest, and, Presto! I was in business.
    Simon thought an advanced degree sounded like a splendid idea, so he went in for history—though why that and not astrophysics or animal husbandry or anything else is beyond me. But, as I said, he had a good brain under his bonnet, and his advisers seemed to think he’d make out all right. He was even offered rooms in college—a most highly sought-after situation. Places for undergrad students are scarce enough, but rooms for graduates are out of the question for any but the truly prized individual.
    Privilege again, I suppose. Simon’s