One L (14 page)

“I have an interesting note on this case,” Sandy said. “I thought that since the husband had served in the Union army, he would have a Civil War pension, and that if he had died his wife might have received something anyway. So I went to Widener and found the official roll of U.S. Civil War pensioners and sure enough, in 1877 Mrs. Tish, as survivor, began to receive eight dollars a month.”

The reaction from the class to Sandy's historical probing was a mixture of outraged laughter and the inevitable hissing. Perini, who'd already found that Sandy's straight-faced dog-gedness made him the perfect foil, said that he was disappointed—that he'd have expected Sandy, being Sandy, to make a trip to Harrisburg to see if Mrs. Tish's aggrieved ghost wasn't still stalking the graveyards.

Yet despite the humor with which Sandy's efforts were received, it became clear within a few days that they'd served to declare open season on outside work, a month ahead of schedule. A number of people now admitted delving into Perini's hornbook, and most reported that much of Perini's classroom commentary seemed to come from there directly. Many men and women began to treat the hornbook as part of the required reading, in hopes of doing well when called on. Even more disconcerting, I suddenly heard that a number of classmates had been observed in the library reading law review articles, sections of the treatises, the illustrative cases noted in the casebooks.

“I don't know what those guys think they're proving,” Tony Dawes, a classmate, told me one day when I saw him in the library. Tony had regularly studied near the reserve section where the treatises were located and he was telling me about the sudden rush of people from Section 2 who'd begun to appear there. “These professors aren't dumb. They know what those people are up to. It'll all come clear at the end of the year. None of 'em are gonna get any better grades than the rest of us.”

Not everyone was convinced that what Tony said was true. Many people felt a new pressure to consult sources other than the casebook, and to put even more time into study. Often I heard tales of students who appeared to those who knew them well to be doing nothing but law 20 hours a day, 140 hours a week—types who were in the library the moment it opened, or who broke their study in their dorm rooms only for half an hour of dinner each night, people who went over their class notes at the end of each day and typed all of them up over the weekend. Those stories were frightening. A standard was being set that not all of us could match. People were getting ahead, it seemed. People were falling behind.

Certainly in class it was beginning to appear that in spite of all initial impressions of parity, there really were some people who had an edge. We had all heard stories about students magically able in the law who appeared on rare occasions like a showing of the northern lights, the kind who would make straight A-pluses on their exams. Some of our professors were said to have been students like that, and we often shared speculations on whether there was anyone similarly gifted within the section. Lately it had started to look as if there were some likely candidates. In recent weeks, two or three people had begun to speak up in class who showed something more than what had been demonstrated by Clarissa and Wally Karlin and some of the others who had talked regularly from the start of the year. Clarissa and Wally were on again and off. Many of their remarks were things the rest of us had merely felt too abashed to say. But the people now emerging, armed with native talent, and often with intelligence gathered in the library, seemed to make frighteningly penetrating comments every time. And unlike the kind of humorous distaste with which Wally and Clarissa and the others were treated, these people—“the stars,” they were sometimes called, bitterly—occasioned feelings close to loathing, and often for no other reason than the kind of fear many of us felt in comparing ourselves to them.

Ned Cauley, for instance, a lanky man with a strong Maine accent, had by October become the star of Perini's class. He was exceedingly quick and he also loved contract law. Perini obviously admired him. The extent to which he'd become convinced of Ned's talent was dramatized one day when he'd gone on another of his treasure hunts across the room, waiting for a student to come up with the exact answer to a question. Suddenly, without looking behind, Perini whirled, pointed and called out Ned's name. Cauley gave the response half a dozen others had missed.

Ned performed remarkably every day. And most people in the section made faces whenever his name was mentioned. They groaned. Some told me that Ned was unintelligent, that his success was some kind of academic illusion, and that he did it all by burying himself in Contracts treatises. To an extent which shames me, I often agreed. Somehow, it seemed obvious that anyone who had the right answer that often had to be a con man and an SOB.

When I finally got to know Ned, late in the fall, I found that he was one of the best-humored and most diverse persons in the section. He taught a course in Chinese cooking in the free university—the sort of swapshop of skills run by student government—he knew the theatre, politics, music. If he did well in Contracts, it was because his interest and talents were genuine.

There were of course one or two of the stars who, even with allowances for envy, seemed to merit some of the enmity they generated. Harold Hochschild was a small man with a raspy voice and a head of rusty curls pasted to his scalp. Harold appeared quite arrogant. He had gone to Swarthmore and he often delivered himself of the opinion that everyone else in the section had had a second-rate education. In class, Harold loved to drone on, dropping his head emphatically at certain instants like an orchestra leader on the downbeat. By spring term he had mellowed a good deal, but in late October, Harold was the unrivaled leader in classmate contempt. About that time, I had some contact with him, which allowed me to make up my mind on my own.

In the last week of the month, when we were studying the law of trespass, Zechman had provoked a vigorous class debate. He had given us a complicated hypo about two railroads with adjoining rights of way. Should one railroad's representatives be allowed to trespass on the other's property in order to lay there, on a piece of waste land, a drainpipe which would carry away water obstructing the first railroad's track? For forty-five minutes the argument went on. People who believed in absolute property rights earnestly claimed that the trespass should not be permitted and that the pipe should be removed. Others, with equal force, said that the social utility of a running railroad meant the trespass should be overlooked. It was a fine class. When the session was over, Zechman revealed that his hypo was actually the fact situation of an old Iowa case.

“Who won?” a number of people called out.

Zechman, as usual, gave away ice in the wintertime. “The railroad,” he answered, then wrote the case citation on the board.

After a late meeting of the study group, Aubrey and I went to the library to look the case over. The report volume was missing from the shelf. I saw Harold Hochschild sitting nearby. Suspicious, I went to his carrel. Sure enough, the report volume was lying there unread while Harold studied.

It is, needless to mention, considered bad form around the law school to hoard a book that 140 others might be looking for. I ignored that, and asked Harold if we could look at the case for a second. He fluttered the back of his hand at me to take the book.

Aubrey and I read the report together. The trespassing railroad had to pay for use of the land, but the court refused to order the drainpipe removed. Given what we knew, the outcome seemed peculiar, although a good compromise of the positions struck by the class. (Later we learned that the Iowa case had begun the first formulation of the contemporary law of nuisance.)

I took the book back to Harold.

“That's really a strange result, isn't it?” I said to Harold.

He was reading and he didn't look up.

“I'm not sure which way it went,” I said.

Harold still did not reply. I looked at him for a moment then replaced the book.

“Thanks again,” I said. Still no answer.

Repeating the story in the next couple of days, I was informed by classmates that Harold had a policy of talking to no one when he studied. No one. He would not be interrupted in the midst of the glorious task. Getting the back of his hand when I picked up the book was miraculous, people said, more than could have been expected had I announced the second coming.

Stephen had a dark, grisly sense of humor and when I told him all of this he began cackling. “You know what's great?” he asked, laughing. “You know what I love about this place? Hochschild's going to be number one.
He's
the one who'll get A-pluses.
That's
the meritocracy.”

I agreed with what Stephen said, but I had a hard time finding any humor in it. That notion simply depressed me. The word Stephen used, “meritocracy,” kept popping up more and more often. It meant that Harvard Law School was a place where only merit, only raw intelligence and perseverance, both of extraordinary degree, were the sole means of success. Increasingly, I'd become certain that I was short on both counts. I was too exhausted to become a twenty-hour-a-day person, and too slow with the rest of my work to get to outside sources in the twelve to fourteen hours I studied each day. And compared to people like Harold and Ned, I had nothing worth saying in class. I made
mistakes
, in fact, silly blunders. If lucky, I was mediocre. And my conviction of my mediocrity was sour and unhappy. I had given up a good career, some security and distinction, to be swallowed in the horde, to confront intelligence which overshadowed my own. The shame at what I'd lost and was incapable of doing had become acute; and the day I embarrassed myself by making that mistake in Mann's class, I was low enough that my feelings worsened into something harrowing.

Walking out of that session, I was as close to tears as I had been in a decade. I wanted to explain to Mann, to all my classmates, that I really wasn't dumb or indiscreet, that I was able to accomplish many things worth doing. But there was no way to prove that, to them or even to myself.

When I had recovered somewhat, I vowed that I wouldn't let that feeling overcome me again. But that didn't mean taking a more balanced view of my feelings or a broader perspective on what was going on in general. I was too caught up in all of it by then. I promised instead that I would not talk in class. That meant feeling distant and frustrated while I sat in each meeting; it meant that I was giving in to fear. But I suffered it all, rather than face that horrible shame again, and for weeks I did not let myself be heard.

10/30/75 (Thursday)

Primarily, a down week with a couple of lighter spots, specifically, the lunches with two of our professors. The five of us in the study group went out with Perini yesterday and Zechman today. Both proved mildly interesting events, though I hardly felt I'd achieved anything profound with either man.

Having lunch with faculty members is something of an institution at HLS. It is one of the least painless ways that teachers can try to ease one of the most persistent criticisms of the place—that there is not enough contact between professors and students. Most of the professors seem freely available to those who ask for lunch appointments and there are a number who openly encourage small groups of students to join them for a drink or a meal. Peter Geocaris reports that last year Professor Mann went so far as to pick up the tabs.

In Perini's case, an invitation was issued with typical panache. Earlier in the month he started class by peering up sternly at the tiers of students around him.

“I have an announcement to make,” he said. Then he brightened and turned both palms up. “I am free for lunch,” he told us. “Dutch.”

Since then he's gone out almost every noon with a group of students. With him we went to Ferdinand's, a smooth French place near Harvard Square. He remained much the man behind the lectern—probably the most practiced human being I've ever met, the person who most desires to have his world in perfect order. He had to turn his lobster salad at the proper angle before he could eat. I watched him rotate the bowl.

Nonetheless, he was engaging, charming in an arid way. He was careful to look each of us square in the eye as he talked; mainly the conversation was about some of the projects Perini takes on outside of school. He does a good deal of consulting with various Republicans in Congress and a lot of Washington names got dropped throughout the meal: Percy, Rhodes, Fred Graham, various senators. I was surprised to hear that Perini treats senators the way he treats students and takes the same delight in it. He described an argument he had in a restaurant with one politician, the chairman of a subcommittee he's worked for. “I had him pinned on a point, absolutely pinned. I was standing right over him and he was getting red up to the neck. It was wonderful.”