The Magic Keys Albert Murray (read novels website TXT) 📖

And he said, The main thing is that you’re not only somebody from down the way and was actually in that place part of the time I was there and even saw me there and actually knew about some of the books I was reading on my own along with all that music theory and all those required practice sessions, it’s not just that. Man, what I’m hoping is that just the experience of hearing myself reading some of this crazy stuff I’m playing around with to somebody like you, just might be all I need to keep me going in the outrageous direction I’m going.

And that was when I also told him about how my roommate and I had started reading books on the reading list for the special elective course on the novel for upperclassmen because it was being taught by Carlton Poindexter, who also taught our section of freshman English. Then I said, As things turned out neither of us actually took that class in the novel because my roommate transferred to the Yale School of Architecture after his sophomore year and the course was not available during my junior year, because Mr. Poindexter was away in graduate school on a special fellowship grant, because he was going to be the new librarian.

And anyway, man, by that time the main thing for me was that other reading list that my old roommate and I had tacked on the wall of Atelier 359 by the end of our freshman year. And there was also all of those follow-up references in those wide-ranging anthologies and follow-up stuff to articles in current magazines.

And then I also said what I said about spending all three of my college summers on the campus working as a hospital kitchen helper the first summer, as a power plant engineer’s unskilled assistant the second summer, and in the stacks of the library itself during the summer before my senior year.

And he said, You, too? Because it turned out that he had also spent the two summers of his three college years working on the campus, first as a baker’s helper in the campus dining hall, and in the library, not only the next summer but also that next regular school year. Which is why I had not really been surprised when he said that he was trying to write a book, not a symphony or an oratorio. I had seen him with the band and sometimes he also wore his band uniform to work when he had to report to the library directly after playing for an early-morning cadet parade formation practice, and I also knew that he was an advanced student in the School of Music because sometimes he used to come to the library to do his copywork assignments with the sheets spread out before him at a table all by himself. But even so, I had remembered seeing him carrying library books across the campus far more often than I saw him with his trumpet case.

Man, I said, I couldn’t even spare bus fare to Mobile, and the summer jobs that you could get on the campus were so much better than anything available to me down there, anyway. Man, those summers I spent working on the campus were just as important as the regular school term. Hey, come to think of it, those three summers now seem like the equivalent of three full terms. Man, with no formal class assignments between me and all those library books, and with new ones coming in all the time. Man, talking about the rabbit in the briar patch. And he said, I know what you mean, man. I know exactly what you mean. Then he said, They had some very good people in that School of Music down there, but as I look at things now, the best thing down there for me turned out to be the library along with the kind of informal sessions I used to have with Carlton Poindexter. Man, I still think of that library as something special. When you consider the fact that the main emphasis in that school was not that of a liberal arts college like Fisk, Talladega, and Morehouse—but when you remember how many of those younger profs were still doing advanced graduate work, maybe that had something to do with it. Anyway, that library collection suggests that there may well have been at least a few others down there like Carlton Poindexter who had a much richer background in liberal arts than was required by the courses they taught. And come to think of it, that was also true of the School of Music.

Which reminded me that my old roommate and I had thought of Taft Edison as an upperclassman worthy of our special attention and some deference. Not only because his name was on the library checkout card for so many books that were not required for any course of study offered by the college program at that time, but also because on so many that were current and recent publications or were referred to in current and back issues of weekly, monthly literary magazines and quarterly journals.

Man, he said, as he walked with me to the elevator when I told him that I had to be getting on back to the library to finish an assignment for an early-evening class, speaking of the rabbit in the briar patch, did you ever get around to checking out Of Time and the River? And I said, I did, remembering that I had put it on my list because I had seen it on Mr. Carlton Poindexter’s desk after class one morning along with several other books by contemporary Southern authors.

And when he said, Remember the section that he calls “Young Faustus”? and I said I did and that sometimes I also used to refer to my old roommate as Dr. Faustus after Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical History