"Paul Levinson - Loose Ends (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

done graduate work at universities in the mid-20th century. One,
named Geoffrey, had earned a Ph.D. in social psychology from the
University of Edinburgh in 1958. Their names and academic
disciplines were close enough that Jeff with a mixture of
Geoff's credentials and his own knowledge of the field would
have been able to demonstrate a convincing identity in 1985-86
-- the team's reason for coming up with this. But it turned out
to also be enough for Jeff to land a job back here as an Adjunct
Professor at the third school whose ad he'd answered, his act
sufficiently polished, hinting just enough knowledge of new
trends in the field to kindle admiration without suspicion. It
was a last-minute Spring teaching appointment, to fill in for a
regular Professor unexpectedly on leave, that required only
cursory credentialing. But it was a foot in the door, and it
paid real money.
He squinted at the sun and inhaled deeply. The polluted air
still bothered him, and he sometimes felt as if little pieces of
black soot were burning holes in his chest. He wheezed
slightly. But the day felt promising, even beautiful, and he
caught the crosstown bus to the IRT subway on West 86th Street.
This would take him to the "Intro to Sociology" class that he
taught at City College on l37th Street in Harlem.
***
Further up the subway line, near a place called Pelham
Parkway in the Bronx, Mrs. Sarah Harris also made her way to
work. The day was beautiful to her too, and she also wheezed a
bit -- from asthma -- as she walked down the block to Saperman's
Bakery where she worked behind the counter. Her mind was filled
today, as it was on many days, with images of the Ukrainian
countryside around Kiev, and with pictures of her father. She
could see him as clearly as if he were standing right in front
of her, even though she had last seen him more than 60 years ago
and a continent away. Her brown eyes, still keen and always
wise, glistened a drop, not from soot but sentiment. Those eyes
were almost identical to Jeff's. She was his
great-great-grandmother.
***
At City College, in a place presciently named Harris Hall,
Jeff labored to make a concluding point about McLuhan. "So
you see, it's not what we watch on television that's important,
it's the fact that we're watching television -- rather than
reading a book or listening to the radio -- that McLuhan says
really counts. This is what he means by `the medium is the
message.'"
Jeff looked at the students, most of whom were scribbling
his words without the slightest comprehension. The three girls
from Queens who smiled at him certainly hadn't the vaguest idea
what he was talking about. Neither did the foreign kid, his
mouth continuously hanging open, who at least made no attempt to
disguise his puzzlement. But a few in the class did seem to have