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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Gina Barreca

Murder Mystery XI: The Thrilling Conclusion

(The good parts were, once again, contributed by Norman Stevens — Librarian Extraordinaire — who shook the gravel that I gave him and came up with gold; I couldn’t have found my way out of this labyrinth without him.)

Late the next afternoon, Cynthia and John met at a local bar and started drinking Pinot Grigio. John felt betrayed by his Boston girlfriend Maria who earlier that afternoon had bragged to him on her cellphone about an English scholar she had just met who was as good a feminist as any man she knew. The photograph of her snuggling up to this handsome stranger that she had forwarded from her cellphone had put him in an especially foul mood. He had been drinking heavily since that unsettling call.

Cynthia was equally distressed not so much by the fact that Mary Anne Hanley, the daughter of one of her college classmates, not only had found Mann’s heart on the bonfire but also had wrapped it up and carried it off to the police station, but by the instant five minutes of fame it had brought her. She was officially welcomed into the sisterhood of Omega Omega Delta for having carried out the heart stunt and was christened Ticky on the spot.

Cynthia knew how upset her mother Buffy would be. It was Ticky who attached the note to Mann’s heart; a quotation from Whitman (it was the only thing she had written in her notebook when Mann himself wrote it on the blackboard as he ended what was to be his last class ever). Having dealt with those important matters, they moved on to a consideration of Mann’s death and the potential impact on their academic careers.

John tentatively leaned over to kiss Cynthia on her wine-flavored lips and their investigation, so to speak, was reduced in scope but proved both fruitful and enjoyable.

Meanwhile, back at Kicker’s room, when Muffy playfully called him by his given name while they were having one of their frequent sexual escapades, he hit her across the mouth and split her lip. As she left to return to her sorority house, Kicker decided to return to Mann’s office to make sure that he had recovered. In tears Muffy, with her face streaked to a pink that matched the sorority’s color, told her housemate Shirley Maxwell, aka S-Max, how Kicker had smacked her for no good reason. Outraged, and not in the least concerned that Kicker might be kicked out of school, S-Max called the campus police. The hunt for Kicker was on!

Winkie, when he returned to his office in the Satis Library, was surprised to find that there was no visible police presence and no yellow-crime scene tape across Mann’s office door. Peeking into the office, he saw Mann’s body still upright in his chair so he headed to his own office where he finally called the police. Kicker arrived at Mann’s office still not understanding why nobody had mentioned an assault on Mann. He knocked on the door, which swung open, contemplated The Hillborne Mann’s body, and reached for the note, which was the quotation “Every sweet has its sour; every evil its good” by Emerson that he scribbled on a sheet on Mann’s desk the night before.

The police, led by Mrs. Kunkle, burst in and — killing two-birds with one stone — arrested Kicker for assaulting Muffy and killing Mann. Kicker, surprisingly articulate, explained why Mann had to die. Sure that any jury of his peers, perhaps assuming he would face a jury consisting of student-athletes and maybe even a coach or two, would acquit him, he ranted on. Before finally asking for a lawyer, Kicker announced that he regretted his actions only in so far as they might interrupt his football and academic career, and that he remained committed to the study of American literature despite his disappointment with Mann.

Never discovering that it was Nouleigh Rhee Furbished who had so carefully removed Mann’s heart and used it to create an artistic masterpiece, the police seized as evidence the unique copy of “The Telltale Heart.” Unfortunately it was held in a musty evidence locker at the police station where it rotted and decomposed before Kicker’s trial some eleven month’s later. When interviewed on Entertainment Tonight, she declined comment on whether or not she was already planning her next creation, or simply waiting for the right opportunity.

Kicker eventually pled guilty to manslaughter in the second degree and was sentenced to five to seven years in the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord. He is now actively engaged in a prison-based writing program and is completing his first novel: the story of Moby Dick as told by Starbuck. It will be dedicated to Mann.

Ahmed Farouk took over Mann’s 19th-century American literature classes. Despite adamant and vociferous protestations by a number of students, Ahmed has altered the reading list slightly but significantly. He also has put into place a new system of grading that relies heavily on frequent unannounced in-class exams in place of term papers, thus eliminating the time-honored tradition of recycling long practiced in Hillborne’s fraternities and sororities.

Pleased to have reclaimed Mann’s office for the Satis Library, Peason presses ahead with his campaign to exile them completely. His chief argument is the fact that the endowment established by Mann will bring a newfound prestige to the English Department that should entitle them to their own new building. He even announces that technology will not require additional library space and relinquishes any claim to the land behind the library, which had long been dedicated to library expansion, in favor of that new building. He even suggests that Hillborne might consider commissioning Frank Gehry to design a landmark book-shaped building to house the department.

Cynthia and John go their separate ways except for an occasional relapse when the mood strikes one or the other. Maria becomes a less frequent part of his life. He struggles along with TGBB deciding eventually to recast it for publication through Amazon’s BookSurge program.

Campbell, Farouk, and Jefferies persuade the President to appoint them each to a ten-year term for the administration of the scholarship established by Mann. To compensate for the increased demands on their time, their course load is reduced by one class a semester and each is given $5,000 a year for incidental expenses involved with their new duties.

John is outraged that he has not been asked to serve in that capacity. He begins dating the new assistant dean of admissions, a former student of his who happened into an inheritance of her own.

John thinks Mann was right about one thing: Nobody but a fool ever married but for money.

Posted at 08:53:35 PM on May 19, 2008 | All postings by Gina Barreca

Comments

  1. Applause. And neatly done, too.

    — Funofit · May 21, 12:08 AM · #

  2. At least any new library will not be Nouleigh Rhee Furbished.

    — Rita · May 21, 03:25 AM · #

  3. The author(s) seemed to turn suddenly bitter towards John. Why?

    — nancy · May 21, 05:36 AM · #

  4. I’m sorry to see it all come to an end, but thanks for bringing a little mystery to our (reading) lives!

    — Emily · May 21, 06:08 AM · #

  5. I hope John reconsiders—he and Cynthia belong together. I will miss these characters!

    — Beth Welch · May 21, 06:30 AM · #

  6. I’m sad to see this mystery end! I have looked forward to each new installment. Bravo, Gina! What a fun ride you have taken us on these last few weeks!

    — Jennifer · May 21, 07:36 AM · #

  7. I laughed, I cried, I’m sorry it’s over, but looking forward to your new, insightful biograhy of the legendary Concord College president. Dr. P Rolle.

    — Andrea · May 21, 07:44 AM · #

  8. WHEN is the novel coming out?

    — Col · May 21, 08:57 AM · #

  9. Gina, I loved this! Everything was great – from the plot to the names of your characters. I can’t wait to see what you come up with next!

    — Niamh · May 21, 09:58 AM · #

  10. A triumph. And good news for the department, too. What a happy ending.

    — Lee A. Jacobus · May 21, 10:31 AM · #

  11. Bravo, Gina! I’m sorry to see this great mystery come to an end… You may have a second career in mystery fiction! : )

    — Nina Lomando-Grigoreas · May 21, 10:40 AM · #

  12. Too bad it’s over! I would love to read a full, novel-length version of this. Someday?

    — maggie · May 21, 12:12 PM · #

  13. If you marry for money you will surely earn it.

    — Emile Discard · May 21, 01:47 PM · #

  14. MORE.

    — sherlock · May 21, 08:09 PM · #

  15. Is this the end of the most honest discussion of violence, passion, and books at a college—at least the most frank that I’ve read?

    Ah? Yes? I mourn.

    — sarah and your girlfriend knows · May 21, 10:08 PM · #

  16. Why is y’all reading this when y’all should be writing or out dispatching your own enemies? Life is too brief to live through fiction, m’darlins. Trust J.L. on that.

    — johnny · May 21, 10:14 PM · #

  17. Finally! I can sleep again. It was touch and go there for a while

    — Hannah · May 22, 09:07 AM · #

  18. Now that “Murder Mystery” has concluded, might a dissenting opinion be allowed? Which is to say that the writing was simply awful. In my day, we were instructed to “show, not tell.” To say that the characters were one-dimensional is to attribute to them a depth they did not possess. The plot was a hodge-podge. And there was nary a trace of an arc or pacing to the electronic novella. The shelves of a decent library or good second-hand book shop contain at least several professionally crafted academic whodunits. If one is lucky, one can find a copy of Helen Eustis’s “The Horizontal Man,” or Howard Nemerov’s “The Homecoming Game” (which is not a murder mystery, but a kind of intellectual suspense story), or that wonderful recent mystery (I have lent it out and the title escapes me now) in which the reader truly does not know at the end whether the professor is the culprit or not. In any case, I am rather astounded at the praise appearing above. It seems that those readers are so grateful for, to be truthful, so very little.

    — The Woman in White · May 22, 03:58 PM · #

  19. Must all murders (or any other writing genre for that matter) follow a formula? should we always follow “instruction”? Should we never introduce another way of experiencing a story? That sounds pretty boring to me. Perhaps this wasn’t cookie-cutter enough for you. Personally, I liked it because while it was working within certain stereotypes, it certainly broke the mold and that is fun. Read it, like it…or read it and don’t like it. To each their own. But one must always know that appreciation for writing (and all arts) is subjective and should not assume that all people should like the same things.

    — Hannah · May 23, 12:05 PM · #

  20. Mine was certainly an opinion and opinions are substantially subjective. But some opinions are more well-grounded than others. It would require more words here than one could graciously expect this forum’s readers to endure to cite all the instances of distressingly flat and ungainly declarations of fact and characters’ attributes occuring throughout the “Murder Mystery.” So I will not ask that indulgence.

    I will say, however, that I do not expect murder mysteries to follow a formula. The three books I recommended (one of them uninformatively, I apologize, for lack of a title and author) are very, very different. And as to the cookie-cutter aspect, the problem was that “Murder Mystery” seemed to derive from a multiplicity of cookie cutters, rather than one or none.

    I do suspect than many, if not the majority, of the favorable comments appearing above are from Prof. Barecca’s present or former students, who seem to form a somewhat uncritical fan club. I also suspect that there are many readers of “Murder Mystery” who share an unfavorable opinion of it. Having spent a considerable amount of time trying to be fair to the work by reading it in its entirety, I feel entitled to post such an opinion.

    — The Woman in White · May 23, 01:40 PM · #

  21. Is it not fair to say that when one knows a writer personally and has a favorable experience with that writer one is often apt to appreciate their writing all the more for that experience? So if there are a number of former students glowing about Gina’s work in this blog I would suggest that this speaks to Gina’s talent as a teacher as well as her talent as a writer rather than some lapse in judgment on our part.

    But, dear Woman in White, you are absolutely correct in that we all are allowed our opinions…hopefully we may all share these opinions kindly with one another.

    — Hannah · May 23, 08:45 PM · #

  22. I am assuming, dear Hannah, that you mean, “It is to be hoped that we may all share…” And I also assume that the misuse of the word “hopefully” is something that Prof. Barecca does her best to correct in even the most recalcitrant of her students.

    — The Woman in White · May 24, 06:33 AM · #

  23. WIW: Are we not a tad bitter? From whence does this bitterness emerge? Do tell…that’s a the REAL mystery.
    PS- I am not one of Dr. Barreca’s former students. Why do you assume everyone is?

    — Claire · May 24, 11:45 PM · #

  24. With some regret, I notice that my original comment, which, although far from a fully formed example of literary criticism, did concern itself directly with the work at hand, has been met with paeans to the relativism of taste, a defense of being in the classroom thrall of an author as a boon to “appreciating” that author’s work, and, now, a bit of personal invective. (No, as a matter of fact, I am not in the least bitter. And, if the commentor “Claire” would redirect herself to Comment No. 20, she would find that I said that I suspected “many, if not the majority” of the favorable comments emanated from current or former students of Prof. Barecca. This is a far cry indeed from my assuming that “everyone” falls into that category.)

    Originally, I employed the term “fan club,” which I thought conveyed a certain happy innocence on the part of the commentors who admire “Murder Mystery” in the matter of (as we used to call it in my younger days) “love me, love my dog.” (That is, love Prof. Barecca, love whatever she writes.) My estimate is now moving away from that comparatively light-hearted term toward something with a litte more gravitas. While I wouldn’t go so far as to invoke “cult,” or even “entourage,” I am inclined to favor “coterie.”

    It would be informative to hear from other readers, from outside the circle indicated above, who are aficionados of either novels of academe, or whodunits, or both. Many of their opinions will, I am sure, diverge from mine. But it would be most interesting to hear them explain, with some dispassionate critical acumen, what exact aspects of “Murder Mystery” they like or don’t like. I admit to being puzzled as to how readers, running anxiously toward a “thrilling conclusion,” cannot be bothered by such leaden prose as (to choose but one a hundred examples), “John felt betrayed by his Boston girlfriend Maria who earlier that afternoon had bragged to him on her cellphone about an English scholar she had just met who was as good a feminist as any man she knew.”

    — The Woman in White · May 25, 07:27 AM · #

  25. At least we now know which Academic Douchebag can be killed off in the next series.

    — Patrick Bateman · May 25, 06:54 PM · #

  26. “It would be informative to hear from other readers, from outside the circle indicated above, who are aficionados of either novels of academe, or whodunits, or both.”

    How vain to choose who you would like to argue with. Kudos, really.

    Now, I am within the great Circle Indicated Above, but since you have opened Pandora’s Box here, drawing up your own terms seems kind of futile, though I appreciate the utter lack of dignity in it, no lie. The way you’ve been giving up ground and going back on your points is top-notch. If you claim Barreca’s characters are predictable, then you must be one of them. Who knew we’d be reading meta-fiction by the end of a simple murder mystery? What you will do now is make some sort of cheap jab at my grammar or spelling and attribute this to what you see as Barreca’s failure in the teaching department. That’s okay. Because I also know that, as a predictable character from Barreca’s next work, you are sitting at your laptop pouring way too much time into your rebuttal, sipping overpriced coffee and giggling at how clever you think you are.

    My point is this: I am one of Barreca’s former students, yes, but I am also a fan of the campus novel and the whodunit, and since being a member of the Barreca Fan Club and, uh, reading aren’t mutually exclusive, I suppose it isn’t preposterous of me to think I might have something of value to add here. Now, I agree that there are sycophants all over this board, but that’s hardly a surprise, is it? Ass kissing in the academic world? No! You’re kidding! WIW, I applaud your efforts to singlehandedly take on this issue, but maybe some things are better left alone. As one of Barreca’s former students, I do not have to like everything she writes and I do not have to flatter her by pretending that I do, but she has at least taught me enough to know that if I am to be accountable for my likes or dislikes, I better do a damn good job of outlining them for the party concerned. It’s more effective, you see, than making rash generalizations. That’s why I post what I liked or disliked about every installment after it has been posted on the blog, along with suggestions which the writer can use or ignore. It’s simple, really, and I don’t have to come across as some sort of an internet alpha-dog by making statements about whether the writing is horrible, or someone’s former students are perpetuating that so called horrible writing. Because if you are going to post here simply to destroy someone else’s work, wouldn’t it be a better use of your time to create something of your own instead? Or am I answering my own question here?

    I’d be interested in a sincere reply, but please, be intelligent about it.

    — Harry Lime · May 25, 08:05 PM · #

  27. Dear Mr. Lime,

    Your points, such as they are, are enthusiastically delivered, and in such manly language, too! (I will assume, for the nonce, that you are of the male persuasion. But, as we all know so well, nothing is ever certain on the Internet.) Alas, there is nothing much new in your comment, except the invocation of “metafiction,” which is a limitlessly expandable umbrella that covers, as they say, a multitude of sins. And if, of course, I am ultimately one of Prof. Barecca’s metafictional characters, then nothing I have said or will say, should perturb any fan of “Murder Mystery,” since it is all part of the greater text.

    True, I did not comment while “Murder Mystery” while it was in progress, and did not offer suggestions to the author. I chose to treat it not as a sort of Amish barn-raising, but rather as a piece of fiction posted in successive parts on the Internet. If “Murder Mystery” was not intended to be open to public comment, then perhaps it should have been published elsewhere, with a password (known only to, as you call it, the “Great Circle Indicated Above”) limiting the audience to a select and adulatory few.

    No purpose would be served by my reiterating my misgivings concerning “Murder Mystery’s” plot, characterizations, and style as, I do notice, that my citing one specific example of hundreds ungainly sentences brought me only an accusation of “making rash generalizations.”

    Finally (and I am in all probability speaking in that “meta” sense you seem to admire, since I can rather predict the responses to this comment), I am not at all seeking “to destory someone else’s work.” Prof. Barecca would be a wilting violet indeed if two or three demurring comments, appearing not in a reputable journal of criticism or a major daily newspaper but only amidst a chorus of praise from that “Great Circle Indicated Above,” were to send “Murder Mystery” to oblivion or, heavens forbid, derail her further creative efforts. I offer only some criticism, which, it seems to me, is rather within the long tradition of the fate of published fiction in Western society. Ms. Marilyn Stasio would most likely affirm that contention. (Yes, she is a professional, and I am not. Then again, “Murder Mystery” was self-published.) I, like you, Mr. Lime, have a life outside this forum and I, like (I presume) you, use much of that time creating something of my own. You may speculate as to its nature or quality as you wish.

    Postscripts:

    I do not drink coffee, only tea.

    I cannot “be intelligent” on command. I am only as intelligent as I am or am not. (And I make you a present of that stick.)

    The crude insults posted by Mssrs Bateman and Seaton speak for themselves. I do not, however, avail myself of a thesaurus while I comment herein. (Later, perhaps.)

    Thank you for your comments. This has been a most interesting sojourn into the world of academe and its demimonde of creative writing courses. Adieu.

    — The Woman in White · May 26, 06:34 AM · #

  28. WIW- I must say, as an observer of the world of academia and its inhabitants through the authors at this sight, I am kind of shocked, but amused by the, frankly, intellectually masturbatory nature of your responses! What appeared to me to be a light, simple story clearly meant to entertain and amuse, has really seemed to get to you. Your last few comments have really made me wonder what personal investment you have in the (attempted) humiliation of Ms. Barreca. THIS ALL SMELLS TOO PERSONAL…
    Too bad…I think you need to lighten up.
    I.K.

    — I. Kensington · May 26, 10:30 PM · #

  29. A student of a professor of feminist theory calls somebody who criticized something by that professor a douchebag. Then somebody calls somebody else’s comment masturbatory and then tells THEM to lighten up. Weird.

    — Just Passing Through · May 27, 10:13 AM · #

  30. My dears, you have seen me post here before, with great respect and acclaim for Mme. Barreca’s work. As someone who does respect her work, I don’t think it’s out of line for someone to post with a varied opinion. The stream of defensive responses got a bit out of hand, meandered around the block, poked its head in the back door of the local community theatre and reinvented itself as a star of stage drama in short order and then started to learn to tap dance in full Victorian garb.

    Please do put away the box of adjectives, the CAPS, and the melodrama, take a deep breath and have a better day. Sometimes it is in the best interest of those you defend not to be quite so volatile in defense, how ever much you may respect their work.

    Everyone in full costume, please put it away and prepare for the comedy presentation that is due several posts from now – George, be certain not to put the hat boxes where the cat can get to them this time.

    — bta · May 27, 01:47 PM · #

  31. Masturbatory, indeed. WIW, if you manage to come across as this pretentious on a messageboard, you must be a riot in person.

    — Tyler Durden · May 29, 03:48 PM · #

  32. For the nonce? Who says that?

    — Tender Branson · May 29, 03:48 PM · #

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