I Who Do Know Best

And those I tell about it

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury

On a good day you might, because you care oh so much about the planet, you might cycle to work. Your work at the university, where you are so celebrated, your job so secure. On a bad day, of course, you’ll use the car. You know how people are, how they think, how they think others think. It’s an advantage you have over them. Though of course, being a good person, you do not use your advantages overmuch. The weather lately has been fine, really fine, but today it is a grey and misty, the fog that comes in far away from the sea a dark and yellow smear threatening worse to come.

You think about the next party you will throw. You are very good a throwing parties. Everyone says so, everyone who has been to one of yours and a few people who haven’t. Such is their reputation. What you do, because you know people, is to throw people together who would not ordinarily interact. Students and faculty, intellectuals and women of action, madonnas and whores. The usual mix. You put them together and in so doing you do them all a favour. You do them such a favour, because they would not have known to have assemble themselves if you had not been there. If you had not been around to help.

And while the people mingle, while they have their fun and begin their deep learning (the kind of deep learning your gatherings prompt and provide), you are not idle — oh, no. You stalk through the crowd as a lioness might traverse the plains. You hunt in the midst of a crowd. Certainly, you know what it is you’re looking for. But first you must recharge glasses, must make amusing remarks that other people would not have thought of on their own — you must make the comments on the passing scene that you are so known for, which you do not rehearse, no matter what people say. You do not rehearse a word of them. People who attend your parties love your little comments. Some have said, have offered in a quiet word, that you have changed their lives. But you would never, being modest as the day is long, make such claims yourself. Of course you would not.

At your parties you want to spark rare gatherings, see steel sharpening steel. And of course you want to see novelty. You want to be entertained. Naturally, you do not throw parties for purely philanthropic reasons — though you are a philanthropist. One who knows mankind and his sins as well as you do; someone like that must have a streak of moral goodness in them. To know the world is to critique the world. And you are one for a good theoretical critique. But you throw your parties for other reasons, too. For other reasons. You want to be important, if only for an evening.

And you want to meet new people, of course. New people unknown to your guests as well as to you. Students, new students, for you are at heart a teacher and a mentor. A great mentor. You want to meet the young. As many as possible. You want to help them: you want to help them in any way you can.

They ask you questions about your work, of course; about the world, too. For they do need some instruction. And you, because you are at heart a good man, a noble man, you do not stoop to tell them. You tell them as if they are your level, your equal. As if they are as good as you, and you as them. It is what a moral man would do. It is what a moral man would say. And you are a moral man.

And some of your students, in their pursuit of novelty, they want to be introduced not only to new knowledge, but to new experiences. You are happy to help, of course.

You wife, she does not mind. How can she? You know people so well. You know about women like her most of all.