A Single Man: A Novel

As George approaches the college where he works, he passes through a disadvantaged neighborhood where Black and Hispanic people live. He explains that these people are not his enemies, and he does not hate them; on the contrary, he believes he understands them. The college is surrounded by dormitories still in development. George pulls into a massive parking lot and counts the cars he recognizes as belonging to students of his. He walks into the main office, greets the secretaries, and checks in. As George ventures across campus, he observes the students passing by and compares them to products being “processed, packaged and placed on the market” (32). He finds a student with whom he regularly speaks in the cafeteria, a man named Russ Dreyer. As they walk to class together, George observes two shirtless men playing tennis and becomes aroused, losing track of his conversation with Dreyer. In this moment, George realizes his alternate self, the “talking head” (38), was speaking for him the moment he arrived at work. It alarms him to think that he is losing himself more and more to these alternates.

George describes his classroom’s structure and the way the students always avoid sitting in the front (with the exception of his regulars). He never enters the classroom with a student due to a “dramatic instinct” (39) that forbids it. A battle of will ensues as George waits for his students to stop talking, and they wait for him to insist upon it—leaving George feeling exhilarated by the tension. He thinks about the male students’ clothing, how clumsy they look compared to their counterparts, and feels scrutinized by them. One student is a nun whose ideals threaten George; another is a middle-aged woman who seems to study his every move. Another student named Kenny often laughs at George, and George cannot tell if he is laughing with him or “at the whole situation; the education system of this country, and all the economic and political and psychological forces which have brought them into this classroom together” (44).

The tension rises until finally, George breaks it and says, “After many a summer dies the swan” (45), quoting Aldous Huxley’s After Many a Summer, which centers on a celebrity who fears his own mortality. George realizes he neglected to tell absent students to read it and feels guilty about one particularly sensitive girl’s reaction. He announces that the class can read the novel later—more so to alleviate his own guilt than to ease their worries. He begins asking questions that nobody knows the answers to and humorously remarks in his head that “they don’t give a shit” (46) about the content he is teaching them. George briefly reacts out of irritation, but again feels guilt and shame and tries to resume teaching. He explains the Greek myth of Tithonus, the story of a goddess who falls in love with a mortal and, forgetting he will age, asks Zeus to grant him immortality. She grows weary of him in his age and locks him away; eventually, he turns into a cicada.

George is bluntly asked by a Jewish student if Huxley was anti-Semitic due to a particular line in his novel. George answers “no” and explains that while such hatred was unjustified, it has sociohistorical context. He explains how minorities “are people who probably look and act and think differently from us and have faults we don’t have” (53). He continues to explain minorities’ perceived threat to societal norms. George believes that people should feel and speak their biases rather than suppress them as this is the only way to solve them. In the decades following World War II, prejudice became increasingly frowned upon and taboo, particularly towards the Jewish community. George knows he is stepping on toes but continues his speech nonetheless. He tells the class that minorities hate not only the majority, but each other, and that this hate turns them “nasty” (54). The students react with awkward shock, and he dismisses them for the day. George believes he imparted great wisdom onto his class and compares himself to a peddler selling a diamond for a nickel—all but a select few seem to understand what he is offering.

On his way out, George encounters his student Kenny, who asks if he consumes the drug mescaline. George explains that he bought some from a drug store before it became illegal and describes the hallucinations he had to Kenny: “everything becomes more and more three-dimensional; curtains get heavy and sculptured-looking, and wood is very grainy” (59). Kenny asks if George has any left, but the latter laughs and declines. The younger suggests that George knows more about the drug and his teaching material than he lets on. George keeps Kenny company on his way to the school bookstore, where Kenny buys George a pencil sharpener as thanks; George feels “he has been offered a rose” (62). George describes the moment they share as intimate as they smile at each other and part ways.

George goes to the cafeteria for lunch and observes the staff, pitying their lives and feeling hopeless about their prospects. He marvels at the idea of professors knowing so much but getting paid so little for said knowledge, referring to them as “suckers” (64). He approaches Grant, a professor to whom he relates for his passion for subverting the system. Another staff member, Cynthia, joins them and rants about the state of American motel rooms. George claims that Americans live an advanced, non-materialistic life that her European mind cannot understand. He compares himself to “a performer at a circus” (72) during his speech and escapes for the parking lot, humiliated once more.