Marisha Pessl - Special topics in calamity physics

SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS

a novel...

Blue v an M eer: a brainy, deadpan, and preternaturally erudite girl who, after traveling from one remote academic outpost to another with her professor father (see "Gareth van Meer"), has a head crammed full of literary, philosophical, and scientific knowledge. (She is also a film buff and can recite pi out to sixty-five decimal places.) When she is sixteen, due to certain nuclear events, her previously dull life is forever transformed.

The Flying Demoiselle: an archaic means of hanging someone, popular in the American South between 1829-1860. It is also, in all likelihood, how Hannah Schneider died.

Gareth Van Meer: a handsome yet maddening man prone to aphorisms, meteoric affairs, (see "June bugs"), and high-end bourbon.

June bugs: single women aged 35-45 who, for reasons unclear to Blue, cling to her father like lint balls to wool pants.

Lion sex: something that happens in Room 222 of the Dynasty Motel.

Valerio: a clue.

MARISHA PESSI

grew up in Asheville, North Carolina, and now lives in New York City. This is her first novel.

Jacket design: Paul Buckley Back jacket photograph Adalberto Rios Szalay/ Sexto Sol/Getty Images

VIKING

A member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York. N.Y. 10014

I Printed in U.S.A.

VIKING

VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pry Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pry) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England

First published in 2006 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

10 9 8 7

Copyright Marisha Pessl, 2006 All rights reserved

Illustrations by the author

Publisher's Note This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Pessl, Marisha. Special topics in calamity physics / Marisha Pessl.

p. cm. ISBN 0670-03777-X

1. Young womenFiction. I. Title. PS3616.E825S67 2006 813'.6dc22 2005058474

Printed in the United States of America Set in Electra LH with Omatic Designed by Daniel Lagin

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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ForAnne and Nie

Core Curriculum (Required Reading

INTRODUCTION 5

PART 1 13

Chapter #1: OTHELLO, William Shakespeare 15

Chapter #2: A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, James Joyce 22

Chapter #3: WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Emily Bront 35

Chapter #4: THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES,

Nathaniel Hawthorne 45

Chapter #5: THE WOMAN IN WHITE, Wilkie Collins 54

Chapter #6: BRAVE NEW WORLD, Aldous Huxley 61

Chapter #7: LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos 73

Chapter #8: MADAME BOVARY, Gustave Flaubert 83

Chapter #9: PYGMALION, George Bernard Shaw 108

Chapter #10: THE MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR AT STYLES,

Agatha Christie 131

CORE CURRICULUM (REQUIRED READING)

PART 2 147

Chapter #11: MOBY-DICK, Herman Melville 149

Chapter #12: A MOVEABLE FEAST, Ernest Hemingway 171

Chapter #13: WOMEN IN LOVE, D. H. Lawrence 193

Chapter #14: "THE HOUSEBREAKER OF SHADY HILL," John Cheever 211

Chapter #15: SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH, Tennessee Williams 230

Chapter #16: LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, Vladimir Nabokov 242

Chapter #17: THE SLEEPING BEAUTY AND OTHER FAIRY TALES, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 254

Chapter #18: A ROOM WITH A VIEW, E. M. Forster 262

PART 3 277

Chapter #19: HOWL AND OTHER POEMS, Allen Ginsberg 279

Chapter #20: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, William Shakespeare 293

Chapter #21: DELIVERANCE, James Dickey 311

Chapter #22: HEART OF DARKNESS, Joseph Conrad 328

Chapter #23: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, Ken Kesey 337

Chapter #24: ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE, Gabriel Garca Mrquez 346

Chapter #25: BLEAK HOUSE, Charles Dickens 361

Chapter #26: THE BIG SLEEP, Raymond Chandler 375

Chapter #27: JUSTINE, Marquis de Sade 385

Chapter #28: QUER PASTICCIACCIO BRUTTO DEVIA MERULANA,

Carlo Emilio Gadda 403 Chapter #29: THINGS FALL APART, Chinua Achebe 413

CORE CURRICULUM (REQUIRED READING) 3

Chapter #30: THE NOCTURNAL CONSPIRACY, Smoke Wyannoch Harvey 426

Chapter #31: CHE GUEVARA TALKS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna 436

Chapter #32: "GOOD COUNTRY PEOPLE," Flannery O'Connor 457

Chapter #33: THE TRIAL, Franz Kafka 460

Chapter #34: PARADISE LOST, John Milton 471

Chapter #35: THE SECRET GARDEN, Frances Hodgson Burnett 479

Chapter #36: METAMORPHOSES, Ovid 495

FINAL EXAM 509

Introduction

I had always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it.

"Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond James Bondyou best spend your free time finger painting or playing shuffleboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed-potato way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it beganwith a wheeze."

Given such rigid parameters, I always assumed I wouldn't have my Magnificent Reason until I was at least seventy, with liver spots, rheumatism, wit as quick as a carving knife, a squat stucco house in Avignon (where I could be found eating 365 different cheeses), a lover twenty years my junior who worked in the fields (I don't know what kind of fieldsany kind that were gold and frothy) and, with any luck, a small triumph of science or philosophy to my name. And yet the decision no, the grave necessityto take pen to paper and write about my childhoodmost critically, the year it unstitched like a snagged sweatercame much sooner than I ever imagined.

It began with simple sleeplessness. It had been almost a year since I'd found Hannah dead, and I thought I'd managed to erase all traces of that night within myself, much in the way Henry Higgins with his relentless elocution exercises had scrubbed away Eliza's Cockney accent.

I was wrong.