I asked my daughter if me and her and her mother were in a hot air balloon and it was about to crash into the ocean who would you throw out to keep the balloon aloft, me or your mother? She said sheaEUR(tm)d throw me out. I said Why? She said Because youaEUR(tm)re bigger than her. So I said okay, imagine that me and your mother weigh exactly the same, then who would you throw out? She said sheaEUR(tm)d throw me out. I said why? She said because youaEUR(tm)re older, so youaEUR(tm)ve had your fun. So I said okay, imagine that me and your mother weigh the same and weaEUR(tm)re exactly the same age, now who would you throw out? She said sheaEUR(tm)d throw me out. I asked why? She said because you keep asking all these stupid questions. So I gave up on that line of enquiry and read Stoner, a much loved novel. 
 ItaEUR(tm)s about this teacher. Boy, do people like to wax sentimental about teachers. ThereaEUR(tm)s Mr Chips in Goodbye Mr Chips and thereaEUR(tm)s John Keating in Dead Poets Society and thataEUR(tm)s just off the top of my head. William Stoner in this sorry tale is a Missouri farm boy who goes to university to study agriculture then gets smacked upside his head by one of ShakespeareaEUR(tm)s sonnets and never looks back. He becomes a worshipper at the shrine of literature, with a capital L and becomes a teacher of it. 
 This is the kind of study of Literature where a student will announce 
 I intend to trace ShelleyaEUR(tm)s first rejection of Godwinian necessitarianism for a more or less Platonic ideal through the mature use of that ideal as a comprehensive synthesis of his earlier atheism, radicalism, Christianity and scientific necessitarianism 
 You at the back wake up! IaEUR(tm)m not even half way done with this damned review. Well, university English departments did and maybe still do crank out students who write this sort of abstruse shite and itaEUR(tm)s all just as useful as the great theological treatises about the nature of the Logos in St JohnaEUR(tm)s left earhole or whether it was 5000 herrings or 5000 cod in the feeding of the 5000. What a colossal waste of time. 
 HE FELT AT TIMES THAT HE WAS A KIND OF VEGETABLE 
 (p. 184)