When I was in high school, we had a popular young music teacher/bandleader who had a very nearly open relationship with one of our classmates. Or, at least, they spent so much time together that responsible adults had to have been suspicious. He was later convicted for sex crimes related to other students and went to prison.

When I was in college a fraternity brother and a young woman I was also friends with woke up in bed together after an alcohol-drenched party. Neither could remember how they ended up there nor what had happened, but she accused him of assault. He was a rather sensitive soul and found the accusation more dumb-founding than offensive. Nothing ever came of it through official channels due to the nature of the events, but it was a shattering experience.

Years later, a woman I was friends with in the workplace asked to speak with me privately. She said the fellow employee she had been seeing had raped her the night before and she wasn't sure what she could do (I'm technically a lawyer). I told her she not only had to report it to our employer but should also file a police report. He was fired and charged and when it turned out there had been prior incidents at the company the president resigned shortly thereafter. I got in trouble for saying that the head of HR should have been fired as well.

Meanwhile, The Wife is a doctor and did her training when the profession was still rather brutal towards residents/interns/fellows and was still very male dominated. The sexism and misogyny she endured was vile.

All of which is to say that I have no illusions in regard to #MeToo and recognize that there is a very real and systemic problem with men, in particular, preying on women in academia, the work place, etc. And while I don't accept that we should "listen to women" unreservedly, we should listen, investigate and punish where necessary. But relations between human beings are complex, nowhere moreso than where sex is involved, and communications, motivations, intentions, etc. can be easily misunderstood. Accusations are just that until we can determine , if we can determine, the truth of what went on.

In this short story by Viken Berberian--which you should absolutely read first so that nothing that follows slants your view of it--a younger colleague offers a different perspective on an old professor, recently deceased, whose daughter has written solicitous obituary in his honor. She concedes his intellect and at least partially charming crustiness. But then begins to darken the narrative:

But then, you did give a thumb’s down of sorts to Mr. K when he failed to make it beyond adjunct. And please don’t pretend that the denial of his promotion had anything to do with his continuous passing of wind during faculty meetings. You clearly saw him as a vassal, as some kind of ancillary leftover in the department, and you took pleasure in that, don’t deny it. I could see that smug glint in your eyes, decode the patina of contempt and good education that covered your face: PhD from MIT, studied under Noam Chomsky.

More than anything, this passage suggests that the writer bears a personal grudge. Particularly in a vacuum, this seems a rather minor blot even if we take it as fully true. After all, as Henry Kissinger famously said: “The reason that university politics is so vicious is because stakes are so small.”

Then there's a reference to an incident that even the writer says was indeterminative:

I came across a passing reference to your wife in a letter, though there was no mention of her drinking. It was when I served on the grievance committee of the faculty senate. Another anonymous student had filed a complaint about your behaviour. The letter did not get into the details of the alleged incident, just mentioning that ‘Professor D’s efforts to slip his hand into my jeans startled me.’ An internal inquiry followed, prompting a review of other student evaluations, interviews with undergraduates who had taken your classes. The evidence was inconclusive and the accuser’s motivation murky.

And then we arrive at the crux of the matter, an encounter when she's at the professor's residence for help with a writing project:

It started a few minutes after you walked backed from the kitchen to the living room. We were reviewing one of my claims, which you said lacked clarity of aim. You sat next to me on the sofa and placed your hand on my thigh. ‘You smell of flowers,’ you said. ‘It’s making me heady.’ I peeled your right hand off me, but it fell again. You then grabbed my arm, bending me to the floor. I broke free and thrust my fist into your face, smashing your glasses. This lack of etiquette on my part must have startled you, and you, the linguist, were at a loss for words, except for a grunt. I sprinted to the door and made sure to avoid you for the rest of the term.

This seems to be, more or less, a riff on the allegation that Naomi Wolf made against Harold Bloom, twenty years after being his student. It was met with hostility at the time and Ms Wolf's subsequent descent into lunacy hardly tends to earn her the benefit of the doubt. This similarity and the trappings surrounding the other elements that the writer believes would add "completeness" make me wonder if we're really supposed to take the final accusation at face value. Obviously if he did force her to the floor this was the kind of thing that could/should have been made an official matter, if for no other reason than to protect other women the professor had access to. And, if he did get this physical it cannot/should not be dismissed as an awkward pass by a lonely old man. But in his final appearance we are once more given cause to question what went on:

We crossed paths once in the park, your eyes had faded into an insipid gray. All that you managed to say was: ‘Please tell me what happened. I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you in any way.’

But since the story concludes with the writer pressing post on this "request" and since the professor is dead and can no longer offer a different version of events, the obituary is about to be full of something. We just can't be sure whether it will be more complete..

(Reviewed:27-Jul-24)

Grade: (B+) Orrin C. Judd

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Viken Berberian Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Viken Berberian
    -AUTHOR SITE: VikenBerberian.com
    -TWITTER: Viken Berberian @TheFrunzik
    -FACULTY PAGE: Viken Berberian Senior Lecturer (American University of Armenia)
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Viken Berberian (Simon & Schuster)
    -ENTRY: Berberian, Viken (Encyclopedia.com)
    -INDEX: Viken Berberian (BOMB)
    -INDEX: Viken Berberian (Foreign Affairs)
    -INDEX: Viken Berberian (KCRW)
    -INDEX: Viken Berberian (Le Monde Diplomatique)
    -INDEX: Viken Berberian (The Nation)
    -INDEX: Viken Berberian (NY Review of Books)
    -INDEX: Viken Berberian (Granta)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Viken Berberian (IMDB)
    -SHORT STORY: Request for a More Complete Obituary (Viken Berberian, The London Magazine)
    -ESSAY: No Remembrance Of the Things They Passed (Viken Berberian, July 3, 2003, NY Times)
    -SHORT STORY: The Art of Falling: An aging, beautiful, woman with a height of sixty-five inches, roughly the same as the canvas, slipped in front of a Jackson Pollock. It was Madame Moreau falling down, her limbs splayed across the floor in every direction. (Viken Berberian, July 26, 2018, NY Review of Books)
    -ESSAY: Armenia’s Bad Week for Autocrats: The mass protests in Yerevan have, surprisingly, broken Armenia’s frozen pattern of power. The collective psychology of “it’s not allowed” has been turned on its head. (Viken Berberian, May 1, 2018, NY Review of Books)
    -ESSAY: Manga Hulks Its Way to the Top: Japanese comics have become an undisputed juggernaut of the publishing industry. (VIKEN BERBERIAN, 9/09/22, The Nation)
    -ESSAY: Captive of the Caucasus: The Long War Over Nagorno-Karabakh: How a little-understood war between Azerbaijan and Armenia threatens democracy. (VIKEN BERBERIAN, 10/08/20, The Nation)
    -SHORT STORY: The Consolidated Republic of Nowhere (Viken Berberian, February 2008, Le Monde Diplomatique)
    -EXCERPT: A paean to phi: In Berberian’s Das Kapital – a homage to Marx – Wayne, a Wall Street trader, gambles on the short sell and profits hugely from the collapse of entire economies. To do this he enlists the help of a Corsican. (Viken Berberian, December 2008, Le Monde Diplomatique)
    -EXCERPT: Chapter One: The Cyclist By Viken Berberian
    -SHORT STORY: Faint-hearted Z (Viken Berberian, The London Magazine)
    -ESSAY: Pow! Bam! Paf! Take That, Evil Virus: We are inextricably attached every minute of the day. We ask ourselves if this is finally the end of exile. Did we need a pandemic to stand still in one place? (Viken Berberian, 4/28/20, Foreign Affairs)
    -SHORT STORY: The Mattress (VIKEN BERBERIAN, OCTOBER 2, 2017, BOMB)
    -ESSAY: Yerevan, Armenia (Viken Berberian, 7/30/20, Granta)
    -ESSAY: Armenia’s Tragedy in Shushi: Purged of its Armenian population during fighting over the disputed enclave of Artsakh, also known as Nagorno-Karabakh, the historic center now faces cultural cleansing. (Viken Berberian, December 21, 2020, NY Review of Books)
    -ESSAY: Democracy Is Held Back in Armenia (Viken Berberian, May 2, 2018, NY Times)
    -PODCAST: Viken Berberian: The Cyclist (Hosted by Michael Silverblatt Jul. 25, 2002, KCRW: Bookworm)
    -PODCAST: Viken Berberian examines the pitfalls of development with his new graphic novel, The Structure is Rotten, Comrade (The Monocle Weekly, 28 April 2019)
    -INTERVIEW: This surrealist graphic novel delves into architecture and social change (Carol Hills, December 31, 2019, The World)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview with Viken Berberian (Emmanuel Gros, Transcript)
    -INTERVIEW: Viken Berberian: "I thought it would be interesting to slip inside the head of a man in the business of terror." (interviewed by Ron Hogan, Beatrice)
    -PROFILE: HOW YANN KEBBI MADE HIS OWN MUSEUM (Cynthia Rose, October 17, 2019, The Comics Journal)
    -VIDEO ARCHIVES: "viken berberian" (YouTube)
    -REVIEW ARTCHIVES: Viken Berberian (Publishers Weekly)
    -ARCHIVES: Viken Berberian (Internet Archive)
    -REVIEW: of The Cyclist by Viken Berberian (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of The Cyclist (Washington Times)
    -REVIEW: of The Cyclist (JackBoston)
    -REVIEW: of The Cyclist (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of The Cyclist (Khachig - Tololyan, Reviews: Armenian Forum)
    -REVIEW: of The Cyclist (Sarah Rachel Egelman, Bookreporter)
    -REVIEW: of The Cyclist (Steve Street The Missouri Review)
    -REVIEW: of Das Kapital by Viken Berberian (Carolyn Kellogg, LA Times)
    -REVIEW: of Das Kapital (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Das Kapital (Michael Leone, SF Gate)
    -REVIEW: of Das Kapital (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of The Structure is Rotten, Comrade by Viken Berberian and Yann Kebbi (Steven Heller, Print)
    -REVIEW: of The Structure is Rotten, Comrade (Mark Favermann, Arts Fuse))
    -REVIEW: of The Structure is Rotten, Comrade (Maxim Edwards, Eurasianet)

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