Overview
- Female: 0
- Male: 2
Context
Paul has come to Prof. Groves’ office to go over the first draft of his term paper. He is, however, hung over and feels comfortable enough with Prof. Groves to hear his comments while lying on the floor. He thinks this acceptable, for himself at least, believing his work on the paper has been first rate. Groves is not so comfortable meeting with a student who is lying on the floor – but he tries to work with it as he commences his (as it turns out, indeed quite favorable) comments on the
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GROVES: Was this bacchanal a celebration or a condolence?
PAUL: Celebration pretty much.
GROVES: Well that’s nice.
PAUL: I became an officially professional writer yesterday.
GROVES: You did?
PAUL: Which is to say: Money for words.
GROVES: What’d you write?
(Paul sits up; scratches, blasé.)
PAUL: It was like a contest kinda.
GROVES: Fiction?
PAUL: Kinda. Not a big thing really. You never heard of it.
GROVES: Well, congratulations, whatever it is.
PAUL: Yeah.
(Paul gets back on his feet, crosses to the bookshelf. While checking out titles:)
PAUL: So anyway, I figured I’d do what all great writers do. Get plastered.
GROVES: Is that what all great writers do, Paul?
PAUL: Sure seems that way. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Lewis, O’Neill… They were all boozers.
GROVES: Y’know, none of them ever did any decent writing while drunk. I just mention that in case you’re thinking of making a career out of it.
PAUL: Drinking?
GROVES: Whichever.
(A beat)
PAUL: You know Anne in class?
GROVES: Sure.
PAUL: I blew all my writer money on her.
GROVES: Oh yeah?
PAUL: She’s pretty, don’t ya think?
GROVES: Very nice young woman.
PAUL: Poet.
GROVES: Is she? I didn’t know that.
PAUL: Could be famous if she wants it. I dunno what if she wants it. I don’t know what the hell she wants.
(Groves has no response to this, other than, after a moment:)
GROVES: Why don’t we talk about the paper?
PAUL: I didn’t win that money in a fiction contest.
(Groves doesn’t reply. He waits for Paul to continue.)
PAUL: I did make it as a writer though.
GROVES: What’d you write?
PAUL: A paper. (a beat) A term paper.
GROVES: For another student.
PAUL: I’m not naming any names.
GROVES: I’m not asking you to.
PAUL: It wasn’t Anne. It was a guy. Offered me fifty bucks if the paper got an A, twenty-five for a B, zero for a C or worse. It was on Silas Marner. You know what I made? Fifty bucks. And you wanna know something else? To this day, I haven’t read a single word of Silas Marner. I just swung it for fifteen pages about form and substance, and the fool professor gave it an A.
(For several moments Groves takes this in before responding quietly:)
GROVES: I’m disappointed in you.
PAUL: It’s not like I didn’t think about it. But y’know how I figure? I figure who’s cheating who? This person who paid me is just cheating himself. ’Cuz in the long run, see, he isn’t gonna have the skills and I am. So I’ll win out and he’ll suffer.
GROVES: I don’t think it necessarily works that way.
PAUL: I figured you’d be disappointed. But see like, no offense, but you’re a professor. So you have a vested interest in the whole grading system and all that. But me – see, I don’t give a damn about the grading system. Just another kind of pigeonhole. I am what I am.
(A beat.)
GROVES: Which is what?
(End Scene 5)
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