The Niceties

Eleanor Burgess

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786829641
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

At an elite East Coast university, an ambitious young black student and her esteemed white professor meet to discuss a paper the college junior is writing about the American Revolution. They're both liberal. They're both women. They're both brilliant. But very quickly, discussions of grammar and Google turn to race and reputation, and before they know it, they're in dangerous territory neither of them had foreseen – and facing stunning implications that can't be undone.

Act One

An office at an elite northeastern college. There’s a stately, antique mahogany desk. There’s a high wall of bookcases, filled with an overwhelming number of books.

There are a few framed images from revolutionary movements: a Lech Walesa / Solidarity poster; a painting of the tennis court oath; a photo of Emiliano Zapata; a photo of Nelson Mandela in a Springbok uniform; maybe an image from the Arab Spring, and a portrait of George Washington.

JANINE, early 60s, white, is behind the desk in an ergonomic chair. ZOE, 20, black, sits in a folding chair across from her.

They are looking over a paper. ZOE sips from a venti Starbucks cup.

JANINE: You’re missing a comma here.

She holds the paper out to ZOE. ZOE looks.

ZOE: Oof. Yeah. I definitely am.

JANINE: Always proofread in	ZOE:
hard copy. Proofreading on	(Agreeing.)
a computer does not work./
Excellent word choices	Mmm.
by the way. I don’t think
I’ve ever had a student
use “bedeviled” in a paper
before. I love that word. All
the “be” words, bemuse,
beguile.

ZOE: Beseech. Um. Bedazzle...

JANINE: Beget.

ZOE: Classic. Betoken.

JANINE: Bemoan. Oh, I could do this all day. Focus Janine. Next comment. Ah, here, you have –

“Washington succeeded owing to his presenting himself as a leader, elite status as a plantation owner, and his ability to establish commonality.”

ZOE: Yes...

JANINE: Have you	ZOE:
heard of the idea of
parallelism? / Of –	Oo – shoot yeah.
matching grammatical
structure –
JANINE: Because here you have	ZOE:
“presenting himself as a leader”
– gerund – “elite status” – noun
– “his ability” – noun with
possessive pronoun.
	Yeah, yeah –
Can you hear it? / Whereas if
you imagine –
“His ability to present himself
as a leader, to project elite
status, and / to establish	“and to establish
commonality”	commonality.”

JANINE: Yes – yes! There are a plethora of options, three gerunds, three nouns, but any one of them telegraphs to your reader – “you are in safe hands. This writer will not do anything truly horrible to you, like assaulting you with grammatically incompatible clauses.”

ZOE: No, totally. My English teacher made us do like 800 worksheets on it senior year I just – I wanted to get the draft in early so I could get your comments before the deadline, and to be honest I had kind of a tough weekend and I didn’t get to proofread as much as I normally would.

JANINE: Oh. Well.

ZOE: Okay. So I correct all of that, and then the writing’s good?

JANINE: Well... It’s a bit more complicated. I’ve written suggestions, but – Do you have a little more time?

ZOE: Yeah, I mean, I want to make it as strong as possible.

But I know office hours are almost over, if you –

JANINE: Oh, it’s no problem. I just turned in a draft of my new book so there’s no chance I’ll be productive. I have absolutely nothing to do until dinner with my better half at 8:30.

ZOE: Haha, well, hopefully it won’t take that long! Um, so what else is there to fix?

JANINE: Well... it could all use a bit more flair.

ZOE: ...flair?

JANINE: If you want to get through to a reader, you have to make the past feel human. And real. For instance!

(JANINE gets up and goes to the bookcases to hunt for a book. ZOE checks her phone.)

Have you ever been to India?

ZOE: No. Never.

JANINE: It’s really – it’s quite spectacular. The spirituality is – jubilant. And who knew lentils could be delicious? You really must go sometime.

ZOE: Well I do like lentils.

JANINE: You know this place has oodles of money for travel, if it’s related to research. I had a student once who developed his entire senior thesis around getting funding to visit places where he want...