Where the Hell Are the Psych Books?

Selecting courses at Harvard is a multi-faceted process: The two weeks between registering and turning in your study card with your semester's courses is a hectic period of hopes and frustrations, of the vision of new horizons and the disappointment of dead ends. Endless perusals of the course catalogue, anonymous tips and countertips, consultations of the Confi Guide, dranw-out late night discussions, all contribute to both the sense of chaos and urgency that characterize the start of a new term.

There is one aspect of choosing courses, however, that stands out from the rest in its simultaneous inducement of dreams and deflation of hopes. From the week preceding registration until the day study cards are due, the third floor of the Coop, where course books are neatly stacked on endless rows of shelves, is mobbed with armies of frantic students shoving, chattering, and groaning as they crane their necks and screw their eyes for a glimpse of the books required for various courses.

For some--those steady scholars who are already fairly certain about what they will take or those completely unfettered souls who want only the four courses that will most easily enable them to have a relaxing semester--time spent at the Coop is to be avoided. But for others, like myself, it rivals the darkness of bars and the glitter of movie theaters in Cambridge for excitement.

One reason is that natural attraction, the mysterious magnetism books exude for all bibliophiles. The scent of all of those mountains of meticulously-piled Samuelson economics texts and Norton English anthologies, analytic studies of the French Revolution and the New Deal, thick tomes of Mann and Dostoevsky, wafts out into the Square and the Yard, drawing to it all possessors of a sensitive nose. I, for one, fondle books almost as tenderly as I do women, and in these hours I wander up and down the Coop's aisles, my fingers get a good workout. The silkiness of untouched pages, the uncreased bindings smooth like a pond on a summer's day, the rugged smell of newsprint only shortly removed from the presses, all make for an experience sensual in its own perverse way. At times, when I feel certain no one is looking, I lift an open text to my face and inhale deeply, and, like Marcel Proust biting into a tea-soaked madeleine, I receive visions of things past, of old books caressed, old authors befriended, of vicarious adventures of childhood.

But the textbook section of the Coop is even better than consuming a madeleine, for while Proust had only his past to reflect on, selecting courses is most decidedly oriented to the future. This simple arrangement of bookshelves tagged by little slips of paper announcing texts for Chem 10 or Soc Sci 120 or Phil 8 is, in a way, an arena of the imagination, a ball field of the mind on which are played out personal fantasies of your future self. The aisles separating the shelves are sinuous paths in a confusing maze of options, of alternatives leading to different life styles that become apparent when you are faced with the decision of choosing four courses from among the thousands offered.

You walk down one of these paths, and on the left your eyes catch a glimpse of books for Hum 5, "Ideas of Man and the World in Western Thought," and you begin to browse through the selections under this modest, unassuming topic. Ah, yes, Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics," St. Augustine's "Confessions," Machiavelli's, "The Prince," Kant's "Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone," Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy." As you read a few lines here, a few there, the printed words slowly vanish and are replaced by an image of yourself dressed in Renaissance robes, poring over an illuminated manuscript in an Erasmus-like tower. You lean over and look out the window at the little groups of women walking to market and children playing tag, a couple of lovers smiling at one another in the grass, and a frown comes over your face, you shake your head, and, with a slight disdainful grunt, you return to pore over your work...Then, as you are trying to concentrate, you are pushed by someone muttering to himself, "Where the hell are the psychology books?" and you are back in Cambridge, in the Coop, selecting books for the coming semester.

You blink your eyes in the pervasive neon light as you are sucked further into the maze, past Fine Arts, past Sociology. You find yourself in front of Government 116 with its concise, peremptory title--Socialism. As Marx and Lenin stare out at you from behind hortatory covers, you shudder at the sudden bite of the thick moist air settling in the wintry streets of a European capital. The three-story facades of workers' houses are depressing in their black-sooted brick, and the smoke emanating from the stack of a nearby factory leaves an acrid smell in the air. Leaflets are being passed out on the street, and, as you lean over to grab one...someone knocks a copy of "Beyond the Melting Pot" off a shelf above you, it catches you on the shoulder, and you are back again, with nothing other than your course catalogue in your hands.

Further turns in the pathways, further convolutions of the spiral. The people around you seem diminished in stature, their skin pale, their gaze distant. You stop a moment to watch as these college students eddy around you like so many ants in a hill. You are standing in front of the cabinet for Soc Sci 15 and casually pick up a text on behavioral psychology. Graphs of response rates and reinforcements and contingencies stare out at you, but your puzzlement is allayed by the almost tangible presence of laboratory walls enveloping you. A symphonic blend of pigeon cooing fills your ears as you walk to put pellets of feed in place for a new experiment. The smell is a bit overpowering, but this anticipation of finding the missing link to your conception of a society governed by three simple, incontravertible rules makes you forget all the trials, the dead-ends you have had to tolerate over the years. A career of work is about to reach its culmination...and then a comely young woman next to you asks, "How long does the paper required in Stanley Hoffman's 'War' course have to be?"

The mention of a term paper is a crushing blow, and the last dreamy whiff of your future self is quickly extinguished by the thought of long sleepless nights typing 20-page papers on such topics as the role of date-growing in the fall of Nebuchadnezzar the Second. Outside in the Square, there is a bit of a September chill in the air, but the vivid prospect of endless reading lists and embattled nights in the library is such as to even preclude rhapsodizing on the joys of the New England autum. The stentorian monotone of a spectacles professor rings in your ears, and to escape its ghastly sound you head for the nearest refuge, a bar like Charlie's Kitchen, or perhaps the Ha' Penny. Here, back in a dark corner, you can sip your bourbon in peace, watching other hapless souls with different but no less weighty problems.

Is there any way out of the dilemma? Intimations of immortality still infuse your soul, and the whiff of greatness is almost as strong as the smell of print in Samuelson. But, on the other hand, you're not willing to sacrifice the pleasures necessary if you want to climb the ladder of academic success. There are the movies that you've heard so much about but never seen, the trips to New Hampshire and Vermont, the bars and restaurants of Cambridge and Boston, walks along the river and talks with friends. Are these simple experiences, these fleeting moments of sensual and mental satisfaction to fall before the imperative of a rigorous regimen of study? The arrayed books in the Coop have their own particular splendor, but do you really want your time at Harvard to be dominated by plodding through heavy tomes and scribbling over realms of paper? Are you really willing to give up the search for those elusive joys and adventures that cannot be found in books, no matter how virgin or fragrant?

Tired from this arduous introspection, you shrug your shoulders, call yourself an artist, and order another drink.