Jason Thebes, a third year Arts-Law student at the University of Sydney, enrolled himself in a literature class \u2013\u00a0Folktales in Comparative Ethnology \u2013<\/i>\u00a0taught by the notorious Professor Hubert Krupp. Although Jason was bright, charming and almost exactly not-quite-handsome, he found himself, before the semester was even half over, daunted by the Professor and afraid that he would not be able to pass the subject.<\/p>\n
The Professor, a churlish man with an unsettling goatee, was known for locking the heavy wooden doors of the lecture theatre exactly two minutes after the hour and failing any student who was late more than twice in a semester. Professor Krupp was also rumoured to steal the best essays and stories turned in by his students, only to publish them under his own name in obscure academic journals and literary magazines. In actual fact he did not publish them under his own exact name, but under a series of infuriatingly obvious pseudonyms \u2013\u00a0Humbert Kurpp, Herbert Karpp and Hebleb Krapp \u2013\u00a0so that he was always able to deny any wrongdoing to the aggrieved students who trooped vainly to his office, high in the University\u2019s East Tower, to complain.<\/p>\n
One crisp, autumn Wednesday morning in the final week of lectures, Jason made his way to the lecture theatre only to find the doors closed before him. For the second time that semester he found himself locked out of Professor Krupp\u2019s lectures. This time, however, he had no way of collecting the notice paper for his final assignment. Cursing his timetable, which scheduled Folktales<\/i> in the East Tower immediately after his Humanitarian Law<\/i> lectures in the Western Lecture Rooms far away on the opposite side of the campus, Jason made his way to the student bar for liquid consolation.<\/p>\n
He had barely finished his second beer when one of his fellow students, a likeable but frivolous oaf called Markus, entered the bar. Grinning broadly, he waved a sheaf of papers in Jason\u2019s face. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Markus said. \u201cI picked up an extra set of the assignment notices. The Professor says that we have until Friday to write our own folktale. The assignment notice lists all the mythemes that must be included and those that must be avoided. At least eleven of Propp\u2019s thirty-one narrative functions must be utilised and appropriate acknowledgement made of Greimasian actantialism and structuralist semiotics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jason groaned. \u201cI literally have no idea what you just said.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was all in the lectures, man. Weren\u2019t you paying attention?\u201d<\/p>\n
In fact, Jason had taken Folktales in Comparative Ethnology<\/i> simply because the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, a Literature major called Estella Castle, had enrolled in the subject. Consequently he had spent most lectures gazing, lovelorn, at the slender curve of Estella\u2019s neck or the golden fall of her hair. In an entire semester he had managed to say no more than five words to her. Once, on the second day of lectures, reaching to the ground to retrieve a pen that had fallen from the desk at which she was seated, he had said, \u201cI think you dropped this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNever mind,\u201d Markus consoled him. \u201cI\u2019ve got just the thing.\u201d And, holding up a silver thumbdrive which glinted in the bar\u2019s warm, ambient light, he leaned forward and whispered, \u201cProppian narrateme generator. It\u2019s simple. You input the variables you want \u2013\u00a0for instance your hero is a soldier recently returned from war, the villain is a rapacious industrialist, the princess is his daughter and the helper is a djinn. Then you schedule the appropriate narratemes from Propp\u2019s morphology, an interdiction, a violation, a disappearance, reconnaissance, deception, test, the donation of the helper, a further task, a pursuit, a rescue, the hero returns, the task completed, the princess won. And it spits you out a folktale. Or you just put in the formula for any of the folktales in the corpus and it shuffles the variables and turns you out a whole new tale using the same structure as a classic tale.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jason reached uncertainly for the silver device. \u201cAre you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n
Markus grinned. \u201cOf course I\u2019m sure. Take it and use it. Bring it back to me tomorrow. I\u2019ve got a few other, um, friends who will pay for the privilege.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gratefully, Jason took the thumbdrive and hurried back to the flat he shared with three other students. Immediately he set to work installing the narrateme generator on his own laptop but found it harder to use than Markus had indicated. At first it wouldn\u2019t recognise his operating system and then it required more free memory than he had available on his hard drive. After he had deleted a host of movie files and his entire music collection he was able to install it. Even then, though, the narrateme generator demanded he download an obscure plug-in before it would open, but the plug-in site seemed to be rife with scripting errors and refused to acknowledge his registration or allow him to download.<\/p>\n
Finally, at 3 a.m., he went to bed, frustrated and exhausted.<\/p>\n
The next day, he gathered up the thumbdrive and laptop and \u2013 feeling\u00a0 slightly nauseous from sleep deprivation \u2013 sought out Markus in the student bar. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to help me,\u201d he groaned. \u201cIt won\u2019t even install and the story is due tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGive me a look,\u201d said Markus, flipping open the laptop\u2019s lid and jamming the thumbdrive into the USB port. Then, with half a dozen ferociously competent keystrokes and a final flourish he closed the lid and removed the thumbdrive. \u201cAll sorted. Everything should be fine now. Go work on your story in the library. I have to meet my other friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the library, Jason fired up the program and was relieved to see the start-up screen where all the folktale variables could be changed. Selecting a classic tale from the drop-down menu, he began to modify the story\u2019s variables. However, he found that no matter what he did he couldn\u2019t initialise the helper call-function correctly and every story he attempted featured the hero being assisted by a small wood-duck or a fog of slightly viscous green droplets \u2013 neither of which seemed appropriate to the stories they were part of.<\/p>\n
After seventeen separate story attempts, each less convincing than the last, he returned to the student bar, where he found Markus in a darkened booth near the back, beer in hand, in conversation with Estella Castle. He was barely able to register his surprise \u2013\u00a0part delight at being so close to Estella and part horror that she was drinking, alone, with Markus \u2013\u00a0before she excused herself and slid gracefully from the booth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI couldn\u2019t get it to work properly,\u201d Jason complained, sitting in the just vacated seat and savouring the lingering warmth and slightly autumnal scent of Estella\u2019s perfume as he did so. \u201cThe most successful story it came up with had a downtrodden carpenter defeating a mighty emperor\u2019s strongest champions with the help of a small wood-duck called Gavin. It was ridiculous. And I don\u2019t even want to talk about the less successful stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
Markus frowned. \u201cHmm, I think I know what it could be. Give me your laptop. I\u2019ll fix it tonight and have it back to you, along with your story, in time for the final lecture tomorrow. In the meantime, let\u2019s have a drink.\u201d<\/p>\n
The next morning, having overslept and waking with an awful hangover, Jason found himself \u2013 for the third time in the semester \u2013 locked out of Folktales in Comparative Ethnology<\/i>. Professor Krupp, of course, failed him. He wasn\u2019t able to enrol in any further subjects as his identity had been sold to Russian data thieves. And whenever he tried to find Markus for help sorting out his problems, Markus was always too busy spending time with his beautiful new girlfriend.<\/p>\n
File under: <\/i>post-structurally adjusted | the goose that laid the poison egg<\/p>\n