Free The Renewable Virgin by Barbara Paul Page B

college was basically a defiant gesture directed at me. But not completely. By rejecting the academic world, Rudy would never have to live up to its standards—which weren’t all that high even then. But the way he systematically avoided the hard disciplines was revealing. By avoiding them, Rudy never had to risk failing. Rudy didn’t like taking risks.
    When he first started selling scripts to the various series, I watched every show he wrote for. But even on television Rudy rarely missed a chance to get in his digs at the academic life. Repeatedly he pictured it as a retreat, a hiding out from ‘real’ life—which on television was always assumed to be violent and exhibitionistic and loud and vulgar. That was ‘real’ living? Being ‘street wise’ was the epitome of human achievement?
    It’s an attitude that has always amazed me. Rudy frequently had his heroes sneer at teachers as head-in-the-sand milksops, people who never really knew what was going on out there in the ‘real’ world. Rudy wasn’t alone in claiming that, of course; it’s a favorite excuse of dropouts, failures, those too lazy or too afraid to use their brains. But it seemed to me they were the ones with their heads in the sand. I know perfectly well that the polite life led by a small, self-contained academic community in the ‘safe’ state of Ohio is not typical of all human life. I have never claimed that it was. But it’s a way of life that does exist and it isn’t going to go away, no matter how loudly the outsiders proclaim it isn’t real .
    And what did Rudy know of street life? He loved to write about wise-cracking private eyes and fast-talking con men and dedicated social workers and crime-busting lawyers and world-weary police officers. None of that Rudy had any direct experience of; his knowledge of his subject matter was second-hand and even his attitudes were borrowed—from other writers, other shows. He was my son, but I’m afraid there wasn’t one spark of originality in Rudy. Even when he was writing comedy his protagonists were usually unlettered but ‘savvy’ people who consistently triumphed over their better-educated adversaries. And that, I think, was the secret of Rudy’s success. He was a populist writer. He repeatedly gave voice to enduring folk ideals, such as the one that celebrates getting something for nothing. Or the one about the simple soul who wins out not through superior intelligence or skill but just by being his own wonderful self.
    There must be a frighteningly large number of people in this country who need to believe that kind of thing; otherwise Rudy’s particular brand of dramatized exculpation wouldn’t have been so much in demand. This is the way he’d spent his life, telling TV audiences the self-flattering things they wanted to believe. Rudy did not pretend he was doing great work; he affected a certain cynical nonchalance that said this was the only way to survive in the ‘real’ world.
    So Rudy deceived himself as well as his audiences. He always wrote safe stories, ones that could be counted on not to disturb, not to challenge. He took no risks. And yet he looked down his nose at me for hiding in a safe environment. He never saw that he was doing the same thing himself.
    And in the end, it hadn’t protected him after all.
    The semester would be over in another few weeks, and I had plans to make. I notified the dean I wouldn’t be available for either summer session after all, and asked him to find someone to take the two courses I’d agreed to teach. It was late notice and rather put him on the spot, but he told me he’d take care of it and not to worry. A considerate man, and a friend.
    I had made up my mind that if the police hadn’t caught Rudy’s murderer by the end of the school term, I’d go back to New York long enough to hire my own detectives. I was