Word: wicomico
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hell else but in America could you have a cheerful nihilism?" asks a leading character in this highly diverting book, which is a comedy with a tragic ending and, occasionally, a farce with a philosophical meaning. The character who asks the question is Joe Morgan, a history teacher at Wicomico State Teachers College, who has taught himself to "say good-by to objective values." He believes that energy is "what makes the difference between American pragmatism and French existentialism...
Jacob Horner goes off to the sunlit campus of Wicomico State Teachers, where he has wangled an instructor's job (English). He tries the World Almanac cure, but boning up on statistics about air line distances between principal cities only demonstrates that facts cannot minister to a diseased mind. He knows his bad days, when there is "no weather," a haunting waking and sleeping dream in which he is deprived of contact with the natural world. When Horner re-establishes contact with people, it is through the "pretty dedicated bunch" at Wicomico. Here he discovers his true calling...