#542 The Rhett Butlers- Katherine Heiny

#542 The Rhett Butlers- Katherine Heiny

There is nothing more depressing than a story about a forty-year old teacher having a sexual relationship with one of his seventeen-year old students. But here it is. What starts out as an innocent crush, turns into this girl’s first real boyfriend, only it’s not real because she can’t tell anyone.

She, of course is naïve, but as it turns out she is the more mature of the two and she breaks it off as soon as she realizes that this can’t be a real relationship. He is naïve too, naïve to think that this is not a creepy thing to do. What’s more creepy is that he tells another teacher about the affair, and it seems to be a non-story between them.

This is just something that happened in her life, and she seems to have let it go, being more upset at her slipping grades than being taken advantage of by an older man. The readers of this story will probably be more outraged than the narrator, or maybe they’ll be more like the mother, and pretend she doesn’t see anything.

Rating: 8-6-6-6 Total= 26

#471 Our Lady of Peace- ZZ Packer

#471 Our Lady of Peace- ZZ Packer

Lynnea finally got out of her backwoods Kentucky town…only to end up in Baltimore. Her freelance writing job wasn’t paying enough so she took a teaching program and ended up at a public High School.

Teaching public High School in a poorly funded, weakly supported bad part of a city like Baltimore isn’t as bad as you might think; It’s a thousand tomes worse. It is definitely not the place to go to find yourself, or figure out your own life. Children are self-centered creatures, they are supposed to be that way, that’s their job. If you can’t find a way to keep your own insecurities out of the classroom, things will spiral out of control.

I think that’s what happens to Lynnea in this story. Of course the children should behave, of course they should show respect, and want to learn. But if they don’t, is really isn’t their fault?

Rating: 8-7-7-8 Total= 30

#447 October Brown- Maxine Clair

#447 October Brown- Maxine Clair

Rattlebone is a fictional black community just north of Kansans City created by Maxine Clair for this collection. Written to represent the Midwest black lives of the 1950’s, it’ll be interesting to compare it to the Toure’s The Portable Promised Land I started yesterday that represents a fictional black community in the big city. 

October Brown was a teacher in Rattlebone. Her story starts with a fit she had in public as a child when her father attacked her mother. The fit was so crazed that it left her with a mark on her cheek, a devil’s kiss, and a reputation that frightened and intrigued her new students.

“We imagined that a woman surrounded by such lore would have to have a bad temper, a flash fire that could drive her from her desk to yours in a single movement, dislodge you by your measly shoulders, plant you hard on the hardwood floor, tell you in growling underbreaths of wrath to stand up straight…”

It was a big year for Irene, not only because her new teacher wasn’t anywhere nearly as bad as she thought, but because she was about to become a big sister to a new baby brother. Things change quickly though, and change can turn quickly to chaos.

Notable Passage: “Intuition is the guardian of childhood.”

Rating: 8-8-7-7 Total=30

#352 The Briefcase- Rebecca Makkai

#352 The Briefcase- Rebecca Makkai

A chef is among 100 prisoners, chained together, being marched through town. He was caught giving aid to rebels, although all he did was feed people who sat at his table. He was after all, a chef. Somehow he escapes his binding, but that leaves the chain, one man short. The guards arrest the nearest man, a professor, strip him of his briefcase, and clothes and add him unjustly to the prison ranks.

The chef, after all the prisoners leave, picks up the professors briefcase and creates a new life in exile. He spends his time reading the professors papers on the nature of the universe. For months, he eats, sleeps and ruminates philosophically on existence:

“The light of my cigarette is a fire like the sun. From where I sit, all the universe is equidistant from my cigarette. Ergo, my cigarette is the center of the universe. My cigarette is on earth. Ergo, the earth is the center of the universe. If all heavenly bodies move, they must therefore move in relation to the earth, and in relation to my cigarette.”

Of course, not having any training in physics or science, his theories about the cosmos were all wrong, but it didn’t matter, did it? The war had flipped the world upside-down and…“The universe has been folded inside out.”

When you literally can no longer be yourself, who are you? Where are you? Why are we here?

Notable Passage: “History was safer than the news, because there was no question of how it would end.”

Rating: 9-8-9-8 Total= 34

#200 We Drink the Wine in France- Alice Walker

#200 We Drink the Wine in France- Alice Walker

A holocaust survivor is teaching high school French in the American South.  He hides his past and runs from his memories. He finds beauty anywhere he can, in his students . Although not inappropriate, the thoughts of a beautiful young girl in his class haunt him.

“He really must stop thinking of her. Must remember he is old. That death has had its hands on him. That his odor is of ashes while hers is of earth and sun.”

That odor of death lingers in his mind so much that he shirks away from students when he thinks it will mingle with their alive. More vibrant auras, as if his will sully their innocence.

He spent 7 years in frozen hell, while his family died in the camps, he survived and has been a “monster” for doing so, an oddity, a freakish show piece. He runs from that kind of attention, and runs to warmth.

“The surrounding beauty has crept up on him gradually since his arrival three years ago. He can no longer ignore it and it hurts him, terribly. In Mexico he will find an even slower-infecting beauty. When it becomes painful he will begin to explore countries even further south. He has been chased across the world by the realization of beauty. He folds the letter, looks with horror at the narrow walls and low ceiling of the post office, rushes out into the bright sunshine.”

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#147 Private Tuition By Mr. Bose- Anita Desai

#147 Private Tuition By Mr. Bose- Anita Desai

Mr. Bose is a private tutor, teaching language and poetry from his home. Because of the small size of his apartment, and the heat, he conducts his lessons outside of the roof. From there he can see his wife cook and care for their child. Between lessons, he briefly visits with them and wished for more time:

“He wanted so much to touch her hair, the strand that lay over her shoulder in a black loop, and did not know how to—she was so busy.”

At times, the day gets hectic, the child gets unruly as children get, tensions grow and tempers flair. Mr. Bose wishes he did not have to teach these intemperate privileged children, wishes they did not see his meager home, he wishes, he wishes, he wishes…but the weight of his surrounding pile on:

“But the darkness was filled with hideous sounds of business and anger and command. The Radio news commentator barked, the baby wailed, the kitchen pots clashed. He even heard his wife’s voice raised, angrily, at the child like a threatening stick.”

We do what we must to get by. At the end of the day, the child goes to be, dinner is served and the tensions of the day alleviated. The anger—gone, the resentment—gone, all that remains is love and family.

Word of the Day: Tuition- I never knew this word had a second meaning. Besides meaning the cost of education, it can also be used to describe the actual “teaching or instruction, especially of individual pupils or small groups.” Don’t I feel uneducated? I guess I should have spend more tuition getting a tuition.

Notable Passage: “Immediately, at the very sight of the tip of her sandal peeping out beneath the flowering hem of her sari, he was a man broken to pieces, flung this way and that, rattling. Rattling.”

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total= 31

#129 The Teacher’s Story- Gita Mehta

#129 The Teacher’s Story- Gita Mehta

Master Mohan was a humble music teacher. He was once a promising young singer, but on the day he was to record his first record, his pure, young voice broke and he never recovered from that heartbreak. He is liked and respected by just about everyone except his own family. His wife is an angry judgmental woman who resents his failure.

“Everyday his wife reminded him how his voice had not mellowed in the years that followed.”

“Her taunts re-opened a wound which might have healed if only Master Mohan’s wife had left him alone.”

“Although he tried Master Mohan could not stop coughing. It was a nervous reaction to his family’s ability to silence the music he heard in his own head.”

Music was his only solace, his only love, his only reason for living. One day Quawwali singers from Nizamuddin were coming to perform for a weeks worth of concerts. Nizamuddin was where Quawwali music was invented 700 years ago. He went to each night, enjoying not only the music but the break from being judged and insulted by his family:

“The more the singers were carried away by their music the more Master Mohan felt the weight that burdened him lighten, as if the ecstasy of the song being relayed from one throat to another was lifting him into a long forgotten ecstasy himself.”

After one concert he stayed to hear a young boy sing. Imrat was being accompanied by his sister who could no longer take are of him. Imrat had a talent not seen in 500 years:

“Such a voice is not human. What will happen to music if this is the standard by which God Judges us.”

Master Mohan agreed to take the child to his home and become his music mentor. Because his family’s hatred of him, they mistreated the young phenom. So, the Master took his lessons to the park, where people began to gather in large numbers and pay tribute. All of the tribute went to the boy and his sister, and even when he signed a music contract Master Mohan wanted nothing for himself.

This story is a love letter to music, and to all those that love and teach music with passion. Music is religion and love and life. Everything else can be tuned out.

Notable Passage: “He only saw the power of the morning raga and dreaming visions of light he pushed his voice towards them, believing sight was only a half-tone away.”

Rating: 8-9-10-9 Total= 36

#119 The Soul Is Not a Smithy- David Foster Wallace

#119 The Soul Is Not a Smithy- David Foster Wallace

Reading David Foster Wallace can be a commitment. The length and meticulous detail in his works don’t lend themselves to “light-reading.” However, if you are willing to put in the effort, and keep focus (something missing from a lot of internet-aged readers) the payoffs can be huge.

To some, this style of over-prose may seem to be a bit tiresome, but I assume these are the same people that would rather fast forward the first 2 ½ hours of Die Walkurie, a tough opera to get through for a novice, just to listen to the 3 minutes they know…The Ride of the Walkurie. For an opera fan, or an avid lover of the long-form in any of the arts, the adventure and ride of the exposition makes the payoff so much sweeter.

Speaking of focus and boredom, Terence Velen is a fourth grade student having a hard time concentrating at school. He spends his days staring through the classroom window, subdividing his attention through small, reticulated metal mesh squares and letting his imagination create his own reality. Meanwhile in class, his substitute Civics teacher, Mr. Richard Johnson (a nice name for a civics teacher in the 1960’s) “had just written KILL on the chalkboard.” Then KILL THEM, and finally KILL THEM ALL.

We learn that Mr. Johnson had an obvious nervous breakdown and while most of the class fled the scene in a panic, there were four unwitting hostages, including Terence. These four were among the perceived "slow" or "deficient" students. But its seems that they were neither slow, brave, unlucky, or unwilling to leave. And it seems they weren’t really hostages, as much as daydreamers confused about what exactly was going on around them.

“In testing many school children labeled as hyperactive or deficient in attention are observed to be not so much unable to pat attention as to have difficulty exercising control or choice over what it is they pat attention to.”

Many of DFW stories follow a style such as this, a frenetic accounting of an unfocussed mind. Some have used his writing (unfairly to both him and the mental health profession) as a peek inside the mind of such young people who have suffered misdiagnoses or misunderstandings or worse, mis-medications. Beyond the obvious technical skills of these works, and beyond the comedic or tragic circumstances of the plots, there is a deep truth here, a soul that calls out to be recognized.  At once, impressive, touching, heartbreaking, and hilarious...there is only one DFW.

Notable Passage: “There is something about someone throwing up anywhere within a child’s earshot that serves to direct and concentrate his attention with an utmost insane force…”

Rating: Once again…Not Rate-able…it is unfair to compare DFW to anyone else. To do so I’d have to develop a whole new system.  He ruins the curve…so lets just say he gets a perfect score and move on. Do I sound biased here? Who cares, its my blog and my rating system.