Wednesday morning

11 January 2017

— the tracery of black maple branches against silvery gray overcast

Good Morning All,

Fred, you wanted to know how much of the 1.8 tons of stuff we heaved into the dumpster were books? Well, other than a couple of dozen duplicate copies of Labyrinth, our school's hardcover literary rag, I can’t think of any. 

Oh, and fifty or so hardcover copies of 1001 English Delights, a book I wrote a decade or so ago for tenth graders. My aim was to include things about language and literature our internationally nomadic students may have missed in their travels. It’s actually not so bad (and includes quizzes at the end of the forty-odd weekly lessons!) I had printed 500 copies, sold half of them, gave away a hundred, still have a hundred, and chucked those fifty into the book bin at the town dump. (Let me tell you, it is a very strange feeling tossing away fifty hardcover copies of your own book! Once I started skimming them to see if I could hit the back wall of the bin it got a little better.) 

Also, I was tempted to chuck my copy of Lord of the Flies in there, since there is probably no novel I loathe more for its pretentiously cynical view of the human spirit. But in the end, it got to remain with Golding’s far better works and close by the novels of William Goldman, a writer I loved in college. He’s the type of writer you used to say wrote slush, but he was fun in such works as Temple of Gold; Boys and Girls Together; Soldier in the Rain. (As a screenwriter, he was more in his element: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Stepford Wives, All the President’s Men.)

I did take a few duplicate copies of novels to the Red Cross center, but since we were bringing twelve full-sized bookcases and six half sized bookcases to our new home to go along with the huge bookcase the previous owner left us, I figured I better not hand over too many for resale.

The prose passage today if from Cry, the Beloved Country, one of the books in my actual top-ten list. Britta and I taught it in Swaziland. Our students were both astonished and delighted to read about characters who spoke just like them. During one poignant scene where Reverend Kumalo goes to the back door of a white man’s house, Britta who was reading the passage aloud in class broke down completely. And one of the students said, “Hawu, cry, our beloved teacher!”

Sorry for being long-winded! (It was Fred’s fault.)

Go well and stay well,

Bhekaron