5 comments about The Kids from Nowhere.

1. In the 1980s an amazing thing happened. Siberian Yupik kids, who lived on a remote island in the Bering Sea and who spoke English as a second language, won national academic competitions. Their teacher was a writer who took the teaching job in order to support his young family and writing, but the experience turned him into a dedicated teacher as well as award-winning author. The Kids from Nowhere is his story of teaching junior high and high school students in Gambell, Alaska.
   
   George Guthridge went to Gambell to teach in 1982. His students were Siberian Yupiks, who called themselves Eskimos, who got their water from the village's tank, and who missed school to participate in the subsistence activities of their families and community. Located on the northwest corner of St. Lawrence Island, Gambell has a view of nearby Russia on the rare clear day. When he arrived, the Gambell schools had discipline as well as academic problems, and teacher turnover was very high. The school district was considering closing the high school.
   
   Coming from the "outside"--outside of Alaska, Guthridge had much to learn. He learned about Eskimo culture, teaching methods, public school politics, and academic success. His story is also the story of the kids he coached. These kids had the typical Eskimo shyness. Guthridge learned to read the raised eye brow that meant yes, and the lowered brow that meant no. He learned to listen to the silence exchanges among the students--and the discussions in Yupik.
   
   Guthridge was assigned to coach Future Problem Solving at the elementary, junior high, and high school levels. Initially, he did not know what Future Problem Solving was. It is a method of solving a problem set in the future, and a program to teach youth problem-solving skills. Given an assigned topic, the students were to identify at least 20 problems that could go wrong, chose one of the problems, solve it at least 20 ways, develop criteria for evaluating the solutions and then evaluate their solutions, identify the best solution, and write an essay about the solution. In competition, all this had to be done in two hours.
   
   Guthridge's challenge was to teach assigned Future Problem Solving topics like nuclear waste and genetic engineering to students who had seen neither a tree nor an escalator. At times teaching was frustrating, very frustrating. Gradually, Guthridge began to apply the tools of writing to teaching. He developed the "what because why" format to focus on the relationships inherent in any topic. He kept repeating to the students, "Original thinking is precise thinking," and he placed emphasis on research. He ignored grade-level complexity, and he borrowed techniques from Superlearning and educational philosophers. He also had to teach competitive strategies to kids in a cooperative culture.
   
   He also remembered that he was coaching and teaching kids for life. He sent a smelly sock home with any student who insulted another student. The kids were to participate as a team and support each other. In the end, both the junior high and high school teams won national championships.
   
   Guthridge tells his story with grace, modesty, cultural sensitivity, and skill. He stayed in Gambell for six years. He now teaches through the University of Alaska's campus in Dillingham, Alaska, and he continues to write short stories and novels. With full respect for cultural differences, Guthridge reminds us that kids can learn--even "the kids from nowhere."



2. You can almost hear the "Rocky" theme as you read the final pages as these Yuupik kids do the impossible!



3. Although these kids are from a remote sub-arctic island most will never travel to, anyone who has worked with youth as a teacher or other group leader will, or should, recognize them. Turned-off kids, trapped in an alien (to them) school system, who need someone who believes in them--we can find them anywhere. Suffering teachers trying to find themselves while unwilling to give up on impossible assignments--we probably know a few of them too. In my case, I have visited that community several times and even know some of the families involved. This is an authentic telling; the kids' victories, with Guthridge's unique facilitation, actually happened.
   As a former high school teacher myself, I couldn't put the story down. Guthridge's remarkable honesty about the task he took on, his sometimes desperate struggle, his empathy, sometimes remorse, for the situation he had put his own children in, and how he painfully learned day-by-day along with the students made it for me. His tragi-comic relations with the other faculty are priceless. Although I have never felt quite that alone, I, like him, have gotten ill over teaching at times, and laughed myself sick over it too. The book made me wish I could go back and give teaching another run. George is a master story teller as well as a master teacher.



4. This book was well worth it's read. It is realistic to Alaska, heartfelt, inspiring and humbling for all of us who believe in kids and want to make a difference in their lives. The stories are great in their depth of emotion and in bizarreness, and for those who know Alaska Education, you know that they can be true.
   
   As for the author, I met George out in Dillingham, AK while he hosted me at his B&B, the Thai House. We had some great discussions about language development, reading, writing and all the perils of teaching and/or being an itinerant in Alaska. As a person, he reminded me that countless people have felt the same stresses in education even though time and place separate our experiences. He inspired me to read his book as he spoke of his journey through the education system. From the moment I picked this book up, I wanted to read more and more just because it was real to me, and in very simple language.



5. This is a true story, but reads like a novel and is very engrossing. Certainly a must for teachers (which I am not), for anyone who likes stories of human spirit, without it being sugary sweet or like Lifetime TV. Though frankly, the story would make a good movie.

1 comments about Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education: A Biographical Introduction (4th Edition).

1. The book is average for texts of this type. However, Amazon's presentation of the book for prospective customers is terrible! Unlike many other books they sell, they DO NOT allow you to see a table of contents, index, or sample pages. They seem to want the customer to "buy a pig in a poke." That's Amazon's fault--not the author's. I passed on purchase, not because the book is bad, but because Amazon does not seem to want to share what's in this particular book.

No comments about Three African-American Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.

No comments about By My Own Reckoning.

3 comments about Painting Chinese: A Lifelong Teacher Gains the Wisdom of Youth.

1. This book was beautifully written description of opening the heart to receive wisdom offered by life. It describes a transformation from a fearful state of mind to one of acceptance during the transition from employment to retirement.



2. This is a quiet little book, it's not about raging, "...against the dying of the light," nor does he take the tone that "aging is not for sissies." He accepts that life has a beginning and an end and that he is closer to the end. He cherishes the irony in being in a class with small children who will be guides for him as he learns to paint in the Chinese style. Along with learning how to paint he opens his eyes to a way of teaching that had been inimical to him in his life as an educator. He finds joy in learning and his book is a joy to read.



3. This wonderful book details the author's struggle with loss, both the closure of a program he had created and his own mortality. He wanders into the Joseph Fine Art School, hoping to learn how to paint. It turns out to be a school of Chinese painting, and Herb Kohl finds himself in the beginner's class with 6 year olds as his fellow students. He details his struggles to paint a monkey, accept his role as student rather than teacher, and learn about the culture behind the paintings he is doing. Comfort comes from these activities, loss recedes with time, and joy blossoms. This lovely story is essential reading for anyone who is having or has had loss or fears mortality.

3 comments about Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy..

1. Al was my mentor in the 1970's and this is an honest and true representation of the man I knew. There will never be another like him.



2. Albert Shanker had always been one of my heroes . . . yet until
   I read TOUGH LIBERAL by Richard D. Kahlenberg, I had not known
   too much about him.
   
   That's no longer the case . . . in fact, this excellent biography even
   increased my appreciation of Shanker who once told an interviewer:
   * "If I didn't have to make a living, I would have done this as a volunteer."
   
   What he did was head the American Federation of Teachers for
   well over 20-25 years . . . by doing so, he helped change the
   perception of teachers by having them recognized as professionals:
   
   * A professional receives a liberal-arts education, then specialized
   training, and then must pass a rigorous exam before beginning
   to practice. She participates in an internship, is guided by mentors,
   and participates in reviewing the performance of colleagues. Once these
   professional responsibilities are met come the reciprocal set of rights:
   greater autonomy and higher compensation. In Shanker's vision,
   policies like a rigorous national test, peer review, and career
   ladders were not just defensive moves against critics
   of public-school teachers, they were prerequisites
   to the professionalization of teaching.
   
   TOUGH LIBERAL summarized Shanker's contributions to
   education in one of the finest concluding paragraphs that I've
   ever read:
   
   * In one lifespan, Albert Shanker helped to create the institution
   of collective bargaining for teachers, giving them greater dignity
   and voice in how they would be treated. He then used that power
   to engage in a series of critical education reforms that proved
   instrumental in improving and preserving the institution of public
   education. Both accomplishments served the larger goal he cherished
   above all others: strengthening American democracy. His failure
   to convince fellow liberals to extend their support of democracy more
   broadly--to racial policy, international affairs, and their views of the labor
   movement--leaves open the question: what might society look like
   if we tried?
   
   If you want to learn about Albert Shanker and the labor movement in
   this country, read this book . . . it will also make a great gift for any
   teacher.



3. In his film, Sleeper, Woody Allen immortalized Albert Shanker as the madman responsible for blowing up the world. That helped to get Shanker known outside of NY, but clearly it wasn't the real Shanker. In this highly readable and often exhilarating biography of Shanker, Richard Kahlenberg shows that while Shanker, the architect of the modern teacher union movement (and, it turns out, so much more) surely understood power and accumulated it, his only "madness" was to seek to empower the powerless and to hold this nation to the democratic ideals it espoused and he so cherished. Indeed, far from being "mad," Shanker was both intellectually and politically brilliant -- a rare combination -- an idealist with both a shrewd and compassionate understanding of human nature and a pragmatist who nonetheless stood firm on principles, a stance that sometimes incurred the enmity of allies as much as enemies. This was also a man who dealt with the high and mighty, but who in his writing and speaking could take the most complicated ideas and make them accessible to ordinary people without ever dumbing anything down. Had Kahlenberg just written a biography of this complex and far-ranging man, that probably would have been interesting enough. But Kahlenberg goes further and roots Shanker in the major political and cultural struggles over the soul of the Democratic party and the direction of this country. Regardless of one's view of those struggles and their outcomes, Kahlenberg's recounting of them cannot help but make you think of missed opportunities and "what ifs" to this day. Politics, race, education, the meaning and practice of democracy -- a heady and vitally critical brew. And Kahlenberg stirs and blends this pot well through Shanker, his meaty main ingredient.

5 comments about Front of the Class: How Tourette Syndrome Made Me the Teacher I Never Had.

1. This book is the best! So good, I bought 2 copies to share with people close to me so they can finally understand what my child is going through. Brad is awesome! When I wrote to him to shower him with Kudos, he wrote back to me. I love his determination and I pray my son will have the same!.



2. As an accomplished pianist, teacher and adjudicator I spend most of my time with individuals of all ages. Teaching and adjudicating are perhaps the most challenging of all! Like Brad Cohen, I have Tourette Syndrome and growing up as a "baby boomer", a time when extremely little was known about Tourettes, teasing, being bullied and considered a virtual headache to my teacher's made my life a living hell. All I had to turn to was my God given gift of music!
   Brad Cohen grew up with the same horrific challenges that Tourettes brings with it. A teacher is someone every student should be able to turn to for support, a shoulder to lean on, a friend, when you feel your own are not there for you. Growing up in this day and age is a daunting task. Brad Cohen knows this all too well, and shows his understanding of it through his actions as a teacher. He knows what it is like to not have teachers there when he needed them most in his life. He turned having TS, a debilitating disorder into a tool of support and understanding for those lives he touches everyday. New disorders are being discovered at an alarming rate. The future teachers and classrooms are not yet equipped to handle what lies ahead for them. My niece is a teacher and she can hardly cope with the demands of her position as they stand. Teachers will need the support of people like Brad Cohen travelling to various school boards as I do as a Music Therapist to educate new teachers on how to integrate students with disorders and other issues into the classroom. Teachers' Colleges will have to provide the means to offer clinical studies in what lies ahead such as Tourette Syndrome, ADD, ADHD, learning disorders , behavioral problems and so much more. Educating our teachers as Brad Cohen has educated his students and fellow teachers is paramount if the future of our world's children will have a chance to survive what lies ahead of them. Teacher Assistant's will need to become a necessity in every classroom, and trained in specific areas. One teacher per class will no longer be enough, if those students who require extra attention are going to be successfully integrated into the classroom of the public school system.
   Brad Cohen has touched the lives of so many students in his life as a teacher! They say that if you can touch the life of one person, you have done your job. Brad Cohen has surpassed this objective time and time again!
   I can only hope, that more people like Brad Cohen will give of their talent's as I try to do as a music therapist, to educate and help prepare the schools, teachers' and students' of tomorrow!
   I once received a letter from a student I adjudicated in a competition, and it said; "not often enough in life, do we take the time to say "Thank You", thank you sir for your knowledge and encouragement, it means so much!"
   Now it is time for me to say "THANK YOU" to Brad Cohen, a teacher who has touched many lives."
   To everyone in the profession of teaching, this is a book that will positively "re-charge" your love of being an educator!
   
   Author: Raymond Vacchino M.Mus.(MT) A.Mus. L.R.S.M. Licentiate (hon.)



3. This book is great for so many reasons. Anyone can read this and walk away with something. If you have Tourettes (or any disability), it is such a positive, supportive, encouraging story. I wish I had boxes of this book to pass to every teacher, doctor, friend, grandparent, parent and child. Tourettes is something almost everyone in the world will encounter in some way. Disability dicrimination, is unfortunately also something everyone will encounter in some way. This book provides a unique, well written perspective of life with an uncontrollable, misunderstood disorder. I reccomend it to you.



4. 
   
   I too am a teacher with Tourette Syndrome (TS) and have experienced many of the same things that author Brad Cohen describes in this fascinating book. All of his life, Cohen has worked to overcome his disability. Even when he became ultimately successful, Cohen has still experienced difficulties. For example, even as an adult, he has been asked to leave restaurants and other public events. A few times, however, this has worked to his advantage. While at the Olympics in Atlanta, for example, a number of patrons complained about his tics. But instead of being expelled, Cohen was reseated in a better seating area.
   
   His parents were divorced and, for most of his early life, his father was distant from him. In elementary school and junior high, Cohen was often ridiculed and mocked by other children. Teachers mistakenly thought that he was doing his tics purposely in order to disrupt the class, and punished him accordingly. Many children with TS also have comorbid ADHD and OCD. Cohen described how hard it is to read and comprehend a book. The average person should imagine trying to comprehend a book while it is jerked around every few seconds.
   
   In time, Cohen was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome (TS). He was taken off stimulants, which, in common with many others with TS, only aggravated his condition. His first experience with a TS support group was not at all positive. Members of the group focused on the negative, not how to overcome it and be successful. This is not what Cohen needed to hear. In time, Cohen learned how to educate others about his disorder. Unfortunately, in junior high, there were too many individuals who refused to be educated. However, he did have a supportive principal who allowed him to speak to a school gathering about his condition.
   
   Cohen developed socially by being involved in Jewish organizations. By high school, things got better. The students increasingly overlooked his tics and accepted him as a person. He began to dream of being a teacher.
   
   When Cohen went to Bradley University, he learned not only educational theory but also got valuable hands-on teaching experience with children. But when he tried to get his first teaching job, the door kept getting slammed in his face. Ultimately, he had to go through some 25 principals before he found one that would hire him. "I just cannot see you as a teacher", one candidly remarked. Things seemed hopeless. It looked as if Tourette Syndrome had won over him. But he refused to give up his dream.
   
   Finally, he was hired, and proved himself to be an excellent teacher. He at first taught second grade, and made every child feel wanted. Cohen made the following observation (p. 160) which should be a challenge and inspiration to all teachers: "If you want to feel secure, do what you already know how to do. If you want to be a true professional and continue to grow...go to the cutting edge of your competence, which means a temporary loss of security. So whenever you don't quite know what you're doing, know you're growing."



5. Brad Cohen's first hand account of how he became a teacher despite having Tourette's syndrome isn't great writing, but if you've ever known someone with Tourette's you know how amazing his story is. Happily most people today know what this disease is--as I was growing up with a brother who had it, no one did. If you haven't seen it, it's hard to imagine the noises, tics, cursing, and mental agony of living with this incurable problem. Cohen's book gives an intimate look at what it feels like to have your body taken over by urges that can't be controlled. He also sensitively portrays the distress and confusion of parents who try to deal with a problem for which modern medicine is almost useless. Again we see a situation where young children in the classroom can accept behaviors that the wider world can't tolerate, and Cohen's openness about his problem with these children is the secret of his success. One gets the sense Cohen's life will always be a struggle--although he has many friends there's no mention of a woman in his life, and gaining acceptance with new people is always going to be a risky business. But his courage is amazing. This book should be required reading for any child who doubts his worth as a person because of this terrible disease.

2 comments about Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery.

1. Mary Catherine Bateson is among the most important voices alive today. Daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, anything Catherine writes is wise, warm, artful and authentic. Willing to Learn is her newest book. It is a rich collection of essays compiled for the first time and available nowhere else. Ranging from a poignant description of her father's death, which moved me to grateful tears because of what it teaches about dying with grace and dignity, to insights about parenting, politics, aesthetics and world peace, this book is an eclectic feast. You can pick it up and read any chapter, and can read the chapters in any order. Each stands alone and each contributes to our capacity to be nourished and inspired throughout our lives, young and old, if we are "willing to learn."



2. What a treat to find this hardbound collection of the work of Mary Catherine Bateson. Her prose is eloquent. Her ideas are rich and diverse. Her thinking is open, creative and, at the same time, intensely logical. There are selections from some of her best read books, but she also presents some of her hard-to-find material which merits inclusion. Her very interesting life provides the backdrop, but it's how she processes and weaves her observations and experiences into her work that makes these pieces so very illuminating to me. A must for collectors of the writing of the best thinkers of our time.

2 comments about The Art of Teaching.

1. that one must grow or else pay more to remain the same, paraphrased from Norman Mailer's _Deerpark_ comes into mind as I wandered/wondered through Mr. Parini's work.
   I particulary enjoyed the chapter on Robert Frost and the reflections on Socratic instruction, however, when he "waxes the nostalgic" the pages turn less rapidly and a sense of literay fatigue sets in the reader.
   Mr. Parini seems to have a distain or at least a reluctance to acknowledge the imminent power of the electronic media as it relates to enhancing classroom instruction. Note page 132 where an instructor is damned with faint praise for his utilization of the current technology. Another telling instance of this perception is on page 150 where he writes that he will communicate with his son who will be a college freshman primarily by telephone, to use a contemporary colloquialism, "Duh" how about
   email.
   The reference that there is little value in the over the air media is simply not true, he mentions the Simpsons and South Park which contradics his argument immediately.
   Most of the book is worthy as it promotes inspection into the evolution of an English teacher, I only wish he would have recognised that the "medium is the message" and that the instructor, as he points out is more the conductor and less the composer.



2. Becoming a teacher takes years of exhausting, painful trial and error. Deserving a four star rating, Jay Parini's book The Art of Teaching looks back over his years in the academic field. This beautifully written book is full of essays on everything from the first day of class, to the day of commencement. Parini looks at every issue a teacher might face in the classroom from the teacher's persona, to the teacher's relationships with the students and colleagues. He writes about trying to balance a teaching life and a life of research and writing.
   Parini uses the word "teacher," although he really should say "professor" because the book is about his life at the college level. His life in the early years of teaching and all the struggles he ensued learning the ropes and climbing the ladder to tenure.
   Although this book is written for the teacher at the college level, anyone in the teaching field will come away with some useful insight. This book has great quotes like "There is always a fresh start, with new students, new colleagues, new courses even old colleagues somehow look new in September." In my experience in the teaching field this is so very true.
   Reading this book made me think of teachers from my past. We as teachers draw from our past experiences. This helps us to become better teachers. That is what Parini did. He put some of those experiences down on paper so we could all learn. Although, this book is about teaching at the college level I did come away with some very good insight on teaching from the heart. I would recommend this book to anyone in the teaching field.

5 comments about The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal.

1. I picked this book up after reading Arvin's classic bio of Herman Melville (which is itself worth checking out). Werth's treatment of the tale is reminiscent of the genre of non fiction I like to call "The Expanded New Yorker Article". That's fine, I love the New Yorker, but the weakness endemic to the genre is the feeling that 150 pages would suffice (and you're reading a three hundred page book). Regardless, I read the whole book and don't regret it.
   
   Werth's treatment of Arvin's tortured feelings about his own homosexuality are sad. Arvin's own betrayal of his friends and lovers at the hands of the authorities is pathetic. The fact that the "Homosexual Scandal of Smith College" (of which Arvin was the primary figure) dates to 1960 is astonishing.
   
   It's impossible not to have sympathy for the man, but the bottom line is that he snitched on his comrades(i.e. he named names and testified for the prosecution in a co-defendant's appeal), and that taints his legacy.
   
   I would imagine this would mostly appeal to young academics (and would be academics). That probabaly explains why there are 13 reviews of this book on Amazon!



2. Newton Arvin was a distinguished literary critic, scholar, and college professor whose influence on the early days of American literary studies is still felt today. In 1960, as the age of McCarthy's witch-hunt mentality drew to a close, Arvin and his friends were targets of a police raid, where relatively mild homoerotic materials were seized. The men were arrested and accused of having a "smut ring", leading to their felony convictions, as well as the loss of their jobs and the shame of being revealed as homosexual in 1960. Werth's biography is not only about Arvin's personal and literary life, but is also about America at this time, the puritanical crusades it supported, but which proved their own undoing. Werth's writing is a bit dull during the first half, but as it progresses, and Werth explores Arvin's life in relation to his friends (including his once-lover Truman Capote) and to the world, it becomes a fascinating story of a man who fell from grace, but who didn't let it destroy him. Not only is this a compelling sliver of gay history, but it also showcases the lives of intellectuals in a country where intelligence is progessively devalued.



3. Read THE SCARLET PROFESSOR, an engrossing true story
   about a college professor embroiled in a sex scandal . . . Newtown Arvin published groundbreaking literary studies in his 37 years at Smith College, and he cultivated friendships with the likes of Lillian Helman and Truman Capote . . . a social radical and closeted homosexual, he somehow survived McCarthyism.

   But in September of 1960, his apartment was raided and his
   collection of erotica was confiscated . . . it was then that his

   troubles began . . . he was brought to trial, and in doing
   so, he also named names of other so-called pornographers.

   I found this part of the book particularly fascinating, in that
   it helped give me a better feel for America's moral fanaticism
   during that time period . . . even if you're not a fan of
   biographies, you might find yourself pleasantly surprised
   if you give this one a chance.

   There were many memorable passages; among them:
   The following day he [Newton] wrote to her again:
   "I realize how good I ought (and must) be to you in
   order to make you happy and keep you by me. I wish
   that I could be a god and a saint and a knight and a
   good companion for your sake." If Arvin was to fail as
   a husband, it would not be for want of trying.

   [from his journal] Reading of student papers, bluebooks,
   etc. a form of torture, though inescapable at best. What
   gives the extra turn of the screw is, of course, the
   debased English in which most of them are written.
   Reading them is a matter of rubbing an iron file over
   one's teeth, or holding urine in one's mouth, or having the
   racket of a bulldozer in one's ear for an hour or two on
   end. Physical tiredness inevitably ensues.

   The sudden seizure of his secret history completed the
   shattering of Arvin's world. When he saw police returning
   with the slender volumes, opening them, flipping through
   their limited pages--beginning to decipher the penciled
   hieroglyphics that unlocked his innermost life--it was as if
   there was nothing left of him to take or preserve. He was
   in utter panic, shaking his face fallen.




4. Barry Werth's "The Scarlet Professor" is a rather dry but thorough account of Newton Arvin's self-destructive collision with the stultifying socio-political reality of post-WW II America. As a communist homosexual, his well-deserved place as a respected national scholar and critic was a train wreck waiting to occur in that era of various mass hysterias. The J. Edgar Hoover/McCarthy era, in fact, becomes the more fascinating part of this decades-long drama; we are along with cadres of feds'n'cops as they coordinate and close in on the laughably Mitty-esque "ringleaders" in the series of "smut" busts. How simple things were when the nation was so self-righteous that police squads fanned out across the land to root out stacks of gay pics and mags in people's private homes. The most lasting and valuable upshot of all this high-sounding puffery was the Mapps v. Ohio ruling that disallowed use of any evidence seized in the warrantless busts these over-zealous Christian soldiers performed.

   America's puritanical silliness aside, the book relates Arvin's personal failings, self-loathing, doubts, and travails as being the focal catalyst of much of what has become conventional wisdom regarding Hawthorne, Melville, Whitman, and Longfellow. Of each, Arvin was able to discern a specific experiential and/or psychosexual linkage with himself; it is this synthesis that acts as Arvin's Rosetta stone in deciphering the deeper deconstructions of his authors` lives and works.

   I'll leave the more esoteric literary arguments to others. Read this as a historical document of an era rapidly fading from America's contemporary memory - so long as you don't take stone bosom-covering AG Ashcroft too seriously. He would have fit right in during those strangely paranoid fifties.




5. This book was given to me as a gift so I felt an urge to read it right away. It was a B+. It's about the literary life of Newton Arvin who was shattered by a scandal in 1960. I was born in 1959 so it was interesting to me to read of what was going on at the time. It ventures into the closeted homosexual literary elite. This book gave me other book ideas that I really want to read like: The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, Letters & Leadership by Van Wyck Brooks, Roderick Hudson by Henry James, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson, Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote, and other books that were actually written by Newton Arvin. This book is a great book for any aspiring writer and/or a lover of literature. A few lines that captured me in the book that will give you a flavor for it are:
   It seems our worst fears are always more than justified.
   I shan't advise you. If I were you I would follow my impulse or interest, and get to work.
   He recoiled from loving and from being loved, which, taken away, left little worth living for.
   He felt more trapped in Northampton...which, if nothing else, had made small-town life easier to bear by fostering certain illusions: stability, permanence, and a sense of home.
   He craved solitude, a place of his own as a tranquil and sacred abbey.
   'You know how much I love you'...'It is a luxury only to allow oneself to SAY it from time to time.'
   ...if I ever really began a 'letter' to you it could have no imaginable end--or even beginning--for it would just have to circle for ever and ever, like a great wheel, about the one central fact...
   Like most of us aging and lonely people, what he wants is it get away from HIMSELF & unfortunately you take yourself wherever you go!
   In short, there are sunny days, and there is memory, and--hardest of all--there is choice.
   ...the deepest betrayals usually came not from one's enemies but from one's friends and associates.