Essays 1983

This is a miscellany of pieces, most of which were written during the summer of 1983, when I was teaching summer school at Phillips Exeter Academy. The usual fortunes of free-lancing had been mine: a stump of rejection slips, one or two acceptances in magazines that paid only in copies. Feeling somewhat down about my writing fortunes, I decided to give myself the mythical job of writing a daily column of 750 to 1000 words on whatever happened to cross my mind. (I also imagined editorial congratulations for anything I wrote in addition to a rather handsome paycheck as the objective correlative of the judicious praise.) I wrote steadily for two months, taking week-ends off.

It was a good discipline, that writing. In the two hours before I went to class I had to create something readable, factually correct, and intelligent. The only chance for revision was on-the-run; I gave myself no chance to let things get cold and see them in the cool light of the next day. Reading these over now, I'm surprised at how clearly most of them came out. Every once in a while the clunker phrase or word crops up, but for the most part they are free of jargon and stupidity. Something, however small, for a writer to be thankful about.

The reader will also notice that many of the pieces are about adolescents and education. I've been a teacher all my professional life and went into that work because it offered a window into social problems. TV, drugs, abusive families, Reaganism -- they all end up in the school and in the classroom and have to be dealt with. Not many people think that teaching high school English would put them in touch with what pulses through the body politic, but that is exactly what happens. Therefore, as any good writer should, I wrote about what I knew (which often included what I didn't like).

Nibble at these as you will. May they nourish.

The Essays