zondag 26 december 2010

Edmundson: The Fine Wisdom

The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll


In what he describes as a “graduation gift” to students facing the chasm of postcollege life, Mark Edmundson’s engaging though rather slight memoir of his twenties searches for deep significance in the wanderings of youth. In 1974, Edmundson leaves Bennington College in Vermont looking for “it,” what he “was tooled for and set to do and to be.” That search for purpose leads him first to a bankrupt, graffiti-scrawled New York City, where in between “living like an aristocratic bum,” he drives a cab and sets up equipment at Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd shows. Later he ventures into the wilds of Colorado with Outward Bound and works as a bouncer at a college-town discotheque, before discovering teaching, his true vocation.
Edmundson—an English professor at the University of Virginia, and author of, among other things, the essential Harper’s essay “On the Uses of a Liberal Education”—brings a welcome earnestness to the project, referring to everything from Jacques Lacan to the Rolling Stones. He admirably attempts to write with the yawping gusto of a young fan, but often the teacher in him gets the better of the storyteller, saddling too many tales with a generic moral. His cabbie days show that the rich “have material anxieties in spades,” for instance, while his trip to the Rockies reveals “a vision of nature as a repository of humane and humanizing virtues.” His discovery of university life, finally, leads to this sweeping pronouncement: “Maybe compassion and glory are the potent twin aspirations of the soul.” That may be true—or at least worth considering—but the book’s greatest moments come when Edmundson is at his least professorial, reflecting with a charming, wide-eyed sincerity at the days he spent stalking Woody Allen through the streets of Manhattan, swerving his taxi amid the drunks in Times Square, or perched high on a stack of amps as Jefferson Starship stirred the masses in Central Park.

Time Out New York

Edmundson: Teacher

Edmundson: Teacher. The One Who Made the Difference.

“Anyone who opens "Teacher" expecting a sepia-toned tale of inspiration and uplift, a highbrow version of "Dead Poets Society" or "Tuesdays With Morrie," will be disappointed. Despite its treacly subtitle ("The One Who Made the Difference"), Mark Edmundson's memoir is an unsentimental account of his intellectual awakening in 1969, the year a freshly minted Harvard graduate named Franklin Lears came to anarchic Medford High School in Massachusetts to teach philosophy” (A Review of "Teacher," by Mark Edmundson. LA Times Book Review, August 4, 2002).


Robert Boynton (LA Times Book Review, August 4, 2002)

Tuesdays with Morrie

Tuesdays with Morrie is a 1997 non-fiction novel by American writer Mitch Albom. The story was later adapted by Thomas Rickman into a TV movie of the same name directed by Mick Jackson, which aired on 5 December 1999 and starred Jack Lemmon and Hank Azaria. The book topped the New York Times Non-Fiction Bestsellers of 2000.
It tells the true story of sociologist Morrie Schwartz and his relationship with his students. One student in particular (Mitch Albom) plays an important part. After saying that he will keep in touch with Morrie on his graduation, Mitch hears nothing of his old professor until one night on T.V. he sees Morrie being interviewed. Morrie has ALS, a terminal disease. Mitch begins to visit his professor and soon realizes that, though he has grown remarkably, he still has a lot to learn about values. Both the film and the book chronicle the lessons about life that Mitch learns from his professor.