All in a Day's Work

Open fat mouth, Insert big foot . . .

In College Comp yesterday, we were analyzing two poems (“Harlem” by Langston Hughes and “Out, Out --” by Robert Frost) and a very small passage from a novel (“Winterkill” by Gary Paulson). The poems went fine. When it came time to analyze the snippet from the novel, I went in to the fascinating story about “Winterkill.” Paulson, who grew up in this town, wrote the novel based on an actual murder that happened in town. I had no idea of this until a former colleague of mine, and a current one from the ALC, told me the facts behind it. Apparently, Paulson grew up in a very broken home. He was bounced around from place to place. He models the novel’s narrator after his own experiences. Well, unfortunately for Paulson, as he was writing the novel, he must have actually used all the real names. Then before publication he went back and changed them. As it turns out, he missed changing one name - twice. So as you read the novel, one character’s real last name is there in the text. And this character does not come across as a particularly nice person. Well, evidently many years ago a student was reading this novel and saw their last name in it. They brought it home and showed their father. Then the lawyers were called in and apparently it set Paulson back quite a bit.

So I was relating this story to my students. Well into the story, one of my students raises his hand and says, “He is my uncle.” Meaning Gary Paulson. Now other than coming from a broken home, I never said anything disparaging about Paulson (not that he would care what some teacher had to say about one of his novels). In fact, I was using the piece from the novel as an excellent example of writing. But I winced when I recalled that I had mentioned him coming from a broken him since my student maybe knew who Paulson’s parents were.

Now I have a dilemma. Keep this story under wraps or go ahead as I usually do and tell the real story behind the novel (which has been pulled out of circulation and is very difficult, and expensive, to locate). I have decided to simply ask the class if anyone knows or is related to Paulson. Or I might preface it with, “The actual story behind this novels deals with several families here in town.” And I think I did say that.

Do I risk pissing off parents or grandparents? Is it worth this fascinating story? Is it worth having kids hunt down and read the novel (many, many do)? I don’t know. Yet.

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So much for what I know . . . My Literature and Language 11 students just came up with much better ideas for “The Lottery” than I could. One girl suggested being able to send a text message recounting Tessie’s stoning. I thought that was a great idea. We had talked earlier about how we could tell what time the story was taking place - it had to be years ago because no cell phones were ringing. Then another student suggested making an imovie of their version of the ending. Brilliant. Of course, I could imagine some people going really overboard with buckets of fake blood and so on, but it would be more memorable - and likely more applicable to their lives - than just writing an eye witness report like I’m having them now.