I Found a Book Club, but Here’s the Hook: It’s Better when One Reads the Book!

So let’s just set this up. I’m in English Honors IV. It’s all Seniors, second semester. Taught by a really cool teacher, Dr. Reinholtz. And we’re reading Don Quixote. Have you ever read it? I didn’t think so. It one of those “books you should read before you die,” and you know death is gonna beat you to the punch.

But let me tell you: you really should read it. It’s better than you would think. In fact, it's better than War and Peace and Moby Dick combined. Wait. You know I didn't mean that. Nobody wants to read War and Peace and Moby Dick combined. My bad.

What I mean to say is that you might want to bump Don Quixote up on the "before I die" list. But I digress, and morbidly so.

This class, in the true spirit of “pursuing learning for learning’s sake” takes the chill off 2nd-semester Seniors. It’s just a teacher, some students, and a book. No smart boards, no notes, no lesson plans. There are a couple papers due, but the class is really about reading and talking.

So Dr. Reinholtz. Let’s just talk about him for a second. Totally the teacher we all liked in high school. (Er, I think maybe he was in grade school when we were in high school. Oh well.) He got his Ph.D. In Spanish Literature. Teaches French, Spanish, and English. (For those of you who were able to attend the Marlborough School Charitable Fund’s fashion show earlier this month, Dr. Reinholtz was the auctioneer, and he’s clearly got a shot at stand-up comedy if the Language Arts thing doesn’t work out.) With the likes of Don Quixote (DQ), he’s teaching tough stuff, but he makes it really interesting. You would all really like being in his class.

Then there are the students. A really cool, eclectic mix of smart girls, really smart girls, who have clearly all done their reading, who are into reading this book. They have interesting insights, and this class is the forum to discuss them, lead by Dr. R.

And then, there’s the book. With all 992 pages of it, it’s almost 2 pounds of discussion material. We are, this week, about ½-way through, so I had some catching up to do. And I tell you, it’s a good and funny book! But the best part about reading it is I’ve finally found a book club I like!

It’s nice to have a leader in the book club, too. Like that smart neighbor who got her Masters in Lit. who doesn’t drink too much wine during the meeting.

So Dr. Reinholtz leads the discussion. Today, we’re talking about the beginning of Part Two. Parts One and Two were published 10 years apart (1605 and 1615). Hey, Part Two was a sequel!

The beginning of Part Two deals with the subject of Don Quixote’s madness. His friends and fans think he is crazy (but amusing), but DQ believes himself to be sane: a true knight-errant, willing to do whatever it takes to right wrongs, to uphold morality, to live like knights lived in the Golden Age. He is what the world of fiction calls an antihero.

Which led us to discuss non-fiction heroes. Nelson Mandela, Abe Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. Were these heroes--the ones who dreamed big and stood amidst a raging river of opposition, and yet continued to dream--so different from DQ?

Weren’t they seen by many, in their inspired, hopeful singular-ness, as a little cuckoo? I mean, it didn’t look good for any of those fellows at certain points, right? DQ was nuts, no doubt about it, but he, too, believed the world could be--should be--a better place.

It was an interesting discussion. Putting sanity aside, do all charismatic leaders urge us back to a “golden age”? Do righters of wrongs always yearn to unwind the clock to a simpler, kinder, more idyllic age? And, more provocatively, how golden were the golden ages? Maybe we are just, by nature, erroneously nostalgic? I mean Eden is a great ideal, but let’s get real, right?

Makes me erroneously nostalgic just thinking about it. Come to think of it, when I was a kid, I walked to Marlborough 6 miles in the snow, uphill both ways! (No wonder I never read Don Quixote.)

By the way, did you know Don Quixote is considered the first modern novel? I have not yet learned why, but my classmates could tell you, for sure. They know far more about literary chronology than I. Today, I was more concerned about whether I would be late to pick up the kids at carpool.

Thank God it didn't snow!

I have more reading to do tonight. To page 495, I think. So off I go, to tilt at windmills, quixotically.

Trying to Crack the Code of Cum Laude Leaves Me with Answers that Look Kinda Cloudy

All-school Assembly. 

First, let me say that from the back of the room, this could have been any year at Marlborough, after 1975. A few hundred girls with indifferent hairstyles, sweaters over uniforms, all listening to a keynote speaker at the podium in Caswell Hall. A little more pastel, and it might have been my year.

But the speech was not something out of the1980s. Indeed, the speaker herself was an Alumna who had graduated in 1991. The topic of the speech was how, though today’s Marlborough student is driven to achieve so much, sometimes it takes a real leap of faith to step outside the rat race and pursue one’s real passions, even if such don’t advance one’s c.v. (read: chances to get into  a good college).

The speaker, Danna Drori, was a charming and eloquent mucho-cum-laude Alumna who told her personal story about her hard-driven, successful Marlborough career that unfolded into a consummate Yale experience, with the promise of bigger and better achievements, until she was diagnosed--at age 21--with a rare form of bone cancer, an experience that caused her to stop and re-think what she wanted out of life. She also spoke honestly about what a "bundle of insecurities" she was in school. That no matter how many awards she won, achievements she reaped, she was always apologizing, wondering if people would figure out that she was not really good at that many things. Always trying harder, driving for the next goal, and how all that comes to a full stop when life forces you off the track.

Her message to the girls gathered in Caswell Hall was be true to yourself, don’t apologize for your successes, and be bold in stepping out of the race to pursue your passion. It was a lovely speech, and you could have heard a pin drop.

It got me thinking. What were the inspired adults of my day telling me from the podium in Caswell Hall? Trying to remain true to my mission here, to explore the similarities and differences between 1981 and 2011, I asked myself, “Were adults encouraging us to slow down? To stop and smell the roses? To pursue our passions even though it might derail an AP class?”

No. As I remember, the message we were receiving is that we needed to work harder. That we needed to play less and study more. That we might consider taking an SAT prep class before taking the test. And that APs might be worth considering since they gained you college credits. All very suggestive that we might not be doing enough. Or, better put, that we could be doing more.

As Fritz Hollings once said, “He graduated Magna Cum Laude. I graduated Thank the Laude!”

Maybe it was just me, but no one was ever telling me to slow down (except when it came to eating spoonfuls, and spoons full, of peanut butter after school). Now mind you, I was a particularly relaxed student at Marlborough: I did the minimum and got a B average, which, back then, was just fine. So maybe all the classmates ahead of me in rank (there were a lot of them) would answer this differently. But as I remember it, we worked pretty hard, but no one was telling us to slow down.

Danna Drori is only 10 years behind me, but if what she is saying holds true for her whole class, I can see that changes were afoot in the 1990s.

A Generational Divide? Maybe what we’re seeing here is a pendulum situation:

Perhaps every 50 years the pendulum comes back the other way. World War II work ethic shifts into 1950s perfection, backslides into the 60s and 70s social revolution, hits a rebound in the 80s, climbs in the 90’s and 2000’s, hits a frenzy in 2010, and begins to relax again.

A Class Divide? Or maybe this was just a class valedictorian, more driven than her peers, who had an epiphany to share with other would-be valedictorians. Maybe it’s a class divide. There are always those who can afford to slow down, and those who can afford to ratchet it up a notch.

I really don’t know. But what I do know is that after all those years of people telling me to work harder, it did sink in. By the time I got into the workforce, with a title, I was about as hard-working as any class valedictorian. And it sounds like my fellow Alumna also finally heeded the opposite advice she got all those years: slow down and enjoy life.

Maybe, if we heed good advice, we all end up in a good place.

And, I think that if all today’s private school students are working themselves into a frenzy, the girls in Caswell Hall are at a school that takes balance seriously. Clearly, having a successful Alumna come to send these positive messages, it’s very much on the radar.

So I still haven’t cracked the code on exactly how different it was back then from today; but tune in next week when I attend a Senior course on Don Quixote. We’ll revisit this theme again, perhaps with a verse of La Mancha’s “Impossible Dream” playing in the background, for effect.