Out of print. Can there be three sadder words for a living author?
So why is so magnificent a work no longer available from a publisher and unrecognized by so many readers? Perhaps critics like Gardner and Yardley were simply overenthusiastic in their appraisal.
Perhaps, too, a tome as thick as “Beyond the Bedroom Wall” simply can’t appeal in an age of texting, Twitter, and TikTok. Then, too, a novel about a large family living in North Dakota and the death of a young mother may lack resonance with today’s audience.
It helps to remember as well that in any decade of the past century, scores of writers produced bestselling novels and exciting stories now buried by time in the out-of-print boneyard.
A Meditation on Culture, Learning, and Decline
“Drawing Life: Surviving the Unabomber” is less a book about learning and more about the culture, including the demise of education.In 1993, Yale University professor David Gelernter, computer scientist and artist, opened a package which then exploded in his hands, permanently crippling him. The then-infamous technophobe, the Unabomber, had struck again. Gelernter opens “Drawing Life” by describing his recovery from this assassination attempt. He then offers readers a personal meditation on such topics as the modern university, the importance of marriage and family, religious faith, and a disintegrating culture.
Critical of the political correctness then rearing its head, Gelernter drew the ire of some pundits. And no wonder, for as a description on the book’s jacket puts it, here was “a thought-provoking analysis of our culture and where it’s headed,” which by Gelernter’s lights was decidedly downward.
Published 26 years ago, “Drawing Life” now seems prophetic in its analysis of the negative impact of technology, our ailing system of education, and the undermining of traditional institutions and American ideals by today’s radicals.
A Model for Character and Classroom
In “Good Morning, Miss Dove,” Frances Gray Patton creates a fictional teacher and classroom of the Great Depression era. “The terrible Miss Dove,” as the townspeople call her—many of them were children in her elementary school geography classes—is a disciplinarian who teaches morality along with the oceans and mountain ranges of the world. Though some critics thought the book idealistic in its portrait of a teacher, for many who once sat in such elementary school classrooms and knew such teachers, as I did, Patton’s story hits home. The novel underscores the importance of classroom discipline to learning.“Good Morning, Miss Dove” also reminds us of the vital interplay between school and community. In this little town of Liberty Hill, the school is a central feature of life, much more than a building of classrooms and teachers. It plays a vital role in the community as a conveyor of culture and traditional morality, and Miss Dove is its prime exemplar. From her, the children—and some of the adults as well—take lessons in character-building that will remain with them for the rest of their lives.
A College Like No Other
Josiah Bunting III devoted much of his life—and still does—to education, serving, for example, as the superintendent of the Virginia Military Academy. His 1998 novel “An Education for Our Time” is a fictional account of billionaire and high-tech pioneer John Adams who, dying of cancer, writes out his plans to found and endow a college. He envisions a school with a rigorous program, academic and physical, aimed at producing leaders “whose bent is to command not to chatter, to lead not to criticize, to serve not to whine, and to give rather than calculate the cost.”Using examples from history, philosophy, literature, and his own experiences, Adams delineates in detail how the carefully selected students of his college should live and learn, and who should lead them. This vision of instilling endeavor, excellence, and a sense of service in students stands in stark contrast to nearly all of the practices of our current institutions of higher learning.
Hidden Treasures
Some excellent books fall through the cracks. A small publisher may lack the budget to promote them, or they may not fit the needs or interests of major reviewers. They’re not out of print, but they’re out of sight.If ever there was a time in our nation’s history when teenagers needed such wise, practical guidance, that time is surely now. “With Love and Prayers” allows them to learn from a man sympathetic to their stage of life and its attendant confusions, but who never patronizes them. Instead, Jarvis recognizes their deep desires to get at truths and fundamentals so often overlooked in their own classrooms while constantly encouraging his young audience, as Tennyson would have it, “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
The Stars Are Still Shining
With some hunting, all of these out-of-print books and others may be found and ordered online, or tucked away on the shelves of a public library or a secondhand bookshop.The authors reviewed here saw that beauty, and others will continue to step forward to share that same vision with us.