“Why Teach?” by Peter Shull

And some thoughts on another Substack trend

This was who I was: a school-marm grammarian, repository for the arbitrary and archaic rules of the English language. Someone who could proofread a document or settle a fine point in a late-night bet, perhaps, but readily replaceable by a computer’s red-underlined spell check. Not just a fool, but someone almost entirely irrelevant.

This will be a review of both a book and a trend. Let’s start with the trend. On Substack, authors are now serializing their novels. I don’t know if it was John Pistelli who actually started this with Major Arcana, but I’m seeing other writers follow in his wake. Concord, by Joshua Corey, is another one I’ve been following off and on. Meanwhile, Peter Shull recently completed his serialization of Why Teach? and has now published the book “properly” (i.e. in book form).

I’ve come to the conclusion that serializing a novel on the Internet may sound like a good idea in the abstract, but from my experience as a reader, it doesn’t work very well. First, reading something long and complex on a screen becomes fatiguing rather quickly, in a way it doesn’t on an actual page. Second, if you start missing chapters, you lose the thread of the story, and getting back to where you left off, as the chapters continue to pile up, becomes tedious and confusing.

At this point I can imagine two objections being raised. “But didn’t those great Victorian novelists serialize?” you might say. Well yes, they did – but under quite different conditions. Let’s look at the book that every Substacker is talking about. It was serialized in eight installments in 1871-72. My Modern Library edition is 795 pages long. This averages out to 99 pages per installment. In short, the “magazines” where these excerpts appeared were almost books in their own right. None of the conditions of the electronic age impinged on the leisurely enjoyment of these novels.

The second objection is: “You’re a hypocrite, because you’re doing a serialization yourself [Baltic Journey].” Indeed I am, but there’s a crucial difference: it’s travel writing. It’s not a novel; there’s not a narrative thread you have to follow. You can dip in and out as you like and not miss anything essential, because the various installments don’t depend on each other.

On to the main dish. I read about half of Why Teach? in its serialized form. I suppose one could say that in this case, the serialization was effective, because I liked it enough to buy the book.

Why Teach? tells the story of a young man named Will Able, who teaches high school English in the fictional town of Plains City, Kansas. The character’s name is somewhat ironic, because he is beset by doubts about his path in life, his position relative to his peers, and his ability to attract a suitable mate. He is employed by the very high school he once graduated from, an ambivalent sort of homecoming. His father, a partner in a well-respected law firm, sets an intimidating standard of success. His friends – mostly ex-jock types from high school – are gradually making their way up in the world, while Able tries to decide between law school, grad school, and continuing to teach.

One might think that he would find satisfaction in his job, guiding his young charges through great works of literature, as well as inculcating in them the language skills they will need for success. Sadly, that’s not the case. Able’s ability to do his job is constantly hampered by bureaucratic idiocy. Administrators are focused on one thing: raising students’ test scores. To that end, a “Head of Literacy” has been hired to monitor the teachers’ performances. Her title is even more ironic than Will Able’s name, as her real goal seems to be to crush any love of reading among the students.

While the Head of Literacy is actively destroying literacy, Able has to deal with all kinds of problems within the classroom. As a teacher, he’s expected to do the following:

To deal with student A’s irresponsibility and B’s misbehavior. C, D, and E’s substance abuse problems. F’s dyslexia and G’s anger. H’s lack of faith in herself, I and J’s sureness that what I was offering wasn’t for them. K and L’s insecurity about their weight, M and N’s eating disorders. [etc.]

This alphabet of dysfunction continues all the way to Z, and then starts again, detailing Able’s attempts at coping with each of these troubled letter-students. It’s an effective and virtuosic piece of writing, overwhelming the reader with Able’s challenges while being entertaining at the same time.

Able suffers from all this, physically and mentally. Binge sleep or no sleep; sleeping during the day; binging on food and old TV shows – for a short time, he becomes a walking (or lying) catalog of unhealthy habits. It’s not all bad, and these sections even made me want to drop by Dos Amigos (Able’s local Mexican joint) for a quick taco dinner.

So far, I’ve probably made Why Teach? sound like a bitter and hopeless book. It isn’t. First, because there’s plenty of humor. Second, because of the way Able faces his problems. Despite his setbacks and dark moods, his doubts and failures, he is at least looking for solutions. He has a strong core of belief in the rightness of what he’s doing, even if most of the people around him can’t appreciate it. Another positive aspect of the book lies in its depiction of simple everyday pleasures, which leaven some of the frustration.

As a fan of regionalism, one of the things I liked was the realistic depiction of Plains City. It’s in the poorer western part of Kansas, and in general comes across as the sort of place people leave rather than move to. That said, it has its own compelling complexities. It’s small enough that you’re always bumping into people you know, but big enough to have its own geographical, class, and ethnic divisions. As Will Able moves from the civic microcosm of the school to the plush world of his father’s country club, as he hangs out with his young friends in the town’s nightspots, we acquire a strong sense of the town as a living organism.

Overall, Why Teach? excels as a portrait of a young man struggling with his personal challenges in a region in decline. All over the less economically favored parts of the great American interior, there must be lots of real-life Will Ables, coping with similar situations. This book will appeal to anyone who likes a realistic, honest, and funny slice of mid-American life.