One True Thing from John Robinson: Passion and Memory

Many years ago, as a senior in college, I was about to undertake my student-teaching experience. I was told that I would be paired up with a high school English teacher near the college named John Robinson. Little did I know what that name would come to represent through the unfolding years of my life.

John and I in Room 106 in 2003 after a day of teaching

That year, John and I would sit together at the front of Room 106 in Hamilton-Wenham Regional High school. I laughed more than I've ever laughed in an English classroom. But I also learned things I'd never imagined before--that writers of the novels we ask students to read had led lives just as fraught with fear, hope, passion, vigor, depression, and joy as we do. That every short story, novel, poem, vignette we read with students houses the uncanny ability to both teach creativity and passion, and also to embolden the power of empathy and bolster the need for new perspectives. Whether John was teaching Ernest Hemingway or reading Girl with a Pearl Earring or exploring poetry, he showed me the ropes of teaching for passion and beauty. He showed me how to be myself in an English classroom, too, which all began with Jack Handey's Deep Thoughts.

These years later, I am deeply in love with literature and writing, and I still can barely make it through a Handy Deep Thought while laughing uncontrollably. I still love teaching--whether it's Public Speaking courses in adult education programs here in York, or public school middle and high school classes. John pointed to a path which held untold passion for writing and teaching, and he pushes open the door for me and showed me how to walk it with joy.

John's lifelong work as a teacher is coupled with his lifelong work as a writer, having published two novels, scores of short stories in literary journals like Ploughshares and The Sewanee Review and many others, and having seen reviews, essays, and journalism into print. Every day, John still makes the fundamental decision to sit down at his desk and pen new words, craft new stories and reveal new lives. Because true passions never wither; instead, they are perennial as tulips: drawing strength from cold winters to flower and flourish with even more resolve. John's passion as a teacher and writer is resolve itself, and I'm excited to share Mr. John Robinson's One True Thing here, today.

Passion and Memory
by John Robinson

Yesterday, on a cold and overcast late November day, I drove to a Mobil Mini-Mart in my hometown, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.  I was stopping to purchase a couple of bottles of chocolate milk, a soothing drink I often enjoy late at night.  On my way into the store, I was thinking--brooding really--about the good news I had just received that morning from a esteemed editor of a prestigious literary journal.  I had been informed that my short story had been accepted for publication in the spring.  Yes, I thought, it was good to have yet another story coming out in print, but because most literary journals have small audiences, my joy was somewhat subdued by the prospect of knowing that no one in town will ever know when it is published.  After a lengthy time of being published in many forms and in many venues, I believed I was destined toward that special obscurity reserved only for those whose efforts will be perceived by posterity as being tragically marginal.  Though I knew my work would remain in print long after I'd shed this mortal coil, I would not be remembered, I thought self-pityingly as I entered the store.       

    

I approached the check-out clerk, and laid the bottles on the small counter between us.  Unfortunately, they didn't have "low-fat" chocolate milk, and so instead--because I had no choice--I doubled-down on two bottles of something called "double" chocolate milk.  He was a man around my age.  But below a tattered baseball cap a wizened face--the result of attrition or neglect or addiction-- aged his appearance beyond his years.  He took one bottle into his hand and double-scanned it before announcing the price to me.

            

As I reached into my pocket for the cash to pay him, he looked at me and said, "Hey, aren't you the writer who was in the paper a long time ago?"

            

Long time ago?  He remembered that?  And what an understatement!  It was more like a quarter of a century ago, 27 years to be exact.  I was amazed he remembered my face from the article written so long ago.  The town newspaper had done a feature when my first novel appeared.

            

"There was a picture of you with your dog, I think," he said.

            

"Yes," I said.  "You've got a great memory."  And then after a moment, just before I left the store with my plastic bottles of chocolate milk:  "I'm honored you recalled the article."

            

Somehow the piece about me had moved him enough to remember my face when I entered the store.   The one true thing about organizing your life around your passion--if you're lucky enough to have one--is that for the rest of your life you'll always be rewarded and reminded--in some of the most unanticipated moments and ways--of your commitment to your dream.  It does not matter how small the audience--or how large the financial reward.  It matters only in the existential sense that it mattered to you, and to the few--or many--you unexpectedly reached by trying to become who you were all along.  In my case, a writer.

The Job of a Writer

I've just left a remarkable event entitled Prison Fictions, during which  memoirist Erwin James, academic David Wilson, and novelist Gillian Slovo all shared their experiences and perspectives about imprisonment and writing. Riding my bike to the discussion at the Berrick Saul building on the University of York campus, I felt the sensation of freedom--the wind rushing past my jutting-out hair, the evening sky catching its breath after unrelenting rains throughout the day, and the old bike's wheels taking the hills downward with self-appointed speed.

Ironic, though, considering the issue and the focus for the evening.

David Wilson began, talking to a packed theater about the need for more awareness about what happens within prisons. As a previous prison governor (the equivalent of a warden in the states), David shared passionately about why honest stories need to be told about what occurs behind prison walls, and that media needs to work to "provide some gray to the all-too often black and white of the tabloid media."

Erwin James spoke second--a muscular man with a voice as unassuming as a child's. A convicted murderer, James was sentenced to serve a life-imprisonment of 99 years, but was paroled after 20 years of that sentence. Four years before his parole, he began writing for The Guardian, and eventually wrote two books on his life in prison. An incredible kind of humility, dignity, and transformation bolstered every word James shared. His eyes met an audience leaning forward when he shared that, "I didn't believe I'd been born bad, but I had behaved that way my whole life. In my cell, what I had was time to contemplate how I had become what I had become. I had the time to consider my dysfunction."

James spoke powerfully about his transformation into a writer and a journalist, and how he came to see the human dignity each of us is born with, but often loses in a society that so consistently asserts punitive punishments. James commented that the most important factor for the rehabilitation of a prisoner is "to be able to focus on something positive about oneself." He spoke powerfully about the need to rehabilitate prisoners--considering that so many who are released are repeat offenders.

Finally, novelist Gillian Slovo spoke. As a child of imprisoned white South African parents, Gillian experienced from a young age the pain of prison--watching her parents walk behind closed bars and hearing the shattering sound of slamming doors. Her mother, Ruth First, wrote the acclaimed memoir 117 Days, about her time in solitary confinement without trial in a South African prison for her affiliation with those fighting for justice. The author of 12 novels, including Red Dust which was made into a feature film starring Hillary Swank, Slovo shared deeply about the need for literature, stories, and writing to share the stories of those who are imprisoned. When I asked her about the power literature brings to the conversation regarding structures and systems that perpetuate the status quo, she responded, "Literature doesn't tell people how to think, but it enables empathy to exist."

Her line resonated deeply with me--especially as I considered the plethora of neo-conservative pundits how don't offer anything by way of empathy, but mountains by way of judgment and blame. The absence of empathy in our political discourse, and in our portrayals in media, is a stark and egregious tragedy. Gillian continued, "The job of a writer is to reveal worlds that people may never have imagined."

If there is a more beautiful intersection of literature and social justice, I don't know what it is.

On Leif Enger's Novel, Peace Like a River

I just finished reading this beautiful novel. Years ago, I saw the book in paperback at a Barnes and Noble in Flagstaff, Arizona. After reading the back cover, the opening lines, and the blurbs (one gorgeous blurb provided by Frank McCourt), I knew it was a novel I needed to read.

Leave it to the fact that the essential things of life often end up waiting longest that I have procrastinated until now regarding my reading of Peace Like a River. However, in that odd sort of way in which life fulfills itself, it has been entirely worth the wait.

As I read the final lines of the novel tonight, I found myself filled with an indescribable hope; if I had to translate this hope into language, it would have to take shape as a prayer: "Thank you, God, for this book--and for what it represents." It felt strange to read a novel and feel closer to God for having done so; it somehow provided the realization that the beauty of language and the power of storytelling are nothing less than divine--miracles, you might say.

After finishing the book, I simply held it in my hands a while. Then, I turned to the first pages, wanting to relish its opening once more. Part of me wishes it had never ended.

During the reading of Enger's novel, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird came to mind time and again. Jerimiah Land--the father in Peace Like a River--shares many beautiful similarities to Atticus Finch--Lee's courageously humble father in Mockingbird--and yet is entirely his own character.

The only thing left to say is this: anyone who wants to write should read this book. Anyone considering what it means to believe should read this book. And anyone who knows that stories spark with humble flames that possess the possibilities of lighting fires in our hearts should surely read this book.