An Honorable Profession
Schroth, Raymond A.
York All City High School Chorus, Gould pays tribute to his director, Peter Wilhousky: "His only rule, tacit but pervasive, pro- claimed: 'No compromises.' ...As I worked with Wilhousky, I slowly...
...When Billy's father, a coarse, heavy- drinking cop, becomes obsessed with the notion that Miles had seduced his son, the police begin an investigation, and gossip transforms Miles's life into a living hell...
...One of the things we ask of our best nov- elists is wisdom--an assurance that they not only see with more clarity than the rest "With verve and understated humor, Bawker critiques reduction- istic thinking about the relationship between religion and death...
...For Miles, though a weak man, who is sexually immature and confused in his affairs with two women--Margaret, an alcoholic who sleeps with Miles and cares for both him and his mother, and Diane, his department chairperson, who uses him for one ofher"flings"--is a very good man...
...Gould sets down and adheres to three rules for science writing for the public-- "no compromises with conceptual richness, no bypassing of ambi- guity or ignorance, removal of jargon, but no dumbing down of ideas...
...Raymond A. Schroth / t's the boys' locker room at Malburn High, one of those nice preppy public schools in the ring around Boston...
...And I tell them and they wince...
...Distraught on the night of her death, Miles goes home with a man met at a gay bar for a one-night, first-time fling...
...yet, the New York Times recently published an update on the story of high school football players in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, who penetrated a retarded girl with a broom handle and a small baseball bat...
...Would that those same rules be applied to all public discourse on the major issues--political and ethical as well as technological, i i WEAK MAN, POWERFUL STORY AN HONORABLE PROFESSION John L'Henreux Viking, $19.95,403 pp...
...That's the first chapter...
...Innocent, human acts--he once complimented an athlete on his broad shoulders, he is unmarried at thir- ty-six, he likes to read love poems to his class--are twisted into evidence of his guilt...
...Hardcover $27.95 Available at your local bookstore Cambridge University Press 27 September 1991:555...
...The result is a rich and integrated col- lection of essays...
...A gang of football players--a drunken, doped-up bunch known as the Roids because they pump themselves up on steroids--surround their slight, trembling manager, seventeen- year-old Billy Mack...
...Newspaper reporters, including one from the Boston Globe, prowl the hallways interviewing students and faculty at will: What do you think of this Miles person...
...The school's most popular teacher, the witty, idiosyncratic Miles Bannon, discov- ers the bleeding boy and, while the school administration covers up the scandal, befriends him, takes him jogging, and, inadvertently, wins from the boy a love neither can control...
...And, virtually crippled with guilt: Did he "let" his mother die...
...When an understanding priest urges him to simply accept his humanity, Miles stalks out of the confessional...
...Stephen Jay Gould's gift as a science writer is that he himself embraces that dic- tum...
...These things may not have happened at their schools...
...L'Heureux's dev- astating portrayal of this good man's humil- iation, particularly when the police strip him--first metaphorically, later literal- ly--naked with their questions and rum- mage through his home, is as painful a pas- sage as one will read in a long while...
...He then comments on our current discussion con- cerning diversity and excellence and sug- gests that pluralism and excellence are attainable goals, "but only if we can recover, and fully embrace, Wilhousky's dictum: No compromises...
...One day on a jog, Billy suddenly embraces Miles passionately, and, when Miles fends him off, like Richard Cory in the Edwin Arlington Robinson poem they had read in class, Billy goes home and puts a bullet in his head...
...Should he have let poor Billy hold him rather than back off...
...What's it about...
...Do you think he's gay...
...PBS's "Frontline" broadcast a documentary on a small town hysterical with daycare child abuse accu- sations...
...What's that you're reading...
...He is tolerant, compassionate, open, kind...
...York All City High School Chorus, Gould pays tribute to his director, Peter Wilhousky: "His only rule, tacit but pervasive, pro- claimed: 'No compromises.' ...As I worked with Wilhousky, I slowly personalized the dream that excellence in one activity might be extended to become the pattern, or at least the goal, of an actual life...
...Library Journal* This compelling book gives an overview of what is said about death in the major religious traditions and clears up many misconceptions of death and its relation to the origin of religion...
...And the New Orleans Times Picayune has broken still another story of a priest-university teacher having sex with and videotaping boys...
...Meanwhile, Miles's mother is dying slowly of Lou Gehrig's disease...
...For they both do and do not rec- ognize the world John L' Heureux's novel, An Honorable Profession, portrays...
...my friends --some students and teachers--ask...
...in a game called Violation, they grab him, strip him, arouse him, pin him down, and shove a broom handle into his rectum...
...THE MEANINGS OF DEATH John Bowker "Bowker's analysis of the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism uncovers much richer and more varied responses to the fact of death than the compensatory model allows...
...The quirky, funny English teacher to whom the class had dedicated the yearbook becomes a leper, a "fag...
Vol. 118 • September 1991 • No. 16
