Standing Lessons: A NOVEL

By Norval Rindfleisch

STANDING LESSONS is a wry, witty, and bittersweet story of Jack Bartley, a history teacher, coach and dorm master in a small rural New England private school. Although satisfied, almost complacent... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0595217982
• ISBN13: 9780595217984
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

An insight into the mind of a class master

I have wondered what drives the dedicated educators, the really good ones that do not appear to have a life outside the school. These teachers are most obvious in prep schools because they seem to be the institution, active for decades not merely in the classroom but on the fields or in the theatre each afternoon and at the Saturday events. They somehow connect with the kids and get them to strive to do something. It is clear from Standing Lessons that Rindfleisch writes from his own very rich experience in that world. I enjoyed reading Standing Lessons as a parent as much as I enjoyed reading Salinger's Catcher in the Rye as a young man. The very credible Bartley character reveals both the self-doubts and the source of his enthusiasm while recounting one school year. Bartley's impossible desire to remain a hero to his adolescent daughter, his efforts to navigate very different problems for two of his students and his rationalization of his own baseball coaching performance soon come to reflect the reader's ongoing struggle to find the right path. Standing Lessons is a fast read. It brought me great pleasure and I highly recommend it.

Book of the Year

If you read one novel this year, Standing Lessons would be my recommendation. Rindfleisch has honed his skills on the novella and short story and now gives us a book of monumental proportion and importance. It will embrace you from start to finish. It is about teaching, about morality both real and perceived, it is humorous and satirical and it is about one scholastic year in a private rural New England boarding school. It is also about Jack Bartley - teacher, coach and dorm master - the most complex simple character who, for me, served as both a mirror and window for values then and now. The reader will greatly appreciate Bartley's battles with Mrs. Powell and the lessons that this relationship serves up. Bartley as inept coach and Bartley questioning his skills as a father provide us with glorious insight into our own foibles.Jack Bartley stands beside John Irving's Owen Meany as a most memorable literary character. This book will not disappoint you.