Up the Down Staircase

Bel Kaufman's wonderful 1965 epistolary novel, Up the Down Staircase, is about a first-year English teacher's experiences in a public high school in New York City. If you have not read it, stop reading this ephemeral blog, go immediately to a library and get a copy of the novel. It is hysterical and sad and well worth the time.

I thought of it recently as I was evaluating a manuscript for someone. In Kaufman's novel, a female student with a crush on a new male teacher finally works up the courage to write him a love letter. His flustered response is to correct the grammatical errors in red ink and to return the letter to her. Needless to say, this does not endear him to her or to anyone else.

Trying to read the 270-page manuscript I was given was a bit like that. There were few sentences without problems, no paragraphs without them. I tried three times to read it and never got past the fifth page. The errors were too distracting. The story itself, true in its tragic essentials, was important to the author, and I could tell he was pouring out his heart. But there was no way it was ready for an agent or a publisher. 

I marked errors in the first few paragraphs and then wrote up a list of suggestions for him, including where to find a proofreader and an editor to help him get it into shape. I re-drafted his query letter and printed out samples of how to do that. But it was painful talking to him about a project that means so much to him and not being able to give him more encouragement.

Writers laugh about William Faulkner's famous advice, "In writing, you must kill all your darlings."

It still hurts.