"Up the Down Staircase" by Bel Kaufman

Read: 19 June 09

5/5 stars

I guess it's pretty apt that this is the first book I'm going to review after a long, unwanted blogging hiatus. My short disappearance from the blogging scene is due to only one thing--I've gone back to teaching. Theoretically speaking, of course, blogging and teaching can mix. Realistically...well, those of you who are in the business of teaching (high school, at that), know otherwise.

And so, I take a break from the humdrum of my teaching life to engage in my other love--blogging. And fortuitously, this book allows me to both blog and talk about teaching.

Bel Kaufman's Up the Down Staircase is a hilarious novel about the life of an idealistic literature graduate during her first year of teaching in the public school system. And, trust me, this situation has a lot of potential for hilarity. But I've always believed that, for things to be truly comic, there must be depth and lingering pain behind it. In this respect, Up the Down Staircase satisfies my rule.

The novel is a collection of varied documents--inter-office memos, notes between teachers, school signs and notices, students' notes, homeworks, essays, letters between friends, and even notes from wastebasket. The narrator, then, is effectively eliminated; the story is told, so to speak, straight from the horse's mouth.

As a reader, I've always preferred reading a narrative in the able hands of a narrator, be he first or third person. This is why I don't often read epistolary novels (novels told through correspondences). More so because I find that the writer is challenged to make his voices sound different, and not many writers succeed (case in point, Kostova's The Historian). However, Kaufman does what many writers cannot and every letter, memo, or note in Up the Down Staircase carries a voice all of its own.

The most strident voice, however, is the protagonist's--Sylvia Barrett, a young and beautiful English teacher in a public high school. She enters the school system hoping to teach her students to appreciate works of classical literature to, as Faulkner puts it "create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before." Of course, Miss Barrett's specialty is Chaucer, but you get the literature appreciation drift.

So, hold up. An English teacher. A lover of lit. Hoping to teach classical literary appreciation to high school students.

If you don't know why I'm drawn to this, then I must explain...That up there--that's me.

Or at least, that's how I began. Because, of course, after teaching for the past 11 years, I've become somewhat more realistic in my goals and expectations (read: lowered my standards somewhat).

But let’s let parallelisms end there. Sylvia Barrett is the epitome of every idealistic English teacher who has wanted to make a difference, but who has had to contend with the reality of a strong and stupid bureaucracy. Much of the book's humor comes from the inane and frustrating memos received by Miss Barrett from the school's administration. (e.g., the protagonist being reprimanded for not keeping files in her desk drawer after she had already complained that she didn't have a desk drawer, students being told that they cannot take any stairs that end in the basement--in a school where all stairs but one end in the basement). In fact, the book's title, taken from one of the assistant principal's hilarious memos, has already become an idiom of this kind of silly bureaucracy in public education: No going up the down staircase.

Yet, a great part of the humor, too, stems from Miss Barrett's naivete as a young teacher. One commiserates with Sylvia when faced with the dilemma of whether she should fill in all the forms she's supposed to fill in during her first class or she should actually attend to her students. Miss Barrett is also surrounded by a superb cast of supporting characters, who actually encompass the spectrum of the different types of teachers, such as Henrietta, the fun teacher who gives a lot of enjoyable yet meaningless activities; Paul, a brilliant artist who cares more for the subject matter than for the students; and Beatrice, who actually cares about her students and her fellow teachers and does not suffer fools gladly. And one cannot deny that the students, given their innocence or ignorance (take your pick), are also a source of much mirth.

For all of the book's humor, though, it succeeded very well in prompting a sizable lump in my throat. I don't really cry much over novels. I empathize, yes, but hardly ever am prompted to tears. And though Up the Down Staircase didn't really pull the wetworks out of me, it very nearly did. Because, in the end, for all the humor, frustration, and hilarity there is to being a teacher, the profession, by its very nature, continually makes one ask what it is that is important in life. And I guess anyone who has given up what he's always wanted for something that he suddenly believes in will feel that lump, too.

I heartily recommend this book, especially to the book bloggers out there who are teachers as well. But regardless of your occupation, I'm convinced that this book will make you feel what I think it was intended to make its audience feel--happy in that you are lost.

So, now I've finally done what I've been wanting to do for the past weeks, which is update my blog. And thank God I don't have to give up anything I believe in to do this. Anyways, after doing a bit of internet research, I learned that Up the Down Staircase was also made into a hit movie, though way back in 1967. Too bad I couldn't find any trailers or clips online. Or maybe I haven't looked hard enough yet. If you do know of a place where I can find clips online, do leave a note. I'd appreciate it--and so might the others.:)