Child of God - A Challenge to Everyone Who Reads
Posted by suzieJun 19
I was reminded of this, today. This is old school from my archives.
From the archives: “Child of God: A Challenge to Everyone who Reads” - dated October 17, 2007.
I wrote this in defense of a coach at a high school I took pictures for. I had moved to the Denver area shortly after hearing of the news. I was extremely concerned about the situation as a whole. I still refuse to change sides, though since I was here when it happened, I’ve heard several sides to this story that would normally move me around. When I lost my blog, I lost this write-up, along with all of my other posts. None of them were too important, and many of them were personal things I wish, now, that I could have retracted, anyway. TMI is not really a good thing, now, as the older I get, the less of an open book I want to be.
But anyway, I’ve been getting a lot of 404 hits searching for this post, so I wanted to reprint it here. Enjoy the original version of “Child of God: A Challenge to Everyone who Reads.”
October 17th, 2007
It seems like the little town of Tuscola is in the news, again. Kaleb Tierce, a man with great taste, has offered a 9th grader a book to read (Child of God by Cormac McCarthy) and now he is being lynched for it. The armchair supporters don’t seem to care, since their football team, whom he incidentally is an assistant coach for, is winning.
There are points to ponder, here, from my laptop in Colorado, that I believe my first amendment right allows me to publish.
As a former photographer and lifetime supporter of the Indians, I want to first find someone to blame. But I will resign from doing so before I consider all the facts that have been presented to me.
1. Tierce is widely loved by his peers and students. He seems to bring the best out of everyone he meets. He is married and has a child. He is a former college athlete with degree that allows him to teach AP English…
2. …AP English is a class that, as I recall, was supposed to bring out the harder topics, such as those that Child of God brings to light. It is a class that is designed to make the reader think and even respond, both verbally and written, to the topics that come about. I remember in my AP class, reading questionable material, but I never looked at it as such, because I doubt authors such as McCarthy, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Edgar Allen Poe, Jean Auel, etc would like to be called pornographers, instigators, or worse. They write to entertain and to release a bit of themselves into the world we live in, and allow our senses to take hold of the what-ifs that they put before us. With fiction that parallels the reality we inhabit, I cannot begin to understand any author to be one of little more than entetaining us, unless he explicitly calls himself a romance novelist or similar…
3. …not to mention that the authors have the very ability to write their books, let alone publish them, is probably why I liked my AP class the most. Though I read Child in the 8th grade, on my own terms, checking it out from the school library, I can see how it is a challenge to the freshman class or even older, because it throws you into the depths of the darkest of dark lives, one that is shunned by the human element altogether, and forces him to live in the caves and dregs with little more than stuffed animals and corpses, not to give away the story. The reasoning for the title of the book, I decided, was summed up in a bible verse, of all things, Matthew 25:40…
4. …which is why I find this whole thing with Coach Tierce so ironic. Matthew 25:40 (NKJV) states, And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me. The book itself poses a greater challenge to the people of the world, that in a nutshell, if we are to treat everyone equally, without judgement, regardless his mistakes, where do we find the fortitude to welcome back something as disgusting as what Lester Ballard was accused of doing. Do we ignore it, kick it to the streets, welcome it back with open arms, or even go so far as to nurse it back to light, again? What would you do?
5. Which brings me to my final point: what Tierce did wasn’t even an illicit act! He had a list of books. He had students in the class choose a book from the list to read and write a report on. This sounds simple enough. But one kid, a 9th grader (girl), took issue with the book and showed it to her mother, who is now out for this teacher’s blood. He had a list of books. This is not a list he made, it’s a list he probably found on a teacher site, or dare I say in the halls of JNCISD, and he used the list as a guideline for the students to choose from. This is not breaking a law. He didn’t staple the assignment to the girl’s forehead, he didn’t throw a book at her, he said the book she ended up with, Child of God by Cormac McCarthy, was one of his favorites, and now he’s about to get canned because her mom saw it.
What I gather, here, is that Jim Ned doesn’t want their noses bloody, so they’re covering themselves by sacrificing the career of a very good teacher. Forget how the story of the book scandal began; rather, note that this is a school in a small West Texas town, with one or two notable elements on their long history, and they don’t want to present themselves as negatives to any potential homeowner in their district. When your attendance determines what level of play your football team is in, it matters who stays and who moves in.
However, I know a LOT of people that go to, teach, went to, or live in the JNCISD district, and I will say they are all very good people. I can’t say much negative, except there is the usual small town politics that come with the area, and even with the different sports and extracurricular activities. Those are aesthetics that come along with the scene of a small town. Tuscola doesn’t even have a red light…well there’s the one that flashes, but it’s yellow, if I recall correctly.
That’s how small the community is, and their residents are about as tight as you can get. Yet, in a case like this, it seems that they could do more than the armchair support they seem to be giving. Now, I am saying this from a chair in a coffee shop in Colorado, writing about what I know regarding a small town that I love so much, and about a student body that ranks among the brightest in the nation, and about a teacher, coach, and mentor that has brought a lot more out of the students and athletes he works with than most others (just like Coach Lavallee), who is being hung out to dry over something that I don’t see as being an issue. It’s a damn, book, people. It’s a 14 year old who is obviously intelligent, or she wouldn’t be in AP English. Maybe her maturity level is not of an age to be able to appreciate the meaning behind Child of God, but this is also something that her mother brought to — not the school but the sherriff’s department and the defense attorney’s office. Maybe we should pull out the proverbial noose for McCarthy, as well, for writing such a masterpiece.
But on the other hand, my mom is the same way. If she’d known half the stuff I read by the time I entered high school, I’d probably not be as good a writer as I am, now.
So the challenge I present to you is: read Child of God by Cormac McCarthy. Pass it on. Let everyone know about this book, lest it be banned from the halls of society forever. Just like Lester Ballard. Just like Coach Tierce.