Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: June 12, 2025
P. S.
This is a coda to yesterday’s writing, June 11, which was the 78th birthday of the American writer Allan Gurganus. I made the point that Mavis Gallant (MG) had some kind of family connection to James Thurber, a New Yorker mainstay from the magazine’s get-go, and wondered if he might have done something to ensure her work was seen at the outset. I’m not suggesting such genial meddling, if it occurred, would have proved lubricating for something ersatz. Her writing was ever the furthest thing from fragile. Those stories are a monument, lofty, sturdy, unsusceptible to toppling. MG shared with John Cheever - who taught Gurganus in Iowa - an editor and champion in William Maxwell. It was thanks to Cheever’s advocacy that Maxwell saw what became Gurganus’s first published New Yorker story, “Minor Heroism.”
Another commonality is that MG and Gurganus both embraced fiction after careers in journalism, MG for six years at the Montreal Standard, and Gurganus after about six months in North Carolina with the Rocky Mount Telegram, his hometown paper. The association was short but illustrious; he was one of three Sixth-grade correspondents who contributed to the paper’s School News Page, telling about all the goings-on at Fannie Gorham School. Here are his first published, charming words, from “Fannie Gorham School News,” Saturday, September 27, 1958.
“Gorham and its hoola hoops are in full swing! Gorham’s news is spinning along with the hoola hoops and the Gorham news reporters are having a time keeping you up with the news. My name is Allan Gurganus and along with Mitzi Moore and Danny Bulluck, I will try to keep you up with the ever-changing Gorham News. Gorham students own over 147 hoola hoops! Our school’s coat hangers had almost more hoops than coats! The colored hoops spotted our playgrounds at recess and play period this week. The old saying if you keep a thing long enough it will come back into style is very true. The hoops were used in Greece about 100 B.C., a long time ago!”
For the rest of the school year, every third Saturday, alternating with his classmates Danny and Mitzi, Allan Gurganus filed his reports. Danny (1947 - ) and Mitzi (1946 - 2023) did a fine job of describing the goings on at Fannie Gorham, but Allan Gurganus was a cut above. He showed early on the gifts of eye and ear, the talent for telling detail, that would serve him so well as a writer - also as a painter, at which he excelled. In his reportage, which covered each grades 1 through 6, as well as “Office News,” he assumed the stance of a society reporter, cheeful and uplifting and, now and again, just a bit arch. He was unstinting when it came to making lists, which I admire very much, and while his coverage of school life is broad and inclusive, his compass is always orienting itself in the direction of his own predilections, most particularly art. Plainly, he was a boy who had a LOT of time for mural making, and while his name was never included (in his own reporting) among the participants in the creations of this wall art, my guess is that he was typically the prime mover. (1)
Here are a few excerpts from his writing, brimming with curiosity and youthful energy and good will. These are descriptions of the ordinary stuff of an ordinary post-war American elementary school - in the Jim Crow south - but are lifted out of the commonplace by being noticed and written down by someone who was, already, extraordinary.
Mr. Ruff brought his wife's class two goldfish. The class had a fish castle and a glass swan in the fish tank. They enjoy watching the interesting creatures.
Mrs. Lane’s room looks like Hallowe’en is here. There are spooky goblins, ugly old witches, glowing jack o’lanterns, awful-looking ghosts, black cats and ricketty (sic) fences throughout the room.
Mrs. Woodruff’s room feels quite “grown-up” now that they have stopped printing and are doing all their work in cursive, which they call “real writing.”
Mrs. Best’s class is very proud of Mrs. Helms, their art teacher. She is a student at North Carolina College. During their last period the class did some clay modeling. Miss Boice is going to put the ash trays, bowls, dishes and pets’ feed bowls in her kiln.
The class has begun fractions. They have been cutting paper plates to show the different fractions.
The second graders enjoyed seeing Little Jack (a puppet) in his recent show. It taught them a lot about care of their teeth. The class had a carrot party Monday to get the proper chewing exercise.
Mrs. Warren’s class gave a chapel program which was built around Book Week. A play, “Those Exciting Comics” presented characters from children’s books who tried to convince modern girls and boys that good literature is as exciting as any of today’s comics.
Two banners were made recently to serve the large job of keeping the students who eat in the lunch room quiet. Each room competes for the prize at the end of the week. The class that keeps their tables clean as well as using good table manners better than any other class wins the banner for a day. The class that has won the banner for the most days in the week gets one of two prizes: square dancing or an extra long play period.
Dioramas are boxes with a scene in them. Mrs. Ruff’s pupils are making some with scenes from the Sahara Desert. They will use sand, cloth, clay, cardboard, wood, sticks, and other things. The class plans to write interesting reports on the scene and activity in their own diorama.
Mrs. Ruff’s class learned a French word, “collage.” It means “to stick on.” Some of Mrs. Ruff’s class made collages A collage is a piece of paper with small things stuck on to make a picture.
Mrs. Best’s class thought it might be fun to make a mural to go along with their social studies on the “Western Movement.” First Miss Boice came to show the class some pointers on it Miss Boice suggested they make the mural with real objets, or a collage. Miss Boice got some scraps of fur and the children brought cloth, twigs for trees, cardboard for cabins, and sawdust for grass. They mixed the sawdust for grass. They mixed the sawdust with green paint. The children are using the fur for animals and hair, the cloth for clothing. The collage looks so real you can almost see the animals run and the trees and grass blow in the wind. The class painted on the background and pasted on the foreground.
Mrs. Best’s room has made a Thanksgiving mural. Here is what they did to make it: first they painted their paper half blue, half brown. They cut out pilgrims and Indians. Afterwards they added trees and a church from construction paper.
Gorham Launches Sputnik. Three, two, one, blast off, and the sputnik goes buzzing around a rotating earth. One click and the Earth starts to move, another and the sputnik’s trip begins, then one more and they both go round and round. Cape Canaveral? No, it's at Gorham. Now you're probably "going around in circles" too. But believe it or not, that's just half of what Gorham's latest machine can do. Yes, it's a machine and we think it's super. The marvellous machine is run by electricity. But the best part is yet to come. You can easily launch it from any place on the Earth and see the actual path a real sputnik would take. Any spare time you have, come up and see us launch a sputnik from Gorham.
Mrs. Best’s pupils have almost finished their college mural [sic -“collage” was intended, no doubt] showing how people travelled to the western part of our country. The class has already put in the background, put on covered wagons, flatboats, sheep, men, women and children with real clothes, cabins of cardboard, some bears, dogs, oxen, and the wagon master. The wagon tops are of cloth; the animals with fur. The wagons roll on a sawdust road and the people walk on green sawdust grass. There are trees, bushes, and Indians.
Mrs. Simmons's Grade 6 class has broken the record for painting a mural. The last mural took almost four weeks, but the last mural took one day. The mural is very pretty. A few of the things on it are: Crusaders, pages practising jousting, a castle, a large monastery, and a church.
Mrs. Ruff’s class thanks Georgia Gardner for her display on Japan. Georgia’s mother brought a suitcase filled with interesting items from Japan. The display consisted of these things: pajamas, chopsticks, kerchief, two dolls, a music box which plays Coming Through the Rye, a portable radio, shower shoes, dress shoes, paper money, coins, and two knives. She also brought a set of figureheads which the Japanese think bring good luck.
Mrs. Best’s class is studying plants. So far the class has the following plants in their room: 3 cactus, 2 hyacinths, some wandering Jew, 3 begonias, a carrot plant, a pine seedling, and some jonquils. Also they have a snake plant, moss, Johnny jump up, a day lily, a fire plant, and others. The class made a list of some of the questions they wondered about. They are finding the answers to these questions.
Carolyn Barnes had her feet operated on at Duke Hospital.
Gerald Proctor’s little brother recently drank some kerosene. His stomach was pumped. Now he is getting along fine.
The class is very proud of their two new gold fish. One is golden, the other is black. They take good care of their fish. Miss Oden got some snails from Mrs. Best and shared them with the first graders. The fish can now see the children better for the snails clean out the bowl. They are really tiny garbage men! The children are very grateful for the little work men.
“The fish can see the children better…” There it is. The original take on the optic, the symptom of something like genius. He would more than live up to his sixth grade promise. I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did. It’s a part of Allan Gurganus’s writing career that doesn’t receive much attention - one understands why - but the tone, the humour, and the loving embrace of the everyday are very much part of what, years later, would make his fiction so embracing and embraced. Thanks for reading, BR
(1) As a young man, in his early 20’s, his reputation as a painting prodigy well-known, Allan Gurganus was commissioned to paint an elaborate wall-length mural in the stairwell of Reverend John David Stewart, a Presbyterian minister who lived at 700 Sycamore Street. There was a photograph of the artist and his work in the Telegram, that, sadly, was made illegible in its digitizing. The Stewarts moved from Rocky Mount in 1975 and the house was listed for sale. It took quite a few months, and several price reductions before the nice older home with six fireplaces and four bedrooms on a corner lot was sold. The mural was never listed among the amenities. One of the eccentric cast of Oldest Living Confederate Widow is a half-mad woman who keeps canaries and gives them the run of her house. I love that on May 24, 1984, in the Lost and Found column of the Rocky Mount Telegram this ad appeared: “Lost: Yellow Parakeet. Answers to the name of Gold dust. Lost in the vicinity of 700 Sycamore.” Reverend Stewart, Gurganus’s early patron, died in 2020. His obituary read, in part, “John David LIVED his politics and treated children as reasonable equals. He was a “Renaissance” man who restored classic MGs, hiked Maine woods, made jewelry and kaleidoscopes, studied philosophy and celebrated life.”