Alumni Council Hosts Virtual Book Discussion with Former HS English Teacher Andrew Glassman and Author Margot Livesey

By Andrew Glassman, Former HS English Teacher

The Alumni Council hosted an Alumni book discussion in April 2022 that featured The Boy In the Field by Margot Livesey. Former High School English Teacher Andrew Glassman led a discussion that included a Q&A with Livesey. The Boy in the Field was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (2019) and an O Magazine Book of the Year. Here’s his report:

Recently retired, I was invited to plan a Dalton Alumni Discussion event. How could I refuse my former student, Joe Franken ’03, Vice President of the Alumni Council?

First, some background:

In the late ’80s to early ’90s, I taught reading electives on classic and recent fiction to 6th to 8th grade students at Dalton. A connection to Pen America helped bring in contemporary writers who treated students as people with complex feelings and sharp minds. At the end of one session, Ann Beattie exclaimed, “What great students! What a wonderful school!” Three years later, one of those students ran back to 89th Street from Barnes & Noble to say, “I just saw Ann Beattie’s photo on the jacket of her new novel. We met her! She came to our class!” He is now a writer himself.

In an especially warm session, circa 1989, Livesey responded to questions about stories taken from her debut volume, Learning By Heart. In Acknowledgements to The Boy In The Field, her ninth novel, I found this stunning gesture:

My thanks to the pupil at the Dalton School who, years ago, asked why the animals in my stories don’t talk. Very belatedly, this is an attempt at an answer.

Then came Joe Franken’s invitation. After many years, I wrote to Livesey through her publisher, inviting her to close the circle by returning to discuss The Boy in the Field, a novel focused on adolescents’ complex lives, and she immediately accepted.

In a virtual session, with alumni from 1954 to 2017 RSVPing and 15 attending, I opened by asking, how does a dog, who seems to “talk,” relate to growth in awareness among sensitive siblings, following their discovery of a boy left wounded and alone in a field they were passing?

Livesey spoke of her interest in “a life jumping the tracks, moving into dark shadows.” In their uncertainty, the three protagonists seek guides for their journeys to adulthood. The dog, with its finely tuned instincts for reading human feelings, becomes one of those guides. The protagonists

Throughout the hour-long discussion, Livesey answered questions about character, setting, an art motif, philosophical models alluded to in the narrative, and her play on the detective genre. Did we close the circle opened decades earlier with the question about animals talking? Yes and no. Livesey did explain how she saw her characters’ reacting to their dog’s gestures. And yet, privately, Livesey indicates that questions from this recent event have stirred her again as she works on a new novel. Has the spirit of Helen Parkhurst become a modern muse?

Short Takes@Lunch: Dalton and the Court

Short Takes@Lunch, Dalton’s Alumni Speaker Series, featured an impressive group of community members with experience serving as clerks for Supreme Court Justices. Attendees enjoyed a riveting conversation detailing the panel members’ experiences and their thoughts on the appointment of new U.S. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Participants at the well-attended virtual lunch hour conversation were: Jesse M. Furman ’90, who clerked for the Honorable David H. Souter and is a Federal Judge on the Federal District Court in Manhattan; Daniel Herz-Roiphe ’06, who clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer and is the Senior Vice President, Finance, Operations & Technology at Priovant Therapeutics; Olatunde Johnson P’22 who clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens and is the Jerome B. Sherman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; and Richard L. Revesz P’09 who clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall and is the AnBryce Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus at the New York University School of Law.

Yale Law School’s Alfred M. Rankin Professor of Law Abbe R. Gluck ’92, P’25, P’25, P’31, moderated the discussion and is a certified expert in her own right. She clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and recently worked for the Biden-Harris Administration as the lead lawyer for the White House Covid-19 Response.

The informative and timely session concluded with a lively Q&A with the engaged attendees.

Out On The Town with the Senior Alumni Committee

The Senior Alumni Committee organizes outings for Alumni (over age 65) to enjoy city culture. They recently visited exhibits at the Asia Society and The New-York Historical Society. Committee Co-Chair Marjie Cohen Scharfspitz ’59, who provided the following reports, says, “Seniors: We’d love to have you join us on our next adventure!”

Senior Alumni Committee Enjoys the Asia Society Exhibit — Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians

I was deeply moved by the openness, beauty, and subtleties of the show “Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians.” Because the Asia Society had no docents, I became the presenter during our Senior Alumni group’s visit last March 2022.

The works featured in the recent exhibit Rebel, Jester, Mystic, Poet: Contemporary Persians, are part of the collection of Iranian financier and philanthropist

Mohammed Afkhami. The show featured 23 Iranianborn artists across three generations, and the exhibition revealed the Iranians’ extraordinary histories and identities. Many of these artists live outside of Iran, with several working in the New York area. The word Persians was used deliberately in the title because it harkens back to the cultural identity of the artists, as opposed to the current complexities and hostilities toward the Iranian regimes.

Every artwork in this exhibit illustrates ingenuity, dexterity, and flair. In addition, each is thoughtprovoking — using humor, spirituality, contradictions,