Chapter 181: Had I Only Known

An anxious email landed in my inbox the day after my students’ book went on sale earlier this week. It came from a student who was worried that information he had long sought but which had only just arrived threatened to undermine his story.

I felt badly for him. Every author’s pub date is a time of joy, even as it propels a period of frenetic selling. (This newest Memory Project anthology Piece by Piece is terrific; check out a sample; the students split the royalties.)

My worried student, Owen Mason-Hill, had written a story about his grandfather, a man he loved despite having never met him. Odd, I told him, when he first told me his idea – loving someone you’ve only heard about. Owen went in search of his grandfather, to try to make sense of his powerful and enduring place in his family.

He reported relentlessly, gathering the bits and pieces of his grandfather’s life. Along the way he dove into such mysteries as what, precisely, his grandfather was doing in a postwar military listening post in Europe, and why his grandfather had left Harvard for the army.

Owen traced his grandfather’s path from Cambridge to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California where he studied Russian. He found his records, spoke with military historians, and researched his grandfather’s unit. Was the man a spy?

As to why he had abandoned his studies, no one in the family was quite sure. So Owen wrote to Harvard requesting his undergraduate records. That was four months ago. Harvard said it would get back to him. With what turned out to be all deliberate speed.

In the end Owen concluded that his grandfather may have been listening to the Soviets but was not quite a spy of the John Le Carre darkly romantic cloak-and-dagger school.

The book’s deadline was fast approaching. Owen had not heard back from Harvard. And so like all writers before him and all the writers to come he had no choice but to go with what he had learned: Grandpa did leave Harvard and joined the army. And he did return to Cambridge after his stint, graduated and went on to graduate school.

The book appeared. Then, Owen wrote, “Just an hour ago, I received my grandpa's student records back from Harvard. They sent me 88 pages of pdfs, including his application, his grades, letters from his professors about his lack of attendance and motivation, his academic probation and his readmission to Harvard.

“They more or less contradict a good deal of my story, or at least the sections about his joining the military. He had, in fact, been kicked out of the school for poor performance, and had joined the military after a stint working in his family's factory. (He was readmitted to Harvard in part due to a glowing review by his commanding officer in the military)”

It was not enough to tell Owen that this happens to us all, even though it does. His predicament reminded me of a story I had done early in my career. A mother had approached the city desk at my paper with a story: her teenage son had been paralyzed in a car accident. She was struggling to pay her bills. Maybe the paper would write a story about him. I drew the assignment. I remember that the son was a big fan of Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac.

The story ran. And then, several months later, I saw the same story in a competing paper. The mother had been peddling the story of her son to newsrooms in central New Jersey.

I had not known this when I wrote the story, and given that this was decades before online search, I had no way of making a quick, cursory check. Like Owen, I went with what I knew, and like Owen I winced when I saw that, in effect, I’d been played.

I mentioned Owen’s dilemma to my brother, Jim, who, I say with great fraternal pride, is among America’s preeminent Shakespeare scholars. Jim has spent a career trying to understand the plays, sonnets and the man who wrote them. There is much that is unknown about Shakespeare and much that, over time, has become received wisdom, in particular about his marriage. Then, there comes the moment of being reminded that perhaps you may have been wrong all along.

Jim wrote: “Anyone writing about the lives of others knows that sooner or later a fresh document or letter will emerge, or an existing document will be shown to be fraudulent, that calls what one has published into question. I’ve drawn attention to such a document myself when debunking claims that someone other than Shakespeare wrote his plays. I’ve been on the receiving end too, and more than once. Just last month, a British scholar found a letter written to ‘Mrs. Shakespeare’ in which it appears she was living in London. If this was indeed William Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway—and scholars are not yet sure--it overturns what biographers (myself included) have written about Shakespeare’s marriage (since the overriding consensus was that Anne remained in Stratford-upon-Avon, while William moved to London by himself). I’m excited by this discovery, even if it may undermine what I have argued. That’s how research works. All you can do is your best with the available evidence—and go on to acknowledge that, given new and solid information, your thinking has changed.”

There is nothing new in writers holding fast to their conclusions, but that inclination toward certainty feels so much more a part of our culture. We know what we know and as a result we end up doing too little asking, too little second guessing. Jim describes what feels counter-intuitive for this moment: the delight in being humbled, in being reminded that there is always, always more to learn.

I did my best to assure Owen that the news from Harvard did not fundamentally change his story: he and his family would not have loved his grandfather less had they known he’d been kicked out of Harvard. They might have even loved him more, for the life he built after his expulsion. Still, it stung.

I waited a few days and asked Owen whether he’d mind if I told his story here, and if that was okay, how he felt when he got that packet from Harvard.

To his credit, Owen has had a few days to let the sting of his discovery sink in and see it in a way that makes me feel proud to be his teacher. He didn’t need me to teach him this lesson. Sometimes the best thing a teacher can do is get out of a student’s way.

He wrote: “It’s an odder feeling than I had anticipated to be confronted with the whole, unabashed truth — the totality of it was equal measures exciting and terrifying. It was inarguable in a way I hadn’t considered. I first parsed through some grades, which seemed of good quality, if not more ordinary than I had anticipated, and then I began reading letters. There, on page three, was a letter in regards to his admission to graduate school that laid out his entire educational arc. Then I read handwritten reports from his professors, who only further confirmed my errors. More and more documents piled up that dispelled details of the story I reported. And then came the dread, the understanding that what I had written — with complete conviction and finality — was incorrect. Not only had I written it and told it to my family, his family, but I had published it in a book that would exist forever, that would contain my inaccuracies forever. And that stung.

“But I began reading further, and soon the fear, anxiety and self-loathing fell away as an image of my grandfather emerged. It was the closest I had ever felt to him, and he was every bit the man I had imagined, and wanted, him to be. I read his handwritten application — with a taped-on photograph of him at 17 — which contained all of his youthful aspirations and uncertainty (he had written that he too had wanted to be a journalist). I read the correspondence between various deans discussing his academic probation and subsequent removal from the institution. I read his military enlistment form, which included a sullen, darker photograph in which he had appeared to age decades in just years.

And then I read his readmission request, which outlines precisely the man I know and love. It was a stunning piece of writing. One in which he honestly interrogated his faults and shortcomings, and outlined the path he wanted to walk on for the rest of his life. It is remarkable how closely it aligns with the life he would live and the person he would become. It was filled with much more conviction, discipline and honesty than his initial application. He had totally and completely reinvented himself after being sent away from Harvard. Just like with the home video I watched alongside my siblings last Christmas Eve, I truly saw my grandfather.

“I called my dad and we revelled in the joy of discovery for more than an hour. There is always room for error and inaccuracy in reporting, but I had done my best with the information I had at my disposal, and I’m no longer as deeply frustrated at myself for what I did not know. Particularly on deadline, I think there are limits to the reporting that is possible. If I were to write this story again, I would likely have sat on it until I had empirical evidence such as this. But such is life.”

* * *

If you have a question, a problem in your work, if you are feeling lost, stuck, confused, at sea, searching, grappling, or baffled, email me at Michaelshapiro808@gmail.com and tell me what you’re confronting and what help you need.

It is seldom, if ever, the case that one student’s problem or question is their’s alone.

Please indicate if you want to remain anonymous, have your name or just first name included. I will include the question and then answer it as best I can.

* * *

Nothing good ever came from writers punishing themselves. We know writing is hard. We’re here to show that it doesn’t have to be torture