Never
Fade Away: A Novel by William Hart is serious yet often humorous novel about
a remedial English college instructor and his Vietnamese student. The novel
describes a year in their lives as they fight an oppressive bureaucratic system
aimed at failing ESL students.

Never Fade
Away by William Hart is set at California State University, Maravilla
(CSUM) during the academic year 1985/86. 
John Goddard is an untenured remedial English teacher, traumatized
Vietnam veteran, and struggling author. Tina Le is a very bright Vietnamese
student majoring in mathematics who faces being removed from the college if she
failing her remedial English course for a second time. (The policy of CSUM is
that students must pass English or each course in the remedial language
sequence (ENG 001, ENG 002, & ENG 101) in two tries or be withdrawn from
the university.) Tina, who has excellent grades in her mathematics and science
courses, is on her second attempt at ENG 002. In Mr. Goddard, she finds a
compassionate teacher willing to assist his students to write better. Goddard,
however, is fighting programmatic policies for remedial English instructors
dictated by the English Department juggernaut Professor Mary Hughes Parcell,
aka MHP and “the Humper” that seems geared towards failing the bulk of the ESL
students taking the remedial English sequence. Parcell is tenured and thus
wields a certain amount of power over her untenured colleagues. Not
unsurprisingly, most of the non-tenured English faculty has opted to give her
their silent support. With Mr. Goddard’s support, Tina writes a short story
about her brother entitled, “Minh and Dao” that he believes is good enough to
be published and assists her to submit it to the school literary journal. A
standardized final for ENG 002, designed by Parcell fails 23 of Goddard’s 30
students including Tina. Determined to assist Tina and another ESL student,
Goddard changes their final grades based upon their excellent work during the
semester. While this ease’s Goddard’s anger and assuages Tina fear of failure,
it raises the ire of Parcell and her bureaucratic flunkies.  The spring semester proves to be the toughest
yet, as Tina struggles with a different teacher for ENG 101 and Goddard is
forced to face the wrath of Parcell.

Never Fade Away is
told through journal entries alternating between Tina and Goddard. While
Goddard writes about his struggles with his desire to help his students, his
publishing deadlines, his new interest in Ambrose Bierce, and his inner demons
from Vietnam; Tina writes about her struggles to grasp her reading assignments,
her struggles with writing, her life with Rayneece and her amorous exploits,
and her own demons from her escape as a “boat person” from Vietnam. Tina
entries are often humorous in her outsider’s descriptions and interpretations
of the oddities of American culture. Goddard’s humor is much more satirical.
This is true when he describes his war memories and as he describes the often
petty squabbles of scholars within the academe. He is also “right on target”
about academic politics that it is hard not to laugh at its universality. While
the demons that drive Parcell’s destructive program are hardly laughable,
anyone who has worked in a collegiate setting will be able to identify with the
situation.

There are many walking wounded in
this story. For most, it is the demon of shame that haunts their lives. Tina’s
painful saga, when it is finally revealed, is heart-breaking. She is afraid
that others will discover the secret about her escape from Vietnam. Tina
responds to her tragedy, however, with acceptance and hopeful optimism. Goddard
also has suffered because of the “Vietnam Conflict”. His war stories and the
stories about the deaths of his friends are tragic, but equally tragic are his
perceptions of how others, including his family, view him and his military
involvement in the “Vietnam conflict.” Goddard uses his writing and humor to
face his tragedies. Robert/Roberto, Tina’s computer room supervisor, is
determined to succeed. When he fails ENG 002, he is devastated. Through his
friendship with Tina and his acquaintance with Goddard, he is forces him to
face his feelings about his Latino heritage and to struggle for a renewed
acceptance of his heritage. Rayneece believes that she needs a man in order to
find fulfillment. Her revolving door romances and her fears that she is following
in her mother’s footsteps down the lover strewn path to unfulfilled loneliness,
leads her to evaluate her assumptions about her future prospects.
Unfortunately, the reader can only speculate about the inner demons that drive
Parcell, however, every college/university has at least one Parcell clone and
most faculty can share their own war stories and show their battle scars from
their encounter with him/her.

“William Hart earned a doctorate in English at USC
and has taught basic writing/ESL at Los Angeles universities. His stories and
poems appear widely in newspapers, magazines, and anthologies. He is the author
of several poetry collections, including, Monsoon
(1991) and Paris (1996) which won a
Merit Book Award from the Haiku Society of America. Hart also writes scripts,
most often for his wife, PBS documentary filmmaker, Jayasri Majumdar.” Never Fade Away (2002) is his first
novel.

Never Fade
Away is a wonderful book about enculturation and academic politics. It
should be required reading for every new faculty person and be force fed to
quite a few tenured ones. Hart definitely makes the grade with this one! Dare I
hope for his next writing assignment? Highly recommended.

Links:

·         
William Hart’s home page

·         
Study
guide for Never Fade Away

© 2002 Su Terry

Su Terry: Education:
B.A. in History from Sacred Heart University, M.L.S. in Library Science from
Southern Connecticut State College, M.R.S. in Religious Studies/Pastoral
Counseling from Fairfield University, a M.Div. in Professional Ministry from
New Brunswick Theological Seminary, a Certificate in Spirituality/Spiritual
Direction from Sacred Heart University. She is a Licensed Minister of the
United Church of Christ and an Assistant Professor in Library Science at
Dowling College, Long Island, NY. Interests in Mental Health: She is interested
in the interplay between psychology, biology, and mysticism. Her current area
of research is in the impact of hormonal fluctuation in female Christian
mystics.

Categories: Fiction