Most people can remember fondly at least one teacher whose classroom became a place where the lessons imparted transcended the mundane subject matter and whose tutelage may even have been life-altering. In his wistful The Optimists, Brian Platzer (Bed-Stuy Is Burning) evokes those memories with the story of an enduring bond between a dedicated teacher and the exceptional student he profoundly influenced and who left an equally indelible mark on his life.
John Roderick Keating, thwarted novelist, aficionado of bad jokes, and passionate New York Yankees fan, who considers himself "the luckiest unlucky man on the face of the earth," spends his entire career teaching eighth-grade English at St. George's Episcopal School, a second-rank private school in lower Manhattan. His signal achievement, what he thinks of as "my legacy," is something he calls the Ember Exam, a yearlong, 200-question test that progresses through levels of increasing difficulty. At its pinnacle is the status of Archon, one that's never been reached--until, that is, Clara Hightower, student from a troubled home whom he thinks of as "playful, thoughtful, and a little bit dangerous," enters his classroom.
After suffering a massive stroke in his 70s, Rod resorts to eye blinks directed at a computer screen to begin writing what he calls a novel, appropriating the structure of W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge. He recalls his relationship with Clara, along with her classmate Jacob Smeal, who's smitten with the bright but challenging girl. Though Rod loses touch with her after she graduates to an elite private high school, he follows from a distance the path that propels her to an initial burst of success in Silicon Valley and sudden celebrity, but that veers off into involvement with dangerous activism that will bring him back into her orbit and irrevocably alter his own life.
In describing Rod's gentle obsession with an exceptional student like Clara, Platzer, a middle-school English teacher in New York City, deftly evokes the connection teachers feel with their pupils long after they've moved on with their lives and the corresponding "familial feeling toward teachers without any of the stickiness of family." He's chosen to tell this story in bite-sized, non-chronological chunks that range over more than three decades, a style that's suggestive of the effects of Rod's condition, but that doesn't interfere with the unfolding of this reflective account. The Optimists is warm, funny, and frequently touching. If the impulse to contact a favorite teacher arises after reading it, don't be surprised. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: In this wistful novel, a longtime teacher recalls his challenging relationship with his most exceptional student.