Servant of the Servants of Distraction

In 1981, after 20 years of teaching high school in Nanaimo, Jack Hodgins quit to spend more time writing. In 1984 I was on a similar path, starting my first year as an English teacher in rural Ontario. I lasted seven years. A few of my colleagues had two decades or more under their belts, an achievement of note given that the clientele never ages and pressure on the classroom teacher mounts daily from every side. I have had the privilege, therefore, of knowing stalwart teachers like Axel Thorstad, protagonist of The Master of Happy Endings, this latest fictional foray into Jack Hodgins country. Their dedication was inspiring, their endurance daunting and their students very lucky indeed.

I picture Max von Sydow playing the tall, rail thin, 77-year-old Thorstad, long retired after 40 years in the educational trenches. If the adaptation is not already in script development, well, shame on the CBC. The novel, Hodgins’s eighth, is after all a paean and a...