Staggerford by Jon Hassler

I recently read Jon Hassler's Staggerford (1977), set in small-town Minnesota and describing a week in the life of Miles Pruitt, a 35-year-old high-school English teacher. The setup here reminds me of Anne Tyler or maybe Garrison Keillor: quiet, deadpan humor; appreciation of small-town foibles; mostly good people mostly trying hard.

Miles' life doesn't look like much. He teaches his classes of varying ability. He walks home where he boards with an elderly Catholic-school teacher (he used to be in her class). He and his librarian lady friend Imogene attend long evenings of bridge with the school superintendent and his wife.

However it might look from the outside, Miles likes his life. He's a good teacher, wrestling with the dullards and challenging the smart ones. He does what he can to help an intelligent student whose progress is threatened by poverty and a crazy mother. He likes walking, and enjoys his landlady, and gets a kick out of the school superintendent's long droning conversations. It all looks changeless, except maybe for the kiss he finally plants on Imogene, and we think maybe this is a turning point.

Except that event gets buried in a growing farce starting with two high-school boys fighting and eventually involving the local Indian tribe, fears of an AIM uprising, the National Guard, and Miles' student's crazy mother. It ends surprisingly in a way I really didn't like, although I could see that it made sense given the book as a whole.

This is Hassler's first novel, and it can be weak. The best example is an episode describing Miles's first love that aims to prove the adage "a woman grows up to become her mother." It's used uncritically and as if always true, which of course is bullshit, and on the whole the episode is a great big easy cop-out for some cheap-ass irony.

Hassler went on to write some 10 more novels, several also set in the town of Staggerford, and I want to read more of him.