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A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from Her Student
One morning, a box was delivered to Elizabeth Stone's door. It held ten years of personal diaries and a letter that began "Dear Elizabeth, You must be wondering why I left you my diaries in my will. After all, we have not seen each other in over twenty years . . ." What followed was a remarkable year in Elizabeth's life as she read Vincent's diaries and began to learn abou...more
Hardcover, 202 pages
Published
May 17th 2002
by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
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I couldn't finish this one, unfortunately. I found that I wasn't very interested in the author's view of the guy she was writing about. The guy himself was pretty interesting, although he did a lot of drugs (urban gay male culture in SF in the 80s--not surprising, of course), and I don't find that very interesting to read about. But the author is so boringly mainstream (white middle-class academic married to a nice white man with two nice white children living on the nice East Coast) that I coul...more
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the story of a boy who had a teacher, and how they reconnected after 25 years. he ran away to san francisco, she married and grew up, and upon his death, he gave her the diaries of his past ten years, in order to try and make a book of it, some sense of it.
it made me wonder what i plan to do with all the journals i write and keep, and who will eventually find them.
it's a beautiful meditation on mortality, and the people we become, and the people we are. there's excellent discussion on who we a...more
it made me wonder what i plan to do with all the journals i write and keep, and who will eventually find them.
it's a beautiful meditation on mortality, and the people we become, and the people we are. there's excellent discussion on who we a...more
Author's former student from her days teaching high school in Brooklyn kept in touch for several years only by Christmas card exchanges, until the fellow's diaries arrived at her doorstep unexpectedly as part of his estate. Rather than a strict "re-creation" of Vincent's life, Stone went with contrasting diary entries against what she knew of him personally, as well as discussing how she dealt with issues similar to his in her own life. Highly recommended.
This book was not at all what I expected. It was too much information about a life-style that I am not sympathetic to. However, by the time that Eddie died I started to cry and could not quit for quite some time. The author is a generous woman and a fine writer. She gave me a lot to think about at a time when someone in my own life is ill, what it means to be compassionate and how to accept both life and death.
I didn't love this. I guess I was hoping for...more. The premise is interesting -- a teacher receieves a box of diaries from a student she hasn't seen in twenty-five years. Vincent asks her to read them and try to put them in a readable format. Thus, the book is written.
However, Vincent's diary entries are strange, brief, and obscure at times. Then the author uses Vincent's life and death to refect on her own life and how she deals with death; and at least half of the book is about her reading t...more
However, Vincent's diary entries are strange, brief, and obscure at times. Then the author uses Vincent's life and death to refect on her own life and how she deals with death; and at least half of the book is about her reading t...more
I should pick this one up again...the first time I did, I couldn't put it down.
Really good book about the relationship between the teacher and her student... how the student Vincent dealt with AIDS epidemic, falling victim to HIV, how he blossomed despite the fact that he had HIV and was dying from it, etc. He instructed his teacher to make his diaries "real" to public...
This is on my all-time favorite list. Elizabeth Stone once taught a young man named Vincent. She made such an impression that Vincent and Elizabeth exchanged Christmas cards every year. Then, in 1995, Elizabeth Stone receives a final package from Vincent. He has died and has left Elizabeth his journals in the hopes that they can be turned into a book. This book takes the reader through Vincent's life as a gay man living with AIDS in San Francisco during the 80's. But it also touches on Elizabeth...more
I really liked this book. I think it makes the reader really think about other people and to maybe not judge them so quickly.
I loved the idea of discovering that you have personally impacted someone's life and that person actually let you know about it.
This book gave me lots to think about. I enjoyed how it was written.
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Good book. Was a quick one as it's only 200 pages.
I think I had higher expectations about this book when I started reading it. It was a great story about a teachers student who kept in touch with her through yearly Christmas cards who then died of AIDS. His diary, which he wanted her to read and write about, was the learning experience. It was kind of not very specific in a lot of places which made the story kind of hazy to me. It most definitely was a book on the sad side but I was expecting a book of impact and all I got was a nice, well-told...more
Some interesting introspection...very well written.
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