John A. Gould

As I’ve moved into retirement from teaching at Phillips Academy, Andover, I’ve learned that I have to find new ways of communicating with people. This website is intended to present writing and teaching projects, some old, others brand new. E-publishing has provided one of the new ones, but most of my books still exist in the good old paper and ink format, and this site will tell you about them and how to find them. I’m also still doing some teaching and speaking, and here you’ll be able to keep up with those activities as well. As my old mentor Garrison says, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”^®

Carlton Sortwell (BLOG ONLY)

Carlton Sortwell is nine years old, and he loves two things deeply: Meredith Sewall, who sits in front of him in school, and the game of baseball. In his eponymous novel, Carlton experiences both passionate joys and unspeakable sorrows as he grows from a child in Maine to a young man in Massachusetts. Baseball can be a harsh mistress, but both the game and the girl offer Carlton redemptive powers as well.
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The Ecology of the Heart (EBOOK ONLY)

The Ecology of the Heart is a novel of discovering America in 1976, the Bicentennial, and in so doing discovering atonement and peace. Leaving behind a crumbling marriage, thirty-year-old Sam Sewall sets out from Wiscasset on a ten-speed bicycle, heading west, alone, foundering emotionally and physically.
During his journey, he recalls the strange events that
set him in motion.

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Greenleaf Fires (EBOOK)

The Greenleaf Fires is a novel of renunciation and redemption, the story of a man’s struggle to cut himself away from his father. The setting is rural Maine. Alcott Greenleaf sets fires, serves a prison sentence, fights in Guam during the Second World War, and eventually finds peace through his young, damaged son.

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The Withering Child (Author Signed Edition)

Told from a father’s perspective, The Withering Child is the story of a young boy’s profound reaction to the disruptive forces of change. John A. Gould’s artful narrative of a domestic crisis aptly gauges the subjective undercurrents of contemporary family life. Indeed, parents who read it will confront facets of
their own – and their children’s – expectations

and apprehensions.

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News:

I do some freelance editing and tutoring, by arrangement only.

New Online Only E-book - Carlton Sortwell

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Upcoming Events:

Starting on October 9 of 2012, I’ll be teaching a six-week course on THE SOUND AND THE FURY at Beacon Hill Seminars in Boston.

This is one of William Faulkner’s finest novels: the doomed Compson family, more or less held together by the heroic Dilsey, the former slave. (Dilsey was modeled on Caroline Barr, also a former slave, who worked for the Faulkner family, and to whom he dedicated GO DOWN, MOSES.)

In December: I’ll be at the annual birthday party for the late Anthony Powell, author of DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME, at the Grolier Club in New York City.

In April and May of 2012: I will teach a grammar course at Bennington College titled “Through Syntax to Style.” I taught this course last year, and it was very positively received then. It is based on the material in
my book, THE GRAMMAR OF ALISTAIR BARNSTABLE.

Also in the Spring: I will be giving a lecture with slides for the Boston chapter of Jane Austen Society of North America. More information later.

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