London Bridge

Steven Dhondt

Description

In this fictional memoir, an aspiring American literature teacher decides that acquiring expertise in the works of Jack London provides him the bridge to achieving his dream.

Tom Pierson’s freshman obsessions—with American literature and with the pert assistant to the dean of Abbott College—dominate his first term. When his idealism, inspired by Jack London’s portrayal of working-class struggles, collides with establishment forces, he learns to rue a lesson from London: that fate is often capriciously twisted.

Steven Dhondt brings passion and literary sophistication to this coming-of-age novel. The telltale themes—idolization of inspiring role models, youthful bravado undermined by self doubt, first love, and betrayal—are outlined in graceful prose with signature empathy. Dhondt deftly pays homage to Jack London by emulating the master’s satire and keen understanding of human nature in a story that builds to a tumultuous conclusion.

“I need to find my way. And I think it’s through London. Show me how to travel. Maybe if I follow your path, I can learn how to keep traveling.”

Sujets

• American literature
• Fiction
• Jack London

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 10 avril 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665718387
• Langue: English

Extrait

LONDON
A FICTIONAL MEMOIR
BRIDGE
 
 
 
 
 
STEVEN DHONDT
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 Steven Dhondt
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-1839-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-1837-0 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-1838-7 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022901806
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 05/09/2022
CONTENTS
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Author
In memory of
Augustus Bernard Dhondt,
my grandfather who, after I drove his tractor into a ditch, implored me,
“Don’t tell your grandmother.”
If you suppress truth, if you hide truth, if you do not rise up and speak out in meeting, if you speak out in meeting without speaking the whole truth, then you are less true than truth.
Let me glimpse the face of truth. Tell me what the face of truth looks like.
—Jack London
Stepping Out
A single score less two has passed
With every year just like the last.
Instead of being here at home,
Now
I’m stepping out—out on my own.
The world’s so big, and I’m so small,
I hope someday I’ll see it all.
I’ll have the chance now that I’m grown;
Finally,
I’m stepping out—out on my own.
Though what’s around has been just great,
I’ve had an urge to roam of late.
A restless seed in me was sown;
Thank God
I’m stepping out—out on my own.
I want to see, before settling down,
The world afar, the world around.
And as the seed from pod is blown,
Oh, yes!
I’m stepping out—out on my own.
Sherrill, New York
1962
PROLOGUE
June 12, 1967
Spring arrives late in northern Utah. By then, people happily exchange their heavy winter coats and scarves for the light jackets and cotton sweaters they packed away seven long months ago. By then, the numbing wind that since October drove needles of sleet and snow through Logan Canyon gradually becomes a tranquil breeze, spilling sweet fragrances of rhododendrons, azaleas, and rare pink and white fairy slipper orchids into the flowing expanse that is Cache Valley.
Defining the Cache and defying the welcome transition sweeping across the lower elevations, the soaring Wasatch Range—the only east-to-west-running mountains in North America—retains its mottled white crown in striking contrast to the vivid colors below. Renewal at the summit takes longer.
I sit alone taking it all in as I sip what will be my last cup of coffee in this place at a table on the broad flagstone terrace in front of the Utah State University student center in Logan. The university is situated at the mouth of Logan Canyon on a shelf-like area of rock with steep slopes above and below—what the locals call the valley’s benches. The view is spectacular.
But today, none of it seems real. It is more like an Ansel Adams photograph or an Albert Bierstadt oil. And not many people ever actually get the chance to be a participant in one of those. I should feel privileged to be here, a witness to this picture-perfect magnificence. Yet now, on a glorious late spring morning as I survey this one-of-a-kind valley’s grandeur, I want to get on with it. No lingering. As good as it has been here, I am eager to move on.
I didn’t always feel this way.
I saw the valley for the first time the previous August, having driven west from upstate New York, first on Interstate 90 and then on Interstate 80 for what seemed like weeks in my cramped Volkswagen Beetle packed just short of the bursting point with everything I owned. I was, like Dorothy, blowing through Kansas, following the yellow bricks in search of the Wizard.
Only in my case, I was on my way to meet a King.
Anyone who has made the trip knows that, just after you pass through Rock Springs, a blot on the state of Wyoming, and as you turn off Route 80 a few miles past the tacky Little America rest stop and head northwest on 30, and just before you enter Logan Canyon from the north, you come to the top of a ridge and bam ! In an instant you feel like Dorothy must have at her first sight of Oz. You must slam on the brakes. I mean, stop the car right now on the side of the road so you can get out, rub your eyes, shake your highway-hypnotized head, and stare at what is spread out below to be sure you are not hallucinating.
If Dorothy’s was the Emerald City, this was a jewel even brighter. From the shoulder of the road on the ridge, I looked down in wonderment on an expanse of water the color of a gemstone unlike any ever mined. Just imagine a mix of vibrant green and radiant sapphire that glows as if millions of mirrors reflecting the bright, Rocky Mountain sun were suspended an inch or so below the surface. I sure as hell wasn’t in New York anymore.
I knew I should get back in my car and keep moving, but I was paralyzed by a depth and brilliance of color that would be hard to find even in the Caribbean or South Pacific. In fact, I learned later that it was called “the Caribbean of the Rockies.” The map said it was Bear Lake. And it probably contained water that was still frozen when I escaped Rock Springs a short time earlier. But now I was in Utah. I never guessed it would be this beautiful.
This must be the way to the King.
From this striking glacial tarn created ten thousand years ago, the only way to Cache Valley is through the canyon. And Logan Canyon, it turns out, is big—as deep in some spots as the Grand Canyon.
The two-lane road that bisects the canyon took my little Bug and me twisting below rugged limestone cliffs, through dense canopies of umbrella-like quaking aspens, lodgepole pines, and junipers and meandering around waist-high purple lupines and massive boulders kissing the edge of the frothing river, the home of brown and cutthroat trout, for the last forty miles to the university. I passed cautiously over Burnt and Lower Twin bridges in the narrow middle section of the canyon and peeked apprehensively over the edge of Rocky Point, the tight hairpin turn with a sheer drop-off on one side. So primeval was this place that if it were not for the pavement and overhead utility lines as evidence of modernity, I could have been an explorer like Donald Mackenzie or Jim Bridger coming through the canyon for the first time. In stark contrast to cruising past the gray moss-hung oaks, tupelos, and magnolias of Louisiana or the rolling cornfields of central New York, I embraced the sensation of flowing downstream like a shadow of the river, noticing the shimmery russet bark of red osier dogwoods and slowing to a crawl on curves crowded by ominous granite walls as if I were a fetus pressing through my mother’s birth canal.
I tuned my radio to a Logan station and began humming along with Bob Dylan as he sang “The Times They Are A-Changing.” Knowing I was almost at the end of my long passage, I was impatient for it to be over. But, as it is with birthing, the canyon does not give you any shortcuts. Some two hours after skirting the shore of that mesmerizing jewel of a lake, I finally emerged at what would be my place for the next year.
The place of the King.
He was not actually a king. That is, not in the royal sense. His real name, his given name, was King. Uncommon name. I first heard it from a Duke. Uncommon man.

1
“W eltanschauung.”
With no hint of the southern accent that inflected most of his speech, Professor E. Duke Becker enunciated the German term. His eyes fixed on the class, his head tilted slightly back, and his hands rested on the edges of the lectern.
He relaxed his arms and stepped to one side. “What do we mean when we refer to Twain’s weltanschauung?” His hands slid into the pockets of his crisply pressed twill trousers.
“Worldview,” I said quickly, forgetting to raise my hand. It just fell out of my mouth. Dr. Becker used the term during a class early in the semester, and I made it my business from the beginning to retain such things because he placed special emphasis on them. It was as though I had an instinct for remembering the words and phrases that I suspected were underscored in his lecture notes.
They were not hard to anticipate. He almost always sent an ever-so-subtle signal. Sometimes he paused. A master of his subject does not pause for no reason. God knows he couldn’t be tongue-tied. Other times it was the look on his face or maybe just a tiny gesture of h