I hope Jim Booth (aka sirpaulsbuddy) won’t mind me poaching this story about my high school principal, Carlyle Cox. Jim was my high school English teacher way back when, and at one point he and Cox got to talking about Jim’s aspirations to a career as a writer. Cox allowed that, back in his day he’d been a writer, as well. He’d come back from the war and wound up at Duke with his GI Bill money, where he set about studying English and writing. (They didn’t have room for him at East Carolina or Chapel Hill, so they had to shunt him over to Durham. And by the way, how about the idea of living in a world where the GI Bill puts you through feckin’ Duke, huh?)

Cox was a classic, very distinguished Southern gentleman whose manner of speech recalled nothing quite so much as a cultured and slightly more reserved Foghorn Leghorn. It had to be entertaining to hear him explaining that “you know, Jim, in mah day I was regahded as something of a writuh m’self. But I eventually gave it up. See, the English depahtment at Duke, wheah I was studying, would periodically hold writing contests for the students. But I always came in third. Bill Styron’s short stories always took first.” Turned out there were a couple other budding luminaries in the program, as well, which made it a challenge to even take second. Booth read some of his stories, though, and says he was really talented.

Cox figured he didn’t have much of a career ahead of him if he was no better than second or third in his own little program, so he switched to education. How was he to know? He just happened to wind up in the same spot with one of the legendary Southern writers of his generation, and as a result he wound up as my high school principal. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Meanwhile, Pulitzer Prize winner William Styron is dead of pneumonia at 81. Sophie’s Choice was a remarkable film, and it contained probably the greatest performance by an actor or actress I have ever seen in Meryl Streep’s Oscar-winning turn as Polish concentration camp survivor Sophie Zawistowski.

And still, the film pales in comparison to the novel. If you haven’t read it, put it on your list, especially if you’re the sort of person who, like most of us, hasn’t found (made) the time to actually commit to something as immersive as a book lately.

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