‘Never Fade’ follows teacher, student

Max Jacobson

Monday, March 18, 2002 | 8:31 a.m.

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William Hart has an important message in his poignant, frustrating first novel, and he imparts it eloquently, with heartfelt sincerity. The main focus of his novel is a complex teacher-student relationship, one revolving around an educational system designed to fail, rather than encourage its students.

Set in the mythical Cal State University Maravilla (CSUM, which readers familiar with the landscape of Southern California will recognize as a thinly disguised description of Cal State Los Angeles), the novel uses the literary device of two alternating chronicles, similar to diaries. One is written by maverick teacher John Goddard. The other, written in often ungrammatical and slightly broken English, is by the book's heroine, Tina Le.

This relationship gets its complexity because Goddard is a somewhat troubled Vietnam vet, and because Tina (nee Tien) is a boat person once held prisoner in a cave by a sexual predator, after having watched her father be beaten to death by pirates in the South China Sea. It's impossible not to have sympathy for such a plucky character, even when she gets off to a difficult start in her English 002 class by plagiarizing text for an essay, and confessing her crime.

English 002 is the second English as a Second Language course required for a Cal State student to pass, in order to make him or her eligible for English 101, which every student must pass in order to receive a degree. Goddard, the ESL teacher, is portrayed as a dedicated but somewhat self-destructive loner. He is constantly in trouble with his department for being insubordinate, and he seems accident prone -- his own worst enemy.

Le, meanwhile, is on her own, with no family and few friends. She writes often about culture clashes with her promiscuous black roommate, Rayneece, who parades a succession of lovers into their apartment, and who rarely studies. Later Le and Goddard develop a deep friendship, a sort of mutual dependence. But Hart never allows this to progress too far. The damage both have endured in their past makes this almost impossible.

But set against this backdrop is the real issue this book is concerned with, namely institutional racism. The English department at this backward school fails more than 80 percent of its ESL students, thanks to nearly impossible questions asked on final exams, outside the event horizons of students who did not grow up with Western culture. Failure to complete these courses renders a student ineligible to take English 101. That effectively flunks a student out of school, regardless of how brilliant he or she may be in any other discipline.

The reader will sympathize with Goddard and Le during the teacher's fight to allow his best students to pass, even though he has to bend the rules to pass them. Inevitably, he is sacrificed for standing up for what he thinks is right, and for trying to keep Le in school. But not before both undergo a long succession of meaningful changes.

Hart's prose is simple and straightforward, even if one or two of his literary devices seem hokey. He often has Le omitting the third-person singular ending on her verbs, which is a rudimentary error compared to the difficult concepts she writes about. (For instance, "I confuse" instead of "I was confused," and similar Pidgin-like constucts.)

Plus, a few of his characters are drawn in black and white, such as a clearly prejudiced colleague, and an egotistical, self-indulgent department head who doesn't wish to rock the boat. It would have been nice to know why these educators acted the way they did.

But in the end, one must assume that Hart, who has a doctorate in English and who has taught basic writing and ESL at various Los Angeles-area universities, has chosen this topic for a reason. Most of us who have experienced academic life are aware that absurdity sometimes permeates the system. And who wouldn't agree with the familiar thought that "a mind is a terrible thing to waste"?