From: Paul Fleischman <fleischman>
Date: Mon, 02 Jun 1997 18:00:45 -0700

Dear JoAnn:

It sounds like your BULL RUN reading went well. I'm pleased. I do think readers (and listeners) would miss a lot by ignoring the chronology. You wouldn't get the same sense of so many realities taking place simultaneously, because you'd be switching between characters much less often. The book grew in part out of seeing a symphonic score for the first time, back in high school--seeing all those musical lines so artfully intertwined, the precisely placed entrances and exits. Imagine, though, going to a concert and hearing just the flute part of Beethoven's 9th, then the oboe part, then the clarinet....I don't mean to come down hard on your students, and in fact am interested in the news (which I hadn't known) that many people like to read the speeches out of order.

On the topic of the book's slanted title, I got a letter today that mentioned that I clearly seemed to favor the south. I actually feel that I didn't give the southern viewpoint a long enough hearing. I grew up in California and in the course of the research realized that I was reading their viewpoint for the first time--that the states had a constitutional right to secede, etc. I don't recall hearing that in school. Having spent two recent summers in North Carolina, I know how near at hand the Civil War appears in the south--it was still being debated in the Letters to the Editor.

Best wishes, Paul Fleischman
Received on Mon 02 Jun 1997 08:00:45 PM CDT