Book launch for Pontiac at the Grolier Club in New York 9/24/24, Jim Schutze left, hosted by James Cummins, Bookseller, right.
From The Financial Times of London, 12/5/2024, see Bio and Work page for full review
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How Larry Clark shot his film, "Bully," directly from Jim Schutze's book -- literally.
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PONTIAC
It's 1960, and the times, they are on the verge of changing. One New England boys boarding school has been holding out stubbornly against pressure to diversify.
Grudgingly, St. Philip’s School in New Hampshire opens its doors to its first scholarship student. Young Woodrow Skaggs from Pontiac, Michigan is the tough, rough-edged son of an autoworker.
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His father’s last words are, “Don’t take no shit off those people.” He does not. Things do not go smoothly.
Pontiac is the story of Woodrow’s whole life, start to finish, but it is also the story of the boys who were there first. Will Woodrow’s presence at this nursery to the WASP aristocracy degrade and pollute the school’s proud culture, as some faculty members fear? Or will the boy from Pontiac, Michigan get himself thoroughly preppified and become one of the very tribe he invades?
And which outcome is the one for which the father truly yearns?
BIO
Jim Schutze was born in 1946, spent his childhood in Ann Arbor, Michigan and attended high school at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, after which he was an automobile assembly-line worker in Detroit for six years. While working, Schutze completed a degree in history and political science at the University of Michigan. He is retired from a decades-long career as a newspaper columnist writing about local politics in Dallas, Texas.
Schutze’s book on race relations in Dallas, The Accommodation, was pulled from the presses by a local publisher and suppressed in 1986. Re-published 35 years later in the wake of the George Floyd murder, it was selected for a citywide reading program in Dallas.
From Readers
Sandy Parent Vanderwerven
I loved this book. The kind of writing that makes me want to keep it in hand. A glimpse inside a boys boarding school and the lives of those inside. A definite winner for a first novel. I hope he has others planned.
Dr. Ruth Turner
I couldn’t put down my Kindle . I loved the book! I will never forget Pontiac and his classmates!!!’
Diane Pitts
Loved the book - I wasn’t ready for it to end and didn’t skip ahead (which I often do when I am tired of what I am reading). I loved your style of writing - I can hear your wonderfully sarcastic, irreverent self on every page!
Harlan Crow
"When I finished Pontiac I was very sad. I have not had that good a feeling in a long time. Pontiac became my friend."
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I urge folks to read this novel. Builds on the best tradition of John Knowles and J.D. Salinger with some Mark Twain in there too.
Ashley Higgins
"Like Kipling’s “Stalky & Co.” Also “Lord of the Flies,” sorta. And, of course, the pure Americanism (and writing ability) of Mark Twain. Most importantly, it will all be true because Schutze is an erstwhile true-crime writer and cannot lie (significantly)."
Haven N.B. Pell
"In due course, we learned that there is little quite so self-centered as a ninth grade boy. We saw little beyond ourselves.
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"Unfortunately, 'due course' was measured in decades. I shared that year and three others with Jim Schutze, but from the other side of the scholarship divide.
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"Reliving it with him, but from a different perspective, extended that learning curve by another a few decades.
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"I loved Pontiac and I am the better for reading it."
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