Harry Vernon at Prep

by Pa Rock
Reader

Francis D. Smith was a World War II combat veteran and a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard.  He taught high school for seventeen years and then spent the remainder of his academic career as a literature professor at a small college in Amherst, Massachusetts, and as a dean of the same college.  Smith was also a writer.  During the 1980's he wrote six mystery novels under the pseudonym S.F.X. Dean which concerned the exploits of a fictional college professor/amateur sleuth whose academic background basically paralleled that of the author.  

Those mystery novels were not Smith's first foray into writing.  In 1959 he had published his first (and only other) book, "Harry Vernon at Prep," which was described by his family in his obituary as "a comic adventure narrated by an engaging outlaw who scams his way into a teaching job at a Boston-area private school."  That same obituary also mentioned that the book "gained minor cult status where it was reported that rock critic Lester Bangs (who wrote regularly for Rolling Stone) considered the book to be a 'sacred text.'"   The author wrote "Harry Vernon" as "Franc" Smith.

"Harry Vernon at Prep" is a first person, stream-of-consciousness account of a year in the life of the title character.  Harry stops at a diner in New Hampshire for a meal where he meets a young male teacher.  Harry decides to abandon the borrowed police car that he has been driving and accepts a ride to Boston with his new friend.  Harry, though a con-artist by nature, is also well educated and has been a student at Harvard at one point in his life.  As they travel and talk, the teacher discovers just how bright Harry is - and offers him an odd proposition.

The teacher is trying to break his contract at a boys' prep school in Boston where he teaches literature, but to do that he has to come up with a suitable replacement.  Even though Harry has no formal education in the field of education, he does have the ability to snow his way past the school's administrators and other faculty members - and he soon finds himself ensconced in his own dorm room with a teaching position at the school.

During the school year Harry learns to teach, becomes involved in the lives of his students - and one step-parent, puts on the school play, and spends many hours tutoring and coaching a local bartender who has dreams of becoming a history teacher.  It is Harry's effort to get the bartender to look and sound like a teacher that does so much to illuminate what he sees as the phoniness of the profession.

"Harry Vernon at Prep" provides a view of life in a private boarding school in the 1950's, and it also offers a deep-dive into the field of education that still has relevance today.  The short novel is funny, insightful, and strangely compelling.  It does not, however, live up to the hype of being a "sacred text!"

(Note:  My used copy was originally owned by Janet E. Sell, M.R. 1, Saltsburg, PA.  Janet, if you are still kicking, get in touch and I will send it back to you!)