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Straight Cut Ditch
202 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1979
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June 10, 2026[although this is a novel I have enjoyed immensely there is absolutely nothing to be found about it or the author online. I have tracked down the author's papers to Boston University and I have requested copies of reviews and other material. Once that arrives I will try and finish my review]
From the flyleaf of the jacket of the 1979 hardback edition from Ashley Books Inc:
"STRAIGHT CUT DITCH is a Bildungsroman about a first-year high school teacher and one of his students. The two are old enough to recognise their school's and it's homosexual abusive principal's shortcomings, but they are not mature enough to know how to deal with them.
"'Don't smile until Christmas.' thev teachers at Bleeding Martyr High School are told. Christopher Newland, just starting his teaching career, finds this odd order simply the first of many in the mad world of Bleeding Martyr.
"STRAIGHT CUT DITCH traces the course of Christopher's first teaching year at a school run by gay Brothers, staffed by illiterates, and populated by average students. Christopher, educated in (a) Catholic school, thought he was prepared for the highly charged atmosphere created by jealous priests, repressed nuns, and officious administrators. But he had never before met anyone like Brother Patrick-the treacherous priest-principal (see my footnote *1 below); Brother Ept known as 'Inept' behind his back-the busybody assistant principal; or Bother Callistus, Brother Patrick's former lover, known to break the jaws of recalcitrant students.
"Brother Patrick hired Christopher mainly because he wanted him for his new lover. He soon finds that Brother Patrick also desires him to do some spying and to keep a diary of what he sees: the dissension among the teachers, their incompetence and inability to relate to their students, and the general atmosphere of jealousy and suspicion in the school.
"Then Christtopher meets Bryan, a senior who has also been one of Brother Patrick's lovers. Bryan is also a spy but he and Christopher are drawn to each other by more than their common occupations. Soon they are lovers.
"In a comic misdirection of his energies as a new teacher, Christopher unknowingly becomes the centre of a reform movement within the young faculty staff. In alliance with Mary Walsh, a sympathetic and attractive ex-nun, and with temporary assistance from a visiting Miss California Beauty Contest winner, Christopher Bryan and his students to a sensibility untainted by the way things are in the world.
"STRAIGHT CUT DITCH is a humorous but incisive look at the inside of a (hypothetical) religious-orientated, single-sex high school and the psychological implications such a situation creates. Andersen has drawn his characters with wit and skill and illuminated the repression, bitterness, and hostility that can arise in such an intense environment...an environment definitely antithetical to education.
"Andersen takes his title from the words of Henry David Thoreau: 'What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch out of a free meandering brook.'"
This a fascinating and very enjoyable novel but one that is very much of its time - though that doesn't mean it can't be read with pleasure but for anyone born in the later then 1990 there is context that must be understood. Although there is a great deal 'homosexuality' in the novel this is not a 'gay' novel. The homosexual/gay elements are not the point though clearly the author did see them as central to his story. What most readers today will probably find most interesting - or appalling - is that there is absolutely no condemnation, exploration or even acknowledgement of the exploitative nature of Brother Patrick's and teacher Christopher's relationship with the student Bryan.
Exploitative homosexual activity by members of Religious orders involved in teaching are taken for granted and Richard Andersen's novel echo what the writer Kevin Killian would later relate in his memoir of attending a Catholic all boys high school in Long Island (that novel 'Bedrooms Have Windows', 1989 is most easily found in his memoirs 'Fascination', 2018). It was only years later in the late 1990s when story after story of predatory priests and Religious were in the headlines that Killian even began to see that his own teenage experiences could be defined in that way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from the book's jacket): Richard Andersen was born in New York City in 1946. A professor of Humanities at Boston University, his other works include 'William Goldman', a critical study of the popular writer's ten novels.
*1 Brother Patrick was not a priest so he was a Brother-principal - the distinction between a Brother and a Priest is massive. Doyler, in 'At Swim Two Boys' by Jaimie O'Neil, describes the religious brothers (specifically the Christian Brothers) as "neither hay nor grass". He remarks on their distinctive uniforms but notes that they are "sergeants really, not officer class". Which is an excellent definition - though I am sure I have done nothing to explain the difference - but I have provided you with plenty to Google!
From the flyleaf of the jacket of the 1979 hardback edition from Ashley Books Inc:
"STRAIGHT CUT DITCH is a Bildungsroman about a first-year high school teacher and one of his students. The two are old enough to recognise their school's and it's homosexual abusive principal's shortcomings, but they are not mature enough to know how to deal with them.
"'Don't smile until Christmas.' thev teachers at Bleeding Martyr High School are told. Christopher Newland, just starting his teaching career, finds this odd order simply the first of many in the mad world of Bleeding Martyr.
"STRAIGHT CUT DITCH traces the course of Christopher's first teaching year at a school run by gay Brothers, staffed by illiterates, and populated by average students. Christopher, educated in (a) Catholic school, thought he was prepared for the highly charged atmosphere created by jealous priests, repressed nuns, and officious administrators. But he had never before met anyone like Brother Patrick-the treacherous priest-principal (see my footnote *1 below); Brother Ept known as 'Inept' behind his back-the busybody assistant principal; or Bother Callistus, Brother Patrick's former lover, known to break the jaws of recalcitrant students.
"Brother Patrick hired Christopher mainly because he wanted him for his new lover. He soon finds that Brother Patrick also desires him to do some spying and to keep a diary of what he sees: the dissension among the teachers, their incompetence and inability to relate to their students, and the general atmosphere of jealousy and suspicion in the school.
"Then Christtopher meets Bryan, a senior who has also been one of Brother Patrick's lovers. Bryan is also a spy but he and Christopher are drawn to each other by more than their common occupations. Soon they are lovers.
"In a comic misdirection of his energies as a new teacher, Christopher unknowingly becomes the centre of a reform movement within the young faculty staff. In alliance with Mary Walsh, a sympathetic and attractive ex-nun, and with temporary assistance from a visiting Miss California Beauty Contest winner, Christopher Bryan and his students to a sensibility untainted by the way things are in the world.
"STRAIGHT CUT DITCH is a humorous but incisive look at the inside of a (hypothetical) religious-orientated, single-sex high school and the psychological implications such a situation creates. Andersen has drawn his characters with wit and skill and illuminated the repression, bitterness, and hostility that can arise in such an intense environment...an environment definitely antithetical to education.
"Andersen takes his title from the words of Henry David Thoreau: 'What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch out of a free meandering brook.'"
This a fascinating and very enjoyable novel but one that is very much of its time - though that doesn't mean it can't be read with pleasure but for anyone born in the later then 1990 there is context that must be understood. Although there is a great deal 'homosexuality' in the novel this is not a 'gay' novel. The homosexual/gay elements are not the point though clearly the author did see them as central to his story. What most readers today will probably find most interesting - or appalling - is that there is absolutely no condemnation, exploration or even acknowledgement of the exploitative nature of Brother Patrick's and teacher Christopher's relationship with the student Bryan.
Exploitative homosexual activity by members of Religious orders involved in teaching are taken for granted and Richard Andersen's novel echo what the writer Kevin Killian would later relate in his memoir of attending a Catholic all boys high school in Long Island (that novel 'Bedrooms Have Windows', 1989 is most easily found in his memoirs 'Fascination', 2018). It was only years later in the late 1990s when story after story of predatory priests and Religious were in the headlines that Killian even began to see that his own teenage experiences could be defined in that way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (from the book's jacket): Richard Andersen was born in New York City in 1946. A professor of Humanities at Boston University, his other works include 'William Goldman', a critical study of the popular writer's ten novels.
*1 Brother Patrick was not a priest so he was a Brother-principal - the distinction between a Brother and a Priest is massive. Doyler, in 'At Swim Two Boys' by Jaimie O'Neil, describes the religious brothers (specifically the Christian Brothers) as "neither hay nor grass". He remarks on their distinctive uniforms but notes that they are "sergeants really, not officer class". Which is an excellent definition - though I am sure I have done nothing to explain the difference - but I have provided you with plenty to Google!
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