![]() “Dear Sir or Madam,” one directive reads. ![]() There is also the thicket of memos from school administrators, aptly described by Sylvia as “trivia-in-triplicate.” The narrative comprises Sylvia's wistful letters to a college friend, now married and safely installed in the suburbs bits of student papers (“We study myths like Orpheum & his girl friend because it takes place in the Greek Underground”) and messages left in the class suggestion box (“You're a good teacher except for the rotten books you have to teach like the Oddissy. Largely epistolary in structure, “Up the Down Staircase” is organized as a series of dispatches from the front as it follows Sylvia through her first year at Calvin Coolidge High, a fictitious yet all-too-real New York public school. ![]() Kaufman wrote one other novel, “Love, Etc.,” about a middle-aged woman coping with divorce. She was also a highly visible public presence at events commemorating the work of the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem, her maternal grandfather. The book and movie made Kaufman a celebrity for decades afterward, she was in demand as a speaker before educational and civic groups. Directed by Robert Mulligan, it starred Sandy Dennis as Kaufman's idealistic young teacher, Sylvia Barrett. ![]() “Up the Down Staircase” was made into a popular movie of the same name, released in 1967. ![]()
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