One of the most interesting, understated differences between the US and the UK is the length of the summer break.

My childhood was filled with long, langourous summers. Interminable, Dandelion Wine-esque Midwestern months filled with trips to the library and lazy days wandering around the lawn or flopped by the local pool. Begging my parents for trips to the mall - or anywhere else that other kids might be hanging out.

When I was older, summers grew more serious. Serious work: three months means getting a job - filling the hours with a way to make money (or add an attractive line to a college application). And serious play: once there’s driving involved, or late nights, or girls. All sorts of things that really change the flavor of the summer from Dungeons & Dragons to, uh… Dungeons & Dragons (but secretly thinking about girls).

Three months is a long time.

As a young child, three months constitutes a substantial percentage of one’s time on the planet. For the accelerated lifestyle of a teenager, three months can be a physical and hormonal transformation. In three months you can actually learn your job, make new friends, fall in (and out) of love, grow several inches… it is a quarter of a year. In three months, anything can happen.

In the UK, the summer term is barely half that length. Six weeks is … pretty much nothing. It is a single camp. Maybe a holiday with some TV on either side. It is work experience, not the experience of work. It is a half-dozen weekends.

American media is predicated on the notion of long summers. American summers are predicated on the notion that they are long, fallow periods, ripe for reinvention. You have months away from everyone else - to grow big, get strong, kiss someone; get over a breakup, make new friends, have life experiences and make stories and - most of all - reinvent yourself.

The Summer I Turned Pretty is nonsensical if your summers are barely a month long. By contrast, something like The Inbetweeners Movie seems all the more frantic and desperate until you realise that that trip is the entire summer: they have only that one moment.

As a parent, I’m grateful, on an administrative level, for the six week summer. It is pretty easy to arrange. The compact time period is annoying, because it is competitive and expensive and everyone is jockeying for limited camp/travel/holiday resources at the same time. Still, it is only six weeks of a disruptive routine, and, seriously, the Routine is All.

But… those three month summers made me who I am today. Not only the long periods of boredom and self-sufficiency, that led me to read and imagine and write and build. But also the summer jobs that taught me so much and introduced me to new friends, new skills and new perspectives. Most importantly of all, summers embedded in me that sincere faith in reinvention. Every summer came with a renewed belief in possibility: the knowledge that every school year came with a soft reboot, a chance to reinvent and reposition before starting the school year anew.

That annual cycle of optimism and rediscovery is, I would propose, something key not only to the American childhood, but to the American cultural mindsight. There’s always an opportunity to start afresh.

We’re one British-summer-length (six weeks) away from the launch of The Elements of Dark Academia.

The bad news is: I’m probably going to talk about it a lot.

The good news is: I’m hitting the point in the cycle where I’ll probably do most of my talking elsewhere.

You’re welcome!

Two events already in the calendar:

There will be more stuff, but, as always, the virtual events move much more rapidly than the physical ones… but watch this space.

Last week’s Shelfie was only Jason freakin’ Kander. The last Presidential candidate I was actually excited about!

No new stories about The University of Chicago People’s Press this week or Further Corruption. But… I was doing some research for an essay on After London and digging around old newspapers and obviously I got distracted and decided to prowl about for other things.

As discussed previously, ‘Ned’ Snyder is painfully unsearchable as there are just so many options and variations. I am not that sort of patient. However, Snyder’s co-author, A. Sreyam is, at least in theory, a slightly easier path to follow.

I had previously found Sreyam on a convocation list at UC as a graduate of the School of Social Service Administration in 1962. They did their undergrad work at the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD). They also won a creative writing honour in Chicago in 1961.

A little more about A. Sreyam:

Sreyam, A(llison) clearly preferred the ‘A.’ in all professional works. I’m actually a tiny bit nervous about pronouns, but I’m possibly being hyper-sensitive. Regardless, I’m following the format of the materials I found here.

Syeram stuck around the Hyde Park area (where the University of Chicago is) after graduating, and worked (volunteered?) at a music therapy organisation in Chicago’s South Side.

She wrote for a variety of papers and journals, seemingly non-fiction and commentary. She also interviewed Studs Terkel for a local magazine, and shared his love for jazz.

Her first publication in UCPP was in 1962, when Reflections reprinted the Terkel interview. (I’m guessing - based on very little evidence - that Reflections might be a collection of interviews?)

Her next, and final, UCPP appearance was as the co-author of Further Corruption.

Here’s the twisty(!) update: A. Sreyam was declared missing - and thought dead! - in 1965! There was a fire at her home, and the authorities briefly thought she had died. No body turned out, and she was declared missing instead. Cue a few columns of concern, and a vaguely eulogiac piece in the Maroon (which provided the sparse biography above). The furore, such as it was, died down quickly. A short editorial note followed - a friend of Sreyam’s had been in touch: the ‘missing’ woman was actually back in Canada. Thanks for the concerns, not necessary. Etc.

It never made the front page of any of the local or student papers I found, not even the day after the fire. There was a lot going on in Chicago in 1965: a house fire and a missing woman (an alum, but not an active student) didn’t really merit a lot of column inches. When it came to nothing (which it did) the story went away. Disappeared into the Canada of news.

All in all, still more interesting than Richard Jefferies. I’m sorry, British Transcendentalism, but you are BORING.

It is entirely likely the sprawling ‘saga’ of Further Corruption and its subsidiary explorations is boring you to tears. I can’t blame you, and I do appreciate your indulgence. I have unabashedly enjoyed it, because, y’all, this is why books are the BEST. There is no other form of media - not television, not cinema, not cereal boxes - that has this kind of density of storytelling.

There’s the text - which has proven very useful to Elements. There’s the reaction to the text; the criticism. There’s the reaction to the reaction!, and how the University responded to the criticism. There’s the publisher, and their own body of work. There are the readers - those that have encountered the text. There’s the story of how the book was made (unknown, sadly). There’s the failed? sequel? There’s the book as an object, and those that have encountered the object. There’s the art from the same press (pages from a book, if not this one), and the people that have encountered and actually been influenced by it! And, of course, there are the authors - one of which we know next to nothing about, the other literally nothing. The book as an object, as a text, as a creation, as an influence has passed through so many people’s lives.

I’m a slightly obsessive person (I can hear Anne coughing loudly), but books are mysteries wrapped in riddles wrapped in JOYOUS ADVENTURES. What else can take you down not just rabbit holes, but entire connected warrens?!

This ridiculous book has so far led to a metal band, an artist, a fire!, and even a death (assumed) (briefly) (incorrectly). It may be a very minor work, and nearly-entirely forgotten one. But it is not inconsequential. That’s pretty amazing. The book’s journey, so to speak, doesn’t have a conclusion - but it is weirdly gratifying to think how these madcap musings are now part of that eternally unfolding story.

It has also, I’m not going to lie, been a lot of fun.

I’ve loved the Chicago anecdotes and the rumours and the conspiracy theories (if anything, we can now definitely say that this book was not written by Bernie Sanders).

Please keep them coming, and, as Richard Jefferies continues to bore me, I’ll probably keep doing some more digging of my own.