Paul Valent

Highnoon at Starbucks By Richard Freadman What does a Professor of English do after his retirement, with all his knowledge of the great writers and having written academic pieces about them and their works? He might be tempted to write about his own life, and Richard Freadman has done this in two autobiographies. But in Highnoon at Starbucks he finally cuts himself loose. No longer servant of the English language, he is its master and uses it for his own purposes. Similarly, no longer constricted by facts, he uses fiction to explore the mysteries of life. Each story, tightly and expressively written, may be deceptive in its simplicity. But an unusual though credible narrative or an unexpected twist at the end opens the reader to deeper questions of the human condition. Consider the ending of Wasserman’s Dream (p 115). A Holocaust survivor dying of cancer finds no meaning to his life. Nevertheless, through the story he is able to move, even if a little, to: ‘Not a dead man walking, perhaps, but a live man learning how to die…’ Freadman covers poignant aspects of life in the young and old, men and women, the blind and those with insight. He does it with deep understanding, and a sense of humour as he conveys his observations of the human comedy. Paul Valent