Wheeling High School teacher Mark Maxwell has no time to succumb to the literary scourge known as writer’s block.
Maxwell, 32, somehow managed to write a first novel while teaching high school English, coaching a freshman baseball team, moonlighting as a bartender and juggling the demands of fatherhood.
“As my wife’s belly was growing, so was my anxiety about not getting this thing published,” said Maxwell, explaining that the births of his two children since 1996 were a major incentive for him to finish and publish his novel.
The book, titled “nixoncarver,” was released in February by St. Martin’s Press. It has been reviewed by the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, Publisher’s Weekly and Times Union in Albany, New York.
Mary Ann Ziehl, a community relations manager for Barnes & Noble, said 40 patrons showed up for Maxwell’s visit to the Evanston bookstore, and many requested signed copies of the novel.
Maxwell’s novel is an imaginative story of a secret friendship between former President Richard Nixon and the late American writer Raymond Carver. Though the two were never acquainted during their lifetimes, Maxwell’s book portrays the two characters as old pals.
“I thought this might be a nice bridge, because these guys are seemingly different–a poet and a politician,” Maxwell said.
Maxwell decided to use Carver as a character because the author’s life was a familiar subject to him. Maxwell wrote part of his master’s thesis at Vermont College on Carver, and Carver was his favorite author for many years.
He chose Nixon for different reasons. He wanted to write about someone he did not like, yet still illicit sympathy for the character.
“I wanted to write a book about Nixon,” Maxwell said. “After he died, I was intrigued by the way the country forgave him for a few days.”
Maxwell derived personal experiences in each character’s life from biographies and elaborated on them. For example, the book has passages detailing Nixon’s childhood battles with self-esteem and his brothers’ early deaths from tuberculosis.
“Most of the stuff is loosely based on fact, but I stretched it a lot,” Maxwell said.
Some of the elaborations led Maxwell to write with a raw, edgy style. After the book was released, he was hesitant to recommend it to his students because of concerns that some of the subject matter may be inappropriate for high school-age readers.
“I don’t want parents to get the wrong idea about me as a teacher,” Maxwell said. “What I do as a writer and what I do as a teacher are separate.”
Al Reiser, a former student of Maxwell’s at Wheeling, and his mother, Maria Reistivo-Adams, read the book. Reiser said that though some portions of the book may not be appropriate for immature audiences, “nixoncarver” was a great read, adding that he was particularly impressed with the novel’s interpretation of Nixon’s childhood.
His mother said Maxwell was an important influence on her son, who recently graduated from Wheeling and will study writing at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., in the fall.
“My son is aspiring to be a writer, and I’m just so grateful that he had Mark Maxwell as a teacher,” Reistivo-Adams said.
Maxwell, an Evanston resident, is spending the summer with his wife and two children. He also will be working on his next two novels.
One “jeffersondaley” is expected to tell the story of a troubled postal worker who is influenced by the odd pairing of Thomas Jefferson and Richard J. Daley.
“Dismembered” is a dark tale about a father who is obsessed with fears about his infant daughter’s future.
