About This Book
The Orange in the Orange, a novella and two stories by Fielding Dawson draws on his experiences as a prison teacher. In the novella, The Orange in the Orange, Dawson peels away at himself, in the hero-teacher character, with zeal and more deeply than he has before. Sure, the setting, in prison, where he teaches writing, kind of forces the issue. A prison building is a spectacle for all of us outside, but inside everything is detail. Detail requires alertness, and in prison there are penalties for lack of alertness. The teacher of prisoners is a spectacle until he or she proves otherwise.
According to Mr. Robert Bové in his review of The Orange in the Orange, This book goes way against the grain of the entertainment culture, of industrial-strength spectacle... In The Orange in the Orange, the mind is working overtime, but the reader who works along with writer gets paid time-and-a-half. Reading Dawson, one is never ashamed of having idled away one's time on literary bon-bons.
