Pope Sixtus the Fourth

It is the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Pope Sixtus IV. His namesake high school, will be honored that year, 1984, with a visit from Pope John Paul II, who will use the occasion to make a major announcement. The school administration, led by Father John Daherne, will dedicate the school year by preparing for this visit in May. The administration must organize the school’s component parts: teachers, students, staff, and parents, to achieve the proper tenor when they receive the Pope. In other words, it must do absolutely the impossible because none of these components care about anything save their own agendas. Even more troublesome is Monsignor Daniel Swayze, principal of Alexander VI High School, who will do all he can to sabotage Sixtus High’s plans and get the Vatican to switch venues for the Pope’s visit to Alexander VI High. While the administration looks at the school year as a whole, the teachers are stuck on a single day, October 10, 1983, a Monday, the Columbus Day holiday. Their narrative essentially is concerned with getting through this day, a paradigm of their approach to their jobs. The teacher narrative maintains a pivot by following, Bill Dempsey, a History teacher, who seems to have a conscience, who seems to win Teacher of the Year honors and appear on the Tonight Show, who appears to do his lesson plans, who appears faithful to his wife, and who seems to be a closet Nietzschean.The central student group is “The Class Body.” The class, C-2, by common consent the school’s most unruly in 1983-84. Narrated by an anonymous student, this section details their great struggle to stall and obliterate the school year. While this group is not much different in spirit from the other students, the “Class Body” has a greater consciousness of itself as effecting some sort of change. The destruction of this group of sophomores becomes an imperative for many teachers who are upset at the death of Kaz Schwann, C-2's homeroom teacher, a death they blame (accurately) on the class. Other students in the school are featured via notes written in class, poetry in the literary magazine, the school newspaper, the yearbook, and student essays. The Parents want their kids to have learning disabilities so as not to be embarrassed by the children's apparent stupidity. Parents care for little else except to have their summer vacation plans go uninterrupted. The novel concludes with the Pope John Paul II's visit.