Retired faculty member’s latest novel, “Required Reading,” is aptly named
Retired HFC English instructor Dr. Gary McIlroy's latest novel Required Reading required less “new” research than his previous books.
“I began thinking about an experiences I had in graduate school, and those memories set me on a course toward writing about that period of my life – the world of graduate school, teaching, literature, and the uncertain beginnings of an academic career,” explained McIlroy. “Ostensibly, it’s about the study and teaching of literature and the life of a young professor. But I think it is more broadly about a person trying to make a life while being, like most of us, ‘full of fear and forward motion, messy and unfinished.’”
He continued: “Since the world of the novel was one that I had known firsthand, the challenge was less a matter of reconstructing the past than remembering its texture accurately. I still did a fair amount of fact-checking about events and details from the early 1980s.”
In Required Reading, lead character Martin Langley is an English professor starting out at a small liberal arts college in a modest Midwestern town. He soon finds himself disillusioned with academia, which seems shaped more by budget cuts, departmental quarrels, and institutional politics than teaching, service, and research. As a result, he distances himself from his colleagues, mentors, and students.
“Martin began partly from memories of people I knew in graduate school and in my early years of teaching, and partly from the kind of character I needed for the novel: someone deeply invested in literature and intellectual life, but still trying to discover how those convictions fit into the larger business of living. He isn’t a disguised version of any one person, including me,” said McIlroy. “He shares my passion for literature and intellectual inquiry. Some of his experiences have their origins in things I knew or observed. But he is more adventurous and self-assured than I was, and his life ultimately takes directions that mine did not.”
Between teaching jobs, Martin inherits a dilapidated house on the Michigan coast, believing that he might establish a life outside of the teaching profession. One year later, however, he is hired to teach at a two-year college not far from his home. After a fulfilling but hectic first semester, he takes a holiday trip to the Yucatán coast where he meets Clara, who becomes increasingly important to the story and to Martin’s understanding of himself.
“I needed Martin to step outside the relatively enclosed world of graduate school and teaching after nearly 10 years spent within it,” said McIlroy.
What constitutes a meaningful life
The middle of three sons, McIlroy was born in Detroit. He has been married to Monica Dewey since 1985 and they have three children. They recently moved to Durham, NC after four years in Mexico.
A graduate of Lakeview High School in St. Clair Shores, McIlroy earned his bachelor’s degree in English and political science from Oakland University. A two-time alumnus of the University of Detroit Mercy (then the University of Detroit), he earned both his master’s and doctoral degrees in American literature.
For more than 35 years, McIlroy taught writing and literature at the college level. He taught at UDM and Marygrove College before coming to HFC (then Henry Ford Community College) in 1985. He retired in 2020.
McIlroy has penned four books. His previous three, linked on his website, are:
His early academic writing focused primarily on the Transcendental era with a strong interest in nature writers. His essays on authors Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard have appeared in the South Atlantic Quarterly, American Literature, Thoreau Quarterly, and in the anthologies Earthly Words and Contemporary American Writers.
“I suffer from a lack of routine and tend to write on and off throughout the day,” he explained. “Until a book is finished, I carry around the weight of its incompleteness and its many imperfections. Even after publication, I can rarely reread a page without wanting to change something.”
What makes Required Reading stand out from his other book is McIlroy described it as a “fairly quiet novel.”
“It isn’t a romance, an action story, a political thriller, or a tell-all,” he said. “It follows one person at the beginning of his career when his intellectual ambitions, personal relationships, and ideas about what constitutes a meaningful life are still very much unsettled. I suspect it will appeal particularly to readers interested in literature, teaching, graduate school, and the strange mixture of idealism and uncertainty that often accompanies the beginning of adult life.”
McIlroy is happy to take a break from authoring books, but those who know him might expect something to begin percolating again in the future.
“At the moment, I have nothing underway,” he said. “After finishing Required Reading, I’m content for a while not to have another unfinished book following me around.”