To everyone at St. Augustine’s Episcopal Chapel in Nashville, especially Scott Owings: thank you for, among many other things, reminding me occasionally to take a few deeper-than-normal breaths and teaching me to listen in both the silence and the storm for the still, small voice.

To Peter Taylor: thank you for helping me remember why stories and language still matter, and for prompting me to write the letter that changed the course of my life in the most unexpected and beautiful way. To all of my family—Pettyjohns, Webbs, Lees, Stevenses, Hearnes, Spencers, and Hoods: thank you for your steadfast love and support in this and all things. To Izzy and Trent: let’s gooooo! To Mary-Randolph and Lettie: this whole world is yours and mine.

Finally, to Helen—first and last, forever and ever, Amen.

Reader's Guide

The Fortunate Ones

The Perils of Privilege: An Essay by Ed Tarkington

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Questions for Discussion

The Perils of Privilege
An Essay by Ed Tarkington

In 2007, I moved to Nashville to take a job teaching English at Montgomery Bell Academy, a prestigious boys’ school with a long history and an alumni database that resembles a who’s who of the city’s social and economic elite. I’d always been drawn to the idea of a boys’ school as depicted in books like A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Separate Peace, and films like Dead Poets Society: idylls of wholesome aspiration and idealism populated with earnest strivers and charismatic teachers. In fact, on the first floor of the building in which I teach is a lecture room named the Dead Poets Society Hall, in honor of the film, which was written by MBA alum Tom Schulman and inspired by his experiences there. I was a high school student myself when I saw that movie. Robin Williams’s performance as the unconventional and inspiring John Keating had, in my eyes at least, done for English teachers what Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones had done for archaeologists. I couldn’t exactly see myself mounting a desk and demanding to be called “O Captain! My Captain!” But I was smitten by the idea of finding purpose through beauty and preaching the power of poetry to bright and eager students, and I remain so to this day.