Steve Hays

The Falconer's Call Steve Hays

Four serious kids with unexamined aspirations. A conformist high school with trivial goals. An oblivious town. A society imperiled by human corruption and environmental pollution. The poet Yeats had it right: Things are falling apart; the centre cannot hold; the falcon, unable to hear the falconer's call, flies in a widening gyre. Anarchy-life without unifying commitments-is set loose on Gradgrind, Ohio. Then a teacher brings the kids to the round table in his dining room, where they encounter Socrates' unbending challenges in Plato's Alcibiades. The kids rediscover the ageless gravity of the centre. They hear the call of the falconer. They become knights of a modern round table. Steve Hays, longtime professor of Greek Classics at Ohio University, spins a Dickensian tale of negligent society, heartless villains, and a stable center of unflinching honesty that makes kids strong and revives communities. Not only high school kids, but also college kids and idealistic adult-kids will find this story entertaining, enlightening, and personally challenging. The Falconer's Call is best read with its partner volume Refining Golden by Frank Kaput (a pseudonym for Steve Hays), a translation of Plato's Alcibiades I.