A Season of Youth By Michael Kammen Knopf, 416 pp., $15 Several years ago, when I was teaching history in a secondary school, one of the brighter seniors appeared one day with a copy of Good News for Modern Man. She began trumpeting the colloquialized sayings of Jesus in the smoking lounge, in the hallways, in the classrooms. She was electrified by the Sermon on the Mount, by the raising of Lazarus, by the parable of the mustard seed. Over lunch one afternoon she announced that she had an especially interesting passage to read. She thoughtfully sketched in some background, then fairly shouted the climactic line: “Let him who is without sin—”
She was stunned when I interrupted to complete the verse. “Oh,” she said apologetically, “I must have read you that one already.”
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