I make a living

After watching To Kill a Mockingbird, produced by Alan J. Pakula, I decided to look for other films in which he was involved. One was Up the down staircase. Searching on that title led me to this wonder of humanity: When Bel Kaufman sits you down on her sofa and asks, “Are you comfortable?” the right answer, she reminds you, requires a Yiddish inflection, a shrug and the words, “I make a living.” Kevin Kline's character in Definitely Maybe  (Professor Hampton Roth) uses the same line.

Ms. Kaufman’s hard work and the watchful eye of a demanding father led to a master’s degree in literature from Columbia and teaching jobs at a series of public high schools. Her 20-year odyssey became the springboard out of her grandfather’s shadow. In 1965, she published “Up the Down Staircase,” a novel about a new teacher very much like Ms. Kaufman who struggles to keep up her spirits in a school crowded with more than a few hopeful but ornery students and where memo-happy principals issue rules like not walking “up the down staircase.”