When Don Gutteridge retired from academia in 1993, he intended to say my farewell by publishing a selection of the forty essays he had written over a long career. He gathered them together and gave them a title: The Myth Alive. However, other projects soon began competing for his time. He published two memoir novels in quick succession: Summer's Idyll (1993) and Winter's Descent (1995). Then as a last pedagogical hurrah, he wrote a small volume on teaching theory (Teaching English: 1999). Then it was back to novel writing with Bewilderment (2000) and finally fulltime work on the Marc Edwards mysteries (twelve titles). The Myth Alive was eventually forgotten. When