Creative Writing 101
For Thursday (9/10) we read “My Dog is a Little Obese” by Ellen Kennedy, “How to Date a Browngirl, Blackgirl, Whitegirl or Halfie” by Junot Diaz, and “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell. The theme was DIRECT ADDRESS and INSTRUCTION. As on Tuesday, we spent most of the time on the fiction piece. I think this is because fiction feels “easier” to talk about than poetry, like you’re not going to screw up the technical terms or something. And I think that having a teacher who is primarily a fiction writer contributes to this atmosphere, so I’m going to work harder in the future to check myself. But I think there’s a second reason as well, which is that a relatively straight prose narrative like the Diaz story (or Hemingway last week) yields itself to a kind of knee-jerk cultural studies reading, where the text is really just a pre-text for the themes and politics it evinces or brings to light. Especially with a piece like this one by Diaz, where the narrator is giving “you” instructions on how to re-arrange your apartment so you don’t look as poor as you are, and then impress the various girls you might have invited over, with particular race-based instructions for each one. I hate this way of reading.
It’s not the students’ faults; it’s just how they’ve been taught to process texts, by going for the socio-political throat of the thing at the expense of its aesthetic achievements (and the techniques used to execute same). For me, what makes the Diaz piece exciting and astonishing, is not that he “takes on” race or class issues–I expect that he’ll do that, or anyway, I’m not surprised. What makes it wonderful is how he pulls off a flawless narrative voice–totally believable, authentic, and engaging–and never once drops the central conceit of the direct address, even as he sneaks an actual no-fooling plot into the story through the back door. And that he does it all in what, five pages or something. And how, at the end, after “your” hookup with the girl is abruptly abridged in muted anguish, it’s not her putting her shirt back on that signals the true end of the experience, but rather when she combs her hair, “the sound of it stretching like a sheet of fire between you.” Because for all intents and purposes, that’s what it might as well actually be. But once more, I don’t blame the students. They’re eager, which is just how I want them. They want to swing for the fences of everything–and they should. And I’m glad that they see all the political and racial stuff in the story. Frankly I’d be worried if they didn’t.
Which is why the reaction to Ellen Kennedy’s poem, “My Dog is a Little Obese” first concerned me. They didn’t understand why the narrator felt bad about paying for the four clif bars at Albertson’s, especially after not feeling bad about all the ones that were stolen. Some of them theorized that perhaps the speaker felt bad about all the stealing, when she’d had the money to buy what she wanted all along. Some of them didn’t know what Albertson’s was. I finally broke down and asked if we had any vegans, anarchists, or failing that, kids who’d been punks in high school in the room. Turned out we didn’t, so I explained that for this narrator, stealing from corporations is a positive value, whereas patronizing a corporation is something like a crime. Talk about cultural studies… But at least it made sense to them after that. Onward then, to the burning question of the title.
Now, this was where the class really shone. Once again, they found something I’d never seen before, in a poem I’ve probably read forty times. I had come in prepared to disown the title, because I had no explanation for it other than that Ellen probably thought it was a funny thing to write. But the students linked the dog in the title to the half a clif bar that gets placed in the bowl about midway through–another part of the poem I’d taken for mere randomness, which perhaps proves at least one of the dangers of trying to critically read the work of people you think you know something about. The students told me plainly that the speaker in the poem fed the other half of the clif bar to the dog (they inferred that the bowl was a doggie bowl) and that this which is why the dog was a little obese. This made complete sense to me. I was totally elated and also felt a little silly. Then the real fun came at the end, when we realized that the final lines of Kennedy’s poem reveal that the speaker is not in fact the “you.” It turns out in the second to last line, that there is a definitive “I” in the poem, and that “you” is some other person that I is addressing. So Kennedy became the sort of middle part of the Venn diagram, because her poem is instructional, like Diaz’s story, but its mode of direct address is not merely rhetorical. Like Marvell, Kennedy is trying to convince somebody to do something (“put your tongue in my mouth”).
We spent the least amount of time on Marvell. My logic ran as follows: it’s probably the best poem ever written in English (top 5, anyway) so really what’s there to say about that? Besides, I wanted us to get to our writing exercise, and I had already talked for too long, so instead of saying much about Marvell we just read it out loud together. I had one of the students start, and she went through about half the first stanza (till around “the conversion of the Jews” or so) and then I picked it up for a few lines, then another student took over, then another. After we finished, we talked about rhyme for a minute and then I told them it was time for the writing exercise.
The exercise was to write a direct address modeled on any of the three pieces we’d read, in which the student was to offer “instructions for doing something that is not usually explained” (ie racially profiling in dating, or stealing health food bars) or else to “talk a person into doing something he or she isn’t sure about doing.” We spent not quite 15 minutes writing. Just to show I’m a sport, I did the exercise too. Then I called the class back to order and it was sharing time. Volunteers were a shade slow at first, but then things picked up and in the end we had more volunteers than we had time for. I’ll have to plan for more sharing time in the future. Also, to my surprise and delight, the Marvell rubbed off more than expected, and two of the pieces presented were in highly competent rhymed verse!
So that was class. At the end I handed out “Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful” by Christine Schutt, along with the following four Emily Dickinson poems: “I heard a fly buzz when I died,” “I felt a funeral in my brain,” “There came a wind like a bugle,” and “Just lost, when I was saved!” The Schutt story is in A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer, and all the Dickinson poems are Google-able. Tuesday’s discussion will be a lot more open-ended than today’s. I’m rapidly learning to trust my students to make connections between works, rather than force them to see what I see. And in so doing, I am learning to trust myself to guide them through that process of learning to see for themselves. Of course what they don’t know is that Schutt is a huge Emily Dickinson fan, or that I picked these Dickinson poems from a list Christine made because I emailed her and asked her to. If they’re really quick on the trigger, they’ll have thought to Google me, and could even be reading this post right now, and thus learning the secret, but my suspicion is I’m not really on their minds when I’m not in front of them, yapping, which is probably–again–just as it ought to be.
Tags: Andrew Marvell, Creative Writing 101, Ellen Kennedy, junot diaz
loved the interpretation of the kennedy poem–got her book down off the shelf this morning, gonna give it another go and see what else will fall into place. this was a fun read.
loved the interpretation of the kennedy poem–got her book down off the shelf this morning, gonna give it another go and see what else will fall into place. this was a fun read.
Slightly unrelated… I stopped by Hastings and read your piece in Washingston Square. That journal is beautifully designed, ain’t it?
This post is good.
Slightly unrelated… I stopped by Hastings and read your piece in Washingston Square. That journal is beautifully designed, ain’t it?
This post is good.
i usually google my professors, but that’s just me.
i usually google my professors, but that’s just me.
Thanks. Yeah. They’ve really stepped it up over at WashSq. The new poetry editor seems really pumped also. I was really glad to be in it, and cant’ wait to see what comes next.
More power to ’em if they do. Hi kids, if you’re reading this!
Thanks. Yeah. They’ve really stepped it up over at WashSq. The new poetry editor seems really pumped also. I was really glad to be in it, and cant’ wait to see what comes next.
More power to ’em if they do. Hi kids, if you’re reading this!
andrew marvel and ellen kennedy: nice curls.
this is a great series.
andrew marvel and ellen kennedy: nice curls.
this is a great series.
Along these lines, one of my creative writing classes insists upon reading Wallace Stevens’s “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” as though the only thing worth noticing is that Wallace Stevens is a misogynist. This frustrates me deeply.
Along these lines, one of my creative writing classes insists upon reading Wallace Stevens’s “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” as though the only thing worth noticing is that Wallace Stevens is a misogynist. This frustrates me deeply.
Also along these lines, every time I mention Philip Roth on my Facebook page, someone asks about either his libido or my own. I, too, hate this way of approaching literature.
Also along these lines, every time I mention Philip Roth on my Facebook page, someone asks about either his libido or my own. I, too, hate this way of approaching literature.
Sometimes the roller of big cigars just wants a deeply fulfilling smoking experience.
Sometimes the roller of big cigars just wants a deeply fulfilling smoking experience.
“are there any vegans in the room?”
haha.
“are there any vegans in the room?”
haha.
I wish that when people did have the cultural studies-ish conversation, they’d pay more attention to its relationship to aesthetics, ie in this example (which I haven’t read), how does direct address shape what’s being related re: race and class? I get leery of the way the two emphases (aesthetics and social, cultural, political, etc. content) are sometimes treated as dichotomous.
I wish that when people did have the cultural studies-ish conversation, they’d pay more attention to its relationship to aesthetics, ie in this example (which I haven’t read), how does direct address shape what’s being related re: race and class? I get leery of the way the two emphases (aesthetics and social, cultural, political, etc. content) are sometimes treated as dichotomous.
Tim, I don’t mind any of that. What I do mind is when (1) social concerns are so privileged that aesthetic concerns seem not to matter — the literature-reading version of the art class where everything in interesting on sociological grounds, and value judgments are verboten; or (2) the reading doesn’t take into account point of view, which means that every transgression of thought or word or deed committed by any character is attributed to the author, or, by extension, to the sociocultural stew from which the author came and thereby ostensibly speaks. It’s lazy reading, and it’s overly convenient.
Also, in general, I find that people whose commitment to ideological orthodoxies of any stripe trumps their critical thinking apparatus, are unlikely to be enjoyers of literature, except insofar as a particular reading of a particular work either upholds the ideology or proves how stupid/wrongheaded/backward perceived opponents of the ideology might be.
Tim, I don’t mind any of that. What I do mind is when (1) social concerns are so privileged that aesthetic concerns seem not to matter — the literature-reading version of the art class where everything in interesting on sociological grounds, and value judgments are verboten; or (2) the reading doesn’t take into account point of view, which means that every transgression of thought or word or deed committed by any character is attributed to the author, or, by extension, to the sociocultural stew from which the author came and thereby ostensibly speaks. It’s lazy reading, and it’s overly convenient.
Also, in general, I find that people whose commitment to ideological orthodoxies of any stripe trumps their critical thinking apparatus, are unlikely to be enjoyers of literature, except insofar as a particular reading of a particular work either upholds the ideology or proves how stupid/wrongheaded/backward perceived opponents of the ideology might be.
Tim, yeah absolutely, and it’s a great question. There’s a very rich vein to be mined in the Diaz piece about this, especially as it relates to the performance of self and race, and self-as-race. The flawless narrative voice I mentioned is in fact Dominican-inflected urban English. Of course there is no such thing as “voice” independent of what it’s the voice of. One of the most interesting moments in the piece is when the speaker explains that if the girl you’re out with is from “around the way,” you take her to the nice Spanish restaurant, and order in your “busted-up Spanish.” if she is Spanish too, she’ll correct you and you should let her. If she’s black, she’ll just think it’s cool you know Spanish. If she’s NOT from ‘around the way’ however, you take her to Wendy’s. Practical, b/c it’s cheaper, but also the speaker’s performance of his idea of the girl’s idea of his lifestyle. As in, if she wanted to be taken to a nice place, she wouldn’t be here in the first place, so you give her what she came for. The direct address allows for the interweaving of all of those ideas, which a “regular” story wouldn’t have been able to provide, because there would have been one particular girl-character, instead of all the contingencies described. And just to be clear, we talked about all of that, because it’s interesting, important, and useful. I’m not arguing for excluding cultural discussion from the writing workshop. Literature exists not in a void, etc., besides which I as the prof brought in a piece that begs the issue constantly. But the first graf of Kyle M’s comment below pretty much sums up the shortcomings of that approach, and this goes triple when you’re dealing with 101 students who are still thinking of texts as having essentially one “right” reading.
Tim, yeah absolutely, and it’s a great question. There’s a very rich vein to be mined in the Diaz piece about this, especially as it relates to the performance of self and race, and self-as-race. The flawless narrative voice I mentioned is in fact Dominican-inflected urban English. Of course there is no such thing as “voice” independent of what it’s the voice of. One of the most interesting moments in the piece is when the speaker explains that if the girl you’re out with is from “around the way,” you take her to the nice Spanish restaurant, and order in your “busted-up Spanish.” if she is Spanish too, she’ll correct you and you should let her. If she’s black, she’ll just think it’s cool you know Spanish. If she’s NOT from ‘around the way’ however, you take her to Wendy’s. Practical, b/c it’s cheaper, but also the speaker’s performance of his idea of the girl’s idea of his lifestyle. As in, if she wanted to be taken to a nice place, she wouldn’t be here in the first place, so you give her what she came for. The direct address allows for the interweaving of all of those ideas, which a “regular” story wouldn’t have been able to provide, because there would have been one particular girl-character, instead of all the contingencies described. And just to be clear, we talked about all of that, because it’s interesting, important, and useful. I’m not arguing for excluding cultural discussion from the writing workshop. Literature exists not in a void, etc., besides which I as the prof brought in a piece that begs the issue constantly. But the first graf of Kyle M’s comment below pretty much sums up the shortcomings of that approach, and this goes triple when you’re dealing with 101 students who are still thinking of texts as having essentially one “right” reading.
Wanted to add– no, not dichotomous at all. Hopelessly interwoven, all the time, in the work itself. The separation is really only a pedagogical convenience- we’re going to discuss A, B, and C about this story. Which one first? Why? Etc.
Wanted to add– no, not dichotomous at all. Hopelessly interwoven, all the time, in the work itself. The separation is really only a pedagogical convenience- we’re going to discuss A, B, and C about this story. Which one first? Why? Etc.
Totally agree about how brainwashed everyone is to read like that. I mean, I’ve had some fantastic cultural-studies type lit classes at the college level, and those can be great when they’re specifically what you’ve signed up for. But I hate that all through high school (and middle school, and elementary school…) whenever a teacher talked about a book, all they had to say was what things meant, not ever anything about how, in a linguistic and/or craft sense, the writer did what they did. When we studied visual art in school, we talked about content AND technique. I don’t remember one teacher ever speaking of writing in those terms before I was in college, unless you count learning all the terminology for poetry.
Totally agree about how brainwashed everyone is to read like that. I mean, I’ve had some fantastic cultural-studies type lit classes at the college level, and those can be great when they’re specifically what you’ve signed up for. But I hate that all through high school (and middle school, and elementary school…) whenever a teacher talked about a book, all they had to say was what things meant, not ever anything about how, in a linguistic and/or craft sense, the writer did what they did. When we studied visual art in school, we talked about content AND technique. I don’t remember one teacher ever speaking of writing in those terms before I was in college, unless you count learning all the terminology for poetry.
I think I’m going to enjoy following your class through your posts, and plan to keep up on the reading. Probably do the exercises too, for, well, exercise. Just curious, when your students do the fifteen minute exercise in class, do they put pen/pencil to paper, use their laptop, or either?
I think I’m going to enjoy following your class through your posts, and plan to keep up on the reading. Probably do the exercises too, for, well, exercise. Just curious, when your students do the fifteen minute exercise in class, do they put pen/pencil to paper, use their laptop, or either?
Of all the literature teachers at my U, there is only one who has any demonstrable interest in literature at all. The rest are all, without exception, out to promote whatever socio-political cause got him or her that PhD. I have one teacher who admits to assigning bad books for the purpose of opening a discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict, or the plight of whoever we’re supposed to feel sorry for that day. It’s obnoxious.
My contemporary novel survey was turned into a post-colonial literature class, which exludes culturally significant work like David Foster Wallace and Norman Mailer, somehow without covering Salman Rushdie. There are all kinds of reasons to read “Orlando”, but a 3 hour conversation about a layperson’s views on gender identity before the invention of neuroscience is a waste of time, all the time.
For some reason, I’m being given a degree for this.
Of all the literature teachers at my U, there is only one who has any demonstrable interest in literature at all. The rest are all, without exception, out to promote whatever socio-political cause got him or her that PhD. I have one teacher who admits to assigning bad books for the purpose of opening a discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict, or the plight of whoever we’re supposed to feel sorry for that day. It’s obnoxious.
My contemporary novel survey was turned into a post-colonial literature class, which exludes culturally significant work like David Foster Wallace and Norman Mailer, somehow without covering Salman Rushdie. There are all kinds of reasons to read “Orlando”, but a 3 hour conversation about a layperson’s views on gender identity before the invention of neuroscience is a waste of time, all the time.
For some reason, I’m being given a degree for this.
Wow. This is one of the most mature, enlightened posts I’ve ever seen. I mean, seriously. You should really, really think about doing this professionally. Yes, go around and give advice on how to be more professional, enlightened, and mature. Perhaps you could charge for it. Perhaps you’d even get your own business cards (wouldn’t that go so well with your big boy suit?). What a demonstration of subtle textual reading and measured thought! How do you do it? Please, really, we all want to know. I mean, smugly sneering that someone should listen to their students after that person talked about what he learned from his students – that’s a skill you can’t just pick up anywhere.
And, God! When I sign up for a class and it’s all student-oriented and stuff, I just hope (I jerk off to the fantasy!) that the other students, the real teachers, are as subtle, intelligent, and enlightened as you.
Wow. This is one of the most mature, enlightened posts I’ve ever seen. I mean, seriously. You should really, really think about doing this professionally. Yes, go around and give advice on how to be more professional, enlightened, and mature. Perhaps you could charge for it. Perhaps you’d even get your own business cards (wouldn’t that go so well with your big boy suit?). What a demonstration of subtle textual reading and measured thought! How do you do it? Please, really, we all want to know. I mean, smugly sneering that someone should listen to their students after that person talked about what he learned from his students – that’s a skill you can’t just pick up anywhere.
And, God! When I sign up for a class and it’s all student-oriented and stuff, I just hope (I jerk off to the fantasy!) that the other students, the real teachers, are as subtle, intelligent, and enlightened as you.
So far they seem inclined to use pen and paper. If any of them brought laptops, that’d be very much cool with me. I’ve heard from other teachers a lot of stories about kids who want to take notes on laptops, and how it creates problems because then they wind up on facebook or whatever. In a discussion-based class, like mine is, most of the note-taking would or could happen in the margins of the texts themselves. Basically, I’m okay with them using computers, but I’ve tried to design the class so that said use is pretty much unnecessary. And I would explain that to them if it ever came up, but so far it hasn’t required discussion.
So far they seem inclined to use pen and paper. If any of them brought laptops, that’d be very much cool with me. I’ve heard from other teachers a lot of stories about kids who want to take notes on laptops, and how it creates problems because then they wind up on facebook or whatever. In a discussion-based class, like mine is, most of the note-taking would or could happen in the margins of the texts themselves. Basically, I’m okay with them using computers, but I’ve tried to design the class so that said use is pretty much unnecessary. And I would explain that to them if it ever came up, but so far it hasn’t required discussion.
Two things about our sick friend Cuauhtémoc Cortés Corrado- (1) Just FYI, the Rutgers department of writing is well-aware of these posts, and they’re very excited that the class is being blogged. They’re a progressive, forward-looking department and they totally support this project of mine. Even though he’s a degenerate, CCC does raise the specter of a relevant point about protecting student anonymity. So you can all rest easy knowing that no student has been or ever will be identified by name or visually described. In fact, you can see how the posts are written to sort of convey the general movement of the class discussion, rather than focus in on Kid 1 or Kid 2 and who was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ at any given moment.
(2) Don’t bother responding to CCC’s comments anymore. He’s a total creep, dispensing career advice in his weird fake Hannibal Lecter voice and using these child-molester diminutives–all typed with just one hand, no doubt. I’m going to ask Gene Morgan to figure out how to ban him permanently, but in the meantime I’m just moving all his comments to the spam folder, because that’s what they are. So if you write back to him, your comments won’t make sense after his are gone.
Two things about our sick friend Cuauhtémoc Cortés Corrado- (1) Just FYI, the Rutgers department of writing is well-aware of these posts, and they’re very excited that the class is being blogged. They’re a progressive, forward-looking department and they totally support this project of mine. Even though he’s a degenerate, CCC does raise the specter of a relevant point about protecting student anonymity. So you can all rest easy knowing that no student has been or ever will be identified by name or visually described. In fact, you can see how the posts are written to sort of convey the general movement of the class discussion, rather than focus in on Kid 1 or Kid 2 and who was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ at any given moment.
(2) Don’t bother responding to CCC’s comments anymore. He’s a total creep, dispensing career advice in his weird fake Hannibal Lecter voice and using these child-molester diminutives–all typed with just one hand, no doubt. I’m going to ask Gene Morgan to figure out how to ban him permanently, but in the meantime I’m just moving all his comments to the spam folder, because that’s what they are. So if you write back to him, your comments won’t make sense after his are gone.
Cool.
Thank you!
Cool.
Thank you!
Jason Cook, above, is the new house policy’s first victim. I’m sorry, Jason. To everyone else- Jason was writing about a piece of spam that mistakenly made it through the filter. It’s not his fault, and please don’t pile-on him.
Jason Cook, above, is the new house policy’s first victim. I’m sorry, Jason. To everyone else- Jason was writing about a piece of spam that mistakenly made it through the filter. It’s not his fault, and please don’t pile-on him.
This is why everyone in America hates literature. They way it is taught in schools and colleges is abysmal (obviously I’m referring not to Justin Taylor’s methods, but the ideology method)
This is why everyone in America hates literature. They way it is taught in schools and colleges is abysmal (obviously I’m referring not to Justin Taylor’s methods, but the ideology method)
I attempted to teach Hemingway’s supposed 6 word short(est) story recently. Most of my students hated it, telling me it wasn’t a story.
I attempted to teach Hemingway’s supposed 6 word short(est) story recently. Most of my students hated it, telling me it wasn’t a story.
Really? That’s a great story. Even after it was explained?
To the Lighthouse, which we just finished…now that’s a terrible book.
Really? That’s a great story. Even after it was explained?
To the Lighthouse, which we just finished…now that’s a terrible book.
After it was explained, 2 out of 25 people enjoyed it.
Terrible. I have reviews on Amazon that get better evals than that.
After it was explained, 2 out of 25 people enjoyed it.
Terrible. I have reviews on Amazon that get better evals than that.
[…] And for people who are just coming to the series now, the first two installments are here (1) and here (2). Everyone else, I’ll see you after the […]
No, you have to keep including the links to the works you are assigning! Please, please! It is very satisfying to click on them directly from your posts.
No, you have to keep including the links to the works you are assigning! Please, please! It is very satisfying to click on them directly from your posts.
Duly noted, Amber. I got a little lazy with the linking on this one. Sorry to send you to the Google. Some of the stuff just won’t be available online, but anything that is will get a link from now on.
Duly noted, Amber. I got a little lazy with the linking on this one. Sorry to send you to the Google. Some of the stuff just won’t be available online, but anything that is will get a link from now on.