Traditionally, the approach to genre in the university-based creative writing classroom has been to ban it outright, arguing that as long as we’re pursuing a degree in a traditional academic setting, we should be in the literature business, which is obviously something different from genre writing.
Obviously.
We declare fantasy off limits, but magic realism is okay. Kelly Link is fine, but Ursula K. LeGuin only sometimes. Science fiction is no good, unless its Vonnegut or Philip K. Dick, or some of Ray Bradbury, in which case, right on! Everyone loves Lord of the Rings, or now, Game of Thrones, but don’t do that. Why? Because.
Harry Potter? Probably not. Chronicles of Narnia? You’re good. Twilight? Don’t make me laugh.
These restrictions never felt comfortable to me, particularly when I used to enforce them in my own classroom while devouring Patricia Highsmith novels at night. The core of my teaching philosophy, regardless of subject, is “freedom.” Students learn more when they’re given the latitude to explore the material in the ways they find most interesting and compelling. This has certainly been my experience in my own learning.
March of this year we were in the desert and, like Stephen Crane’s famous creature, we were bestial and squatting; maybe we were naked as well. It’s possible—we were on one drug or another, and memory is strange. I did not hold my heart in my hands but a shotgun. We had bought a box of old records from a flea market on the way down and were taking turns tossing them up in the air and making it rain black diamonds, fragments of song titles and run times. We had liquor, and music, and all five of David Mitchell’s novels—Ghostwritten, number9dream, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. I brought along the audiobook versions as well, as we were staying the night and planned on being too insensate before long to do any actual reading.
Can writing be taught? Can writing be taught online? Is the Internet a valid place to workshop poetry?