2 Teach or not 2 Teach
What authors are the most accessible to being taught, especially to young writing students (as in taking their first classes, not age)? What authors are not?
Example. T.C. Boyle. Very teachable. Consistently uses structures easy to graph/visualize, massive layers of basic CW language techniques, always some intent at theme. Now you can argue the merits of his fiction, but that isn’t my point. My point is the merits of the fiction as pedagogically useful.
(You could take this one story and teach a semester of Intro CW: Freytag’s, quest narrative, suspense, immediacy, imaginative prose, precise verbs, unreliable narrator, suspense, POV, etc.)
Diane Williams. Not so great to teach. The voice, the thought, the paroxysms of perfect, and perfectly odd, sentences—you could smother a young writer, you could lead them to a cliff’s edge and accidentally push them off. (Yes, I know Miss Flannery O’Connor, this would do the world a favor, etc.)
Now I generalize, I generalize, so don’t go all sack of hammers. And I’m not saying don’t read any and every writer (OK, not Jewel). And, with upper level classes, I think the ratio switches—Personally, I start bringing in writers I wouldn’t teach earlier (like Diane Williams, Barry Hannah, Gertrude Stein, etc.) and I start removing T.C. Boyle. And I’m not saying you need to take any writing classes, ever—this question is couched in context. OK, enough with the disclaimers. WTF?
I just wonder if you have your own choices: A writer perfect for the teaching of creative writing to young writers, a writer you might want to avoid? I’m sure many of you have had experiences, as student or instructor. What authors glowed, what thunked?
Tags: Diane Williams, Justin Bieber likes nachos, T. C. Boyle, Writers to teach
When I teach introductory classes, my goal is to expose students to a very wide range of possibilities. I usually organize the class around a discussion of point of view, and make sure they see stories that open up a discussion of objective v. subjective, single-I v. double-I, the uses of the plural 1st person or voice of town gossip, possible approaches to second person, the observer-narrator, variations on close 3rd (discussion of narrative distance, the Jamesian central consciousness narration, and what all that means for language), alternating close 3rd, varieties of omniscience (Abbott’s “One of Star Wars” v. Gusev is one way in), and the “free indirect” discourse. By the advanced workshop, I want to start complicating — what happens if we hybridize, or remove one of the moving parts, or build the story around a metaphor or a repetition, etc., and here we start talking about (and reading) Christine Schutt, Stephen Dixon, Kevin Brockmeier, Brian Evenson, Alice Munro, etc.
Sometimes when I teach an upper-level workshop, I realize that the majority of the students haven’t really read anything or don’t know much about the basic concepts I want to offer in the lower-level class, so I try to build those classes around the more basic stuff.
I don’t like the ideas that a workshop is a democracy, or a workshop is a therapy session, or a workshop is a support group, or a workshop is the promotion of a single aesthetic. I think these undergraduate classes should by hybridized workshop/seminars where there is a lot of teaching and a lot of reading of master writers, and the goal of the thing is to show how many possible ways there are to approach the writing of fiction, and how each of them has inherent strengths that can be exploited, and then, from there, to help a student do the thing the student really wants to do as powerfully and truly as the student can.
As a student, these authors glowed: Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, Italo Calvino, Joyce Carol Oates, William Faulkner, Richard Brautigan. With the exception of Beckett and Faulkner, I read all these authors for the first time in high school and college classes.
I like Raymond Carver, but when I had to study his work (as opposed to just reading him on my own), his stories felt diminished for a year after that. Maybe it’s how the professor taught Raymond Carver. Maybe I was unwilling to have my perception changed about something I liked a lot.
You said a ton here, so I’ll just address one aspect for now. You workshop in introductory classes?
I’m a firm believer in the idea that students need to have their preconceptions of what fiction can be blown apart as early as possible. I try to throw a wide range of authors and styles at my students and let them individually decide which ones appeal to them. Barry Hannah, Diane Williams, Flannery O’Connor, Lydia Davis, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme, Aimee Bender, Italo Calvino, William Gay, Sam Lipsyte, Brian Evenson, Anne Carson, etc. etc.
Sort of. We do something called the “circle of love,” where everybody in turn answers a few descriptive questions (always the same ones) about how the story is made and put together, who the speaker is, what the relationships are among the parts. And everyone has to point out something exciting or interesting or troubling about something specific in the story. Then we turn to that page or paragraph, and I project it on a screen, and we talk about how it works & use that as a jumping-off point for the broader discussion. I stole the phrase “circle of love” from one of my old teachers, for whom it was the prelude to his own “rectangle of reckoning.”
I agree that undergrad classes should be workshop/seminar hybrids. I like doing prompts based on arrays of reading. In my nonfiction workshop, this meant reading, say, a bunch of essays in the form of letters, and then asking them to write an epistolary essay. They loved Letters to Wendy’s. Other texts that they responded to were Bluets by Maggie Nelson and anything by Joan Didion. They had trouble with older classic essayists like E.B. White and George Orwell.
I’m responding to the rest of what you said in a post.
In general, I try not to espouse the idea that any writer is unteachable. There are certainly writers who are difficult to teach to undergrads but I think there is a lot students can learn from writers who are traditionally labeled as “inaccessible.”
So a focused workshop. I can see that. I became so frustrated workshopping in intro classes, I stopped. But I see your way as a compromise.
I taught the Anchor Book of New American Stories in a 200-level Craft of Fiction course, supplemented with craft lectures, essays, very targeted exercises, and some outside stories, and the students absolutely rose to the challenge of the material, and excelled. In my opinion, students don’t need baby steps, but rather a bar that is constantly raised.
It is okay for the professor to admit to also being challenged by the material.
where did you teach this course?
At Bowling Green State University, in Ohio.
Man, I wish I could take your classes. Last semester I took a workshop with a very nice and friendly YA novelist (who originally got her MFA to be a TV writer) that was extremely democratic, with a ‘we’re just 15 friends chatting about life across a conference table having fun’ vibe. We read maybe five short stories, all the usual suspects by Carver, Updike, Oates. Everyone else seemed to have a great time and said sincerely it was the best class they ever took, but for me the lack of rigor was incredibly repressive and I ended up just feeling like a dick for thinking of myself as superior. But I hated everything I wrote for the class because I could get lazy or boring and they would say such nice things anyway. I didn’t even have the heart to give the instructor a negative evaluation. I guess it was an okay experience for what it was and I’m just bitching now and that class shouldn’t matter because if I’m doing it right I should just write and write, but if I had done something like your class I would be so much farther along than I am now.
UNDERGRAD, FORGET THE LAST CLAUSE BECAUSE IT WILL DRIZE YOU INSANE
I would say there’s a difference between a democratic workshop and an ineffective workshop. I don’t think democracy is synonymous with inane niceties though it seems to morph into that under certain circumstances.
oh yeah, i know it. been to it. used to live in ohio. the only reason i ask is that (and in response to sean’s post as well), i think the material i teach is often tailored to the type of student body i’m working with – this took me a long time to figure out. for a while i taught what i loved and it was often challenging stuff. sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t. it often depended on where i was teaching. i’ve taught at a variety of different places, including community colleges, and the students really do vary greatly in their respective abilities. anyway, it’s cool when it happens, that students rise to the challenge, but i’ve seen difficult texts alienate students as well. i agree generally, though, challenging them is typically better than baby steps.
oh yeah, i know it. been to it. used to live in ohio. the only reason i ask is that (and in response to sean’s post as well), i think the material i teach is often tailored to the type of student body i’m working with – this took me a long time to figure out. for a while i taught what i loved and it was often challenging stuff. sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t. it often depended on where i was teaching. i’ve taught at a variety of different places, including community colleges, and the students really do vary greatly in their respective abilities. anyway, it’s cool when it happens, that students rise to the challenge, but i’ve seen difficult texts alienate students as well. i agree generally, though, challenging them is typically better than baby steps.
I won’t say there weren’t students who struggled with it: Of course there were. I struggle with some of those stories too. But it was a great way to let students find an area of contemporary short fiction to explore: I’m more drawn to Christine Schutt and Brian Evenson and Matthew Derby than I am to Jhumpa Lahiri, and some students were the same. Others loved Lahiri and the other more traditional stories in the book, and so also had their models, and also a name with which to find more work they liked.
I won’t say there weren’t students who struggled with it: Of course there were. I struggle with some of those stories too. But it was a great way to let students find an area of contemporary short fiction to explore: I’m more drawn to Christine Schutt and Brian Evenson and Matthew Derby than I am to Jhumpa Lahiri, and some students were the same. Others loved Lahiri and the other more traditional stories in the book, and so also had their models, and also a name with which to find more work they liked.
Alan, under your system, how do you make the determinations on what to teach, when you haven’t taught at a school before? What factors are you using to decide?
As a student I like being surprised more than anything, that feeling of ‘what the hell is this?!’ Also when the instructor is genuinely passionate about the story they’re teaching I can tell and some of this is guaranteed to rub off no matter what. I would much rather an instructor tell me about what they’ve love reading and thinking about rather than whatever is well-anthologized or considered important. More than anything I want to be excited by the possibilities of literature, not bored. Show us something cool that we might not have given a chance otherwise, make sure we understand why we should give it a chance.
I also hate it when instructors teach down or try to obscure what they think we won’t yet understand. We still might not understand, but we notice when you try to coddle us because it reads like dishonesty and the gap between teacher and student is widened and we trust each other less.
THAT WAS AN ACTUAL TYPO
Yes that anchor book is excellent, I read it last summer on my own as an informal introduction to contemporary literature and it really exploded my assumptions of what a story can be. Surprisingly accessible too.
well, right now, i basically teach what i’m told to teach. but when i have had the opportunity to teach lit courses of various types, i learned, sort of like you’re saying, to mix it up. to try to give, especially in intro courses, the broadest range possible of great writing.
but maybe i’m eluding your question some. the factors i’ve received: right now i teach somewhere that always reminds me to keep in mind the “type” of students i have, etc. it was kind of shocking at first but now i understand. they’re a very hardworking group, but sometimes lack the proper background of even basic critical thinking.
i just said critical thinking. i’m paid to say that.
I agree. The word “focused” is the reaction to the challenging material, though. By focusing the material, you are (I feel) bringing back into the milieu provided without a nudge by TC Boyle.
I added qualifiers/disclaimers here to really get across: I am NOT arguing for NOT challenging students. I challenge all students. You have to, to ethically teach writing. Writing is really hard (I mean writing well). Students must understand this, beginning or not. I just think after teaching many, many intro classes that, as far as conveying basic concepts these students know little about, some authors are very accessible. Others not.
I guess my post is about the authors I’ve taught that were great, I loved them (one great prof bling—I teach who I love, basically, or did when younger [now I try to teach who I love/don’t care/hate]) but were they best for intro teaching?
Sounds like the ideal anthology then. I like that it has Lahiri AND Evenson. Will check out.
I’m arguing about Time. There is value to teaching any author. I just keep wanting to be a better teacher (I’m not being flaky here–I am serious). I wonder if I can more efficiently teach certain methods with certain authors? I mean this for INTRO classes. ONLY. I’m not asking for a formula. I am in some ways just selfishly asking for teachable authors, stories, poems, etc. Also I am back-lashing to teachers who use the wrong text for the right lesson.
This is good feedback. Thank you for it.
Well specific teachable authors… I love to use Chabon, Gaitskill, Laura Ingalls Wilder, JCO, Carver, Tim O’Brien, whatever I’m reading currently, trying to mix mainstream and indie even though I don’t have an “indie” writers listed here.
DRIZE is sorta cool word.
I’m with the enthusiasm enthusiasts: what most enables a teacher to cause transformation in the learner/s is her or his passion for the material (as well as for the classroom relationship, of course) – that’s the catalyst for the reaction, more often – or at least more potently – than, say, compulsion.
Keef writes this in Life:
Sean, this “tightening [of] the heartstrings” is what teaching is, or can be.
“It is okay for the professor to admit to also being challenged by the material.”
i like this.
“It is okay for the professor to admit to also being challenged by the material.”
i like this.
That picture looks like a level from RE4.
That’s true to a point. I don’t teach anything I’m not passionate about so it’s no worries. I have a great job. What I mean is I only teach CW classes and no one ever decides what I teach, text or method. SO, believe me, I teach what I am fired up about.
HOWEVER
That’s not my point here. My point is about how some texts are more easily broken down than others, especially in the artificial time frame called a semester. When I teach intro to CW, you ARE going to leave ready for fiction 1, or poetry 1, or CNF 1—because we’re going to hit a wide range of basic concepts. Some texts make this easier than others.
I think passion is great. But practical and passion makes for a great class.
Wow, again with all the white writers! Is Kyle playing some sort of Candid Camera joke on us?? HTML GIANT, pls pls make him stop offering advice in how to teach a workshop. I beseech you!! I shudder to think how many writers learn NOTHING about/from writers of color thanks to Kyle. Ugh, ugh, ugh.
I think in workshops it’s helpful to have a slightly different POV with readings. You don’t have to talk about literature but the experience of reading and how the piece was put together, the choices / nuts & bolts. With this in mind I always pick a certain number of stories that I’ve never read. This is for selfish personal reasons – allows me more reading during the school year. But also has all of us experiencing the piece for the first time.
The Saunders essay “Rise, Baby, Rise!” on Barthelme’s “the School” gives a helpful analysis of a story they’ll like but won’t know how to talk about. They’ll enjoy the nonrealustic
…dang. Stupid touchscreen.
…nonrealist works: they enjoy but don’t have a critical perspective, don’t know how to discuss. Maybe this is what you mean by some being more teachable. But absolutely, mix things up. I’ve got fallback stories I can teach with my eyes closed, that are good for demonstrating aspects of story. But I believe I should still be learning too. Those fallback stories are freeing because it’s less work for me, and maybe I need the time. But those other days, when I’m unsure what I think – just as valuable.
Kyle was my teacher at Capital University for a creative writing class. He spent five weeks teaching Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker. This was the only book we used beside the textbook. In case you didn’t notice she is a Haitian American woman. You dont know what you are talking about and its rude.