Authors who teach
Kevin Thomas Troy
thinking about fiction authors I've read who also teach (usually
English), and base large parts of their books around their
teaching specialty (or specialties).
Quick brainstorm brought up:
Tolkien: medieval lit-- Beowulf and that time period.
Heck, my World of Charlemagne professor keeps apologizing about
all the strange names that keep popping up in the geneologies--
Drogo, Fredegar, etc.
Dan Simmons: Obiviously, _Hyperion_ is Chaucer meets
Keats.
Jon Carroll: Good and evil duality. Faust and that
sort of thing.
Umberto Eco: Medieval studies and cryptology.
Can anyone think of others? Did Borges teach
Shakespeare or anything like that?
--Kevin Troy
"I cannot live without books."
--Thomas Jefferson
MRE...@kentvm.kent.edu
kt...@Virginia.EDU (Kevin Thomas Troy) writes:
> It's my day off, so I'm allowed to think, and I was
>thinking about fiction authors I've read who also teach (usually
>English), and base large parts of their books around their
>teaching specialty (or specialties).
.
.
> Can anyone think of others?
writer of short stories alive. Those who aren't familiar
with his work definitely owe it to themselves to pick some
up on their next trip to the bookstore.
One of the most fascinating articles by a writer about writing,
incidentally, is Davenport's "Ernst Machs Max Ernst," which
is reprinted in his first book of essays, _The Geography of
the Imagination._
Ken
David E. Latane
Authors who teach--but not "creative writing" of course:
Geoffrey Hill (Renaissance literature)
Thomas Kinsella (Irish studies)
William Gass (philosophy)
D. Latane'
Francis Muir
Are we allowed to mention English persons who teach? Then surely
Iris Murdoch is an exemplar. Perhaps in her more than anyone else
are (were?) the two activities so intertwined.
Philomath
Douglas Clark
Are you sure, Francis? I thought John Bayley, her husband, was the
one who went out to work until his recent retirement from his Chair.
--
Douglas Clark Voice : +44 1225 427104
69 Hillcrest Drive, Email : D.G.D...@bath.ac.uk
Bath, Avon, BA2 1HD, UK Books : http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc
Francis Muir
Francis Muir writes:
Are we allowed to mention English persons who teach?
Then surely Iris Murdoch is an exemplar. Perhaps in
her more than anyone else are (were?) the two activities
so intertwined.
Are you sure, Francis? I thought John Bayley, her husband, was
the one who went out to work until his recent retirement from
his Chair.
As sure as I am of anything any more. I attended her inaugural as Lecturer
in Philosophy to the University of Oxford in, when, 1948? I'd like to add
that I remember exactly what she said, but I don't, and probably didn't
then understand a word she said.
Philomath
John Camp
work that I wouldn't do anyway, I took as many as my major would
allow, and had both Nelson Algren and Kurt Vonnegut as teachers. Neither
was much good, because, I think, they had powerful visions of the way
the world worked, and were too engrossed in writing them out to pay
serious attention to the visions of others, i.e., the student stories. Which
was all right with me, as long as they didn't mess with my stuff too much and
gave me a A to balance out my lack of work in other subjects; besides which,
the student stories were the usual MFA bullshit that could make your brain
shivel up and rattle around your skull like a pebble, if you actually tried to
read them...
The thing I most remember about Vonnegut was that he had an apricot-colored
sweater (mo-hair, I believe), and was wearing it almost every time I saw him.
He would come to class, having read about half of the day's stories about
halfway through, and then would attempt to analyze them while avoiding
out-and-out ridicule, although he sometimes failed in the latter task...I also
remember that as lousy as he was as a teacher, he seemed to work all the
time. Everytime I went down to the workshop to complete some bureaucratic
task, I could hear his typewriter rattling away like crazy...and I think (I like
to believe) that the book he was working on so feverishly later turned out to
be Slaughterhouse Five.
Algren was a nice guy, but simply not much interested in teaching, and not
sure that he had much to teach; he liked to play poker in the student union,
and was pretty bad at it, and would regularly get cleaned out by his students.
Everybody wanted to know about his romance with Simone de Beauvoir,
but he didn't have much to say about it; he seemed always to be
worried that she'd show up while he was talking, and whenever her name
was mentioned, he'd seem to sort of look over his shoulder to make sure
he wasn't going to get whacked with something...a kind of flinch, which may
have been more intellectual, than physical. He said that Beauvior was the
smartest person on the face of the earth, including her old pal Jean-Paul...
I like to think that one reason these guys were lousy teachers, but were
teaching anyway, was simply that they needed to earn money in a way
that would allow them to continue to work, and were willing to scam anybody
to do it...in other words, that they were running a game on the University...
John Camp
Lisa Solod
Douglas Clark
I quite believe that you went to Ms Murdoch's lecture back in the 40s
but I still think she gave up lecturing very early to concentrate on
her novels. She probably kept her hand in with the occasional seminar
and tutorial. Pity I have no facts.
Douglas Clark
I cant find my Iris Murdoch `Sartre' whose blurb probably tells all.
And as a postscript I should mention that I paid my annual visit
to my aunt, but not my aunt, at Great Ayton on New Years Day.
Francis Muir
At UC Davis in the 70s I took a course in English Gothic
fiction from Diane Johnson.
I am quite envious. She came down to the Printer's Inc for a reding of
PERSIAN NIGHTS and I got her to inscribe my copy of her ObFem LESSER
LIVES which she did:
To Francis Muir
with thanks for
resurrecting this
my favorite -
Diane Johnson
What a wonderful giggle that woman has. Totally enchanting.
Philomath
Tom Listmann
(Francis Muir) wrote:
> Tom Listmann writes:
>
> At UC Davis in the 70s I took a course in English Gothic
> fiction from Diane Johnson.
>
> I am quite envious.
She was a good teacher-I was a lousy, disinterested student. I believe
that this was an upper-division class with a lot of students; 40-60 or
so. Now that I think about it, this may have been a more general
period course on English fiction 1820-50 or some such. I seem to recall
reading Jane Auston for it. This would have been in 1975, which was
before Diane's fame as a fiction writer or journalist (She covered the
Patty Hearst trial for Rolling Stone, didn't she?).
I also took graduate poetry writing seminars from Karl Shapiro, Richard
Eberhart and Sandra M.Gilbert. Or are we only talking about fiction
writers who teach?
Tom
Charlotte Freeman
(currently director of the Stegner Fellowships at Stanford), Gary Snyder,
Clarence Major, Sandra McPherson, Allan Williamson, and Sandra Gilbert.
Any quick look through American Poetry Review, Poets and Writers, or the
Associated Writing Programs newsletter will tell you who is teaching
where, either full or part time, as well as who is teaching at the many
summer workshops around the country.
Tom Listmann (fac...@cats.ucsc.edu) wrote:
: In article <3hp153$j...@morrow.stanford.edu>, fra...@pangea.Stanford.EDU
Dev Sreevijayan
> Diane Johnson
>
>What a wonderful giggle that woman has. Totally enchanting.
For a moment, I thought you wrote 'What a wonderful
giggle that woman *was*'. That would have been a
nice way to describe some women.
Obookref: Has anyone read Flan O'Brien's 'At Swim-two-Birds'?
Comments?
Dev
Adrian Lurssen
(Tom Listmann) writes:
Two teachers I will not forget are the writers Richard Bausch and Susan
Shreve.
--
Adrian Lurssen/ alur...@ix.netcom.com
Jerold Pearson
t...@baseworx.att.com (Tom Balent) writes:
>In article <D3rE3...@virginia.edu>,
>Kevin Thomas Troy <kt...@Virginia.EDU> wrote:
>> It's my day off, so I'm allowed to think, and I was
>>thinking about fiction authors I've read who also teach (usually
>>English), and base large parts of their books around their
>>teaching specialty (or specialties).
> .
> .
> .
>> Can anyone think of others?
>
>taught:
> John Gardner (Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, etc.)
> He taught at a number of universities in
> the fields of Medieval Lit, Lit, and writing.
>
> Walter Tevis (The Hustler, The Man Who Fell to Earth)
> He taught at Ohio University in the English
> Department.
>
>
>tom
>
Gilbert Sorrentino teaches at Stanford, as does Diane Middlebrook.
Carl Djerassi, the scientist who is the father of the birth control
pill, has recently been writing novels (at the urging, I think, of
Diane Middlebrook, to whom he is married). But I doubt he is
teaching English. There must be other novelists teaching at
Stanford, but I'm not well informed about this sort of thing.
Denise Levertov, the poet, used to teach here before she retired.
-- Jerold Pearson
ct....@forsythe.stanford.edu
MRE...@kentvm.kent.edu
dla...@hibbs.vcu.edu (David E. Latane) writes:
>This thread needs some borders. It makes no sense to ask about
>"authors who teach" if one includes those who teach exclusively the
>so-called "creative writing."
.
.
.
>That I think was the original purport of the query.
Quite correct. The person who originally proposed the topic for
discussion, if I remember correctly, asked for fiction writers
who teach AND whose writing was in some way based on their
teaching specialties. That second criterion's gotten lost
somewhere along the way.
And I agree with your criticism of "creative writing" programs.
One would be hard pressed to find writers of real artistic power
who come out of those sorts of environments. The only exception
I can think of at the moment is Flannery O'Connor, who was
involved with the Writers' Workshop at the State University
of Iowa. I'm sure I might be able to come up with one or
two others if I thought long enough. But I bet I could come
up with MORE interesting writers who were, say, sailors at
some point in their lives (yes, quite a few come to mind
already). So perhaps a young writer would be better
off to join the Navy than to enter a creative-writing
program.
I'm sure others' opinions will differ -- some people actually
LIKE that creative-writing-course-flavored stuff.
Ken
Tom Listmann
wrote:
> Quite correct. The person who originally proposed the topic for
> discussion, if I remember correctly, asked for fiction writers
> who teach AND whose writing was in some way based on their
> teaching specialties. That second criterion's gotten lost
> somewhere along the way.
I missed the original post, and had only the "authors who teach"
heading to go by. That could mean just about anybody and anything,
including profs who churn out drivel for tenure...
> And I agree with your criticism of "creative writing" programs.
> One would be hard pressed to find writers of real artistic power
> who come out of those sorts of environments. The only exception
> I can think of at the moment is Flannery O'Connor, who was
> involved with the Writers' Workshop at the State University
> of Iowa. I'm sure I might be able to come up with one or
> two others if I thought long enough. But I bet I could come
> up with MORE interesting writers who were, say, sailors at
> some point in their lives (yes, quite a few come to mind
> already). So perhaps a young writer would be better
> off to join the Navy than to enter a creative-writing
> program.
>
> I'm sure others' opinions will differ -- some people actually
> LIKE that creative-writing-course-flavored stuff.
As the graduate of a master's program in creative writing, I wholeheartedly
agree with your comments and those of David E. Latane. I haven't
published any poems in years, mostly because I realized I was writing
"creative writing poetry." I basically had nothing to say, so I stopped.
I'll start again when I damn good and ready, and not because I have to
justify my credentials...
I would like to point out, however, that of the teachers I mentioned in my
earlier post, to my knowledge only one--Sandra Gilbert--could be
considered the "product" of a creative writing program. And she is more
prominent as a critic and scholar than as a poet, I think. Shapiro and
Eberhart were famous long before the advent of creative writing programs.
I don't recall Diane Johnson ever teaching cw classes at UC-Davis when
I was there. And you couldn't accuse Gary Snyder--the current famous
poet at Davis--of being a cw production.
Didn't Ken Kesey and Robert Stone come out of the Stanford writers'
seminars?
Tom
Alex Johnston
>In article <3i0i45$d...@peaches.cs.utexas.edu>
>de...@cs.utexas.edu (Dev Sreevijayan) writes:
>
>>Obookref: Has anyone read Flan O'Brien's 'At Swim-two-Birds'?
>>Comments?
>
>A very entertaining novel, if a bit relentless. Published in 1939
>(the author was I think only 28 at the time), _At Swim-Two-Birds_
>exhibited a literary talent of a very high caliber -- a talent
>deployed, in this instance, for rather juvenile purposes.
Perhaps because O'Nolan (see below) wrote the book in a completely
haphazard way. For example, the letter from the bookmaker was an
actual letter which he included for no better reason than that he
thought it might be funny. It is, the first couple of times, but
then the novelty wears off.
I think that Flann O'Brien is one of the most overrated Irish
Irish writers of the century, but of course there's no way I can
_prove_ this, so here I go in all my glorious subjectivity anyway.
ASTB is a strange book: for all its manic energy and multiple plots
it's afflicted with a kind of depressing accidie which comes out in
the rather sophomoric humour associated with the scenes of cruelty
and in the dying fall at the end which, for my money, devalues the
rest of the book. The trouble was that O'Brien was a member of a
literary generation that had to cope with the recent achievement of
Joyce, and the way his circle coped with it was to try and laugh it
off. They thought that Ulysses was a great book, but they regarded
it mainly as a kind of intellectual puzzle, a splendid in-joke
but not at all, as Joyce had hoped, a move towards some kind of
spiritual regeneration of Ireland.
ASTB mimicks Ulysses in some obvious ways, but mainly it conforms
to the idea of the novel as a very clever but rather sterile game.
O'Nolan and his friends were not seriously interested in
spiritually regenerating Ireland; they spent much time huddling in
Dublin bars, complaining that the Wake was too obscure and that Joyce
was getting a bit fuckin' full of himself. Those Irish writers who
were prepared to tackle modernism usually had to go abroad (Beckett,
Coffey, Devlin, McGreevy) to avoid charges of pretentiousness and
obscurity. The irony is that, after the succes d'estime of ASTB,
O'Nolan (in the character of Myles na Gopaleen) was usually the
first in line to stamp on any Irish writers who appeared to be
taking their art a little bit seriously.
He suffered from a failure of confidence. All the grace and
assurance of The Third Policeman can't conceal the fact that it's
about a universe dominated by a very Catholic idea of Hell, a point
which is driven home in rather clodhopping fashion by the repetition
of the hero's arrival at the police station. At a time when Irish
writing was dominated by the unexciting realism of O'Faolain and
Frank O'Connor, the most avant-garde writer in the country seemed to
be obsessed by original sin; not a good prospect for a young literature
trying to find its feet. If this all seems very negative, well, as a
young Irish writer, it took me a long time to realise that O'Nolan
was somebody I had to destroy.
>In succeeding years O'Nolan's primary literary output was a newspaper
>column written under yet another name, Myles naGopaleen. He
>published a handful of other novels before his death in 1966.
As I said above, one of Myles' favourite schticks was to laugh at
any kind of literary activity which didn't secretly regard itself as
a joke. He worked for much of his life as a senior Civil Servant,
and I personally believe that his position in a managerial class
which he basically despised was a source of self-hatred. Vy do
you feel you hef to make fun of litritcha, Herr O'Nolan ?
-Will you go along to hell out of that. Bleedin' middle Europeans
poking their dribbling noses into the musty corners of their psyches.
>_The Third Policeman,_ which was not published until after his
>death, is far and away O'Brien's best work -- a dark, comic,
>unforgettable minor masterpiece.
Hmm. I do think it's his best book, but with the reservations
listed above.
>It's available in a Plume
>paperback in the U.S. Dalkey Archive Press has in the past couple of
>years re-released two other O'Brien novels: _The Hard Life,_
>first published in 1961, and _The Dalkey Archive,_ from
>1964. James Joyce appears as a character in the latter (the
>author, here, of "pamphlets for the Catholic Truth Society of
>Ireland," _Ulysses_ having been a plot by a lovestruck
>Sylvia Beach to make Joyce famous).
>
>All highly recommended.
I can't recommend The Dalkey Archive. It takes bad college humour
to a remarkably uninteresting extreme, which is quite something
when you consider that he wrote it in his fifties.
I can guardedly recommend The Poor Mouth, an English translation
of An Beal Bocht, which O'Nolan wrote in Irish; it's a parody of
a once-thriving genre of peasant autobiography, such as were written
by aged rural folk during the forties and fifties, or more commonly
dictated by a.r.f to visiting professors of Irish; classic examples
are Fiche Bliain ag Fas (Twenty Years A-Growing) by Muiris O
Suilleabhain, An tOileanach (The Islandman) by Tomas O Crohan, and
Peig (An Old Woman's Reflections) by Peig Sayers, the last of which
is still forced down the gullets of Irish schoolchildren. O'Nolan
was a brilliant translator from the Irish and those who have more than
the cupla focail (two words - synonym for basic conversational Irish
such as most Irish people have) say that An Beal Bocht is a superb
parody of various styles of written Irish. The English version (not
by O'Nolan) is pretty funny but some familiarity with the genre may
or may not be helpful for full appreciation.
Alex
A Mylesian Apostate
MRE...@kentvm.kent.edu
rac...@scrg.cs.tcd.ie (Alex Johnston) writes:
>I think that Flann O'Brien is one of the most overrated Irish
>Irish writers of the century, but of course there's no way I can
>_prove_ this, so here I go in all my glorious subjectivity anyway.
rated in the first place. Here in the States, he's not widely
regarded as a major writer. _The Poor Mouth_ is, for example,
not as far as I know available in an American edition. Interest
in O'Brien seems mostly limited to those involved in Irish
studies and to a small cult following. The latter perhaps
explains why O'Brien's books are more accessible here than, say
Patrick Kavanagh's, but one is not likely to run into much
discussion of either one. The situation may appear rather
different from the geographical perspective of a "young Irish
writer" like yourself.
I appreciate your very thoughtful posting, and much of it I
agree with. What can be said with certainty is that O'Brien's
was one of the more DISAPPOINTING literary careers of the
century. A careful reader of _At Swim-Two-Birds,_ noting
O'Brien's superb intelligence and ear (deployed, as we both
agree, to juvenile ends) would have guessed that great things
were forthcoming. The young O'Brien/O'Nolan was, remember,
regarded as being brighter than Joyce. Needless to say, O'Brien
never produced anything of Joyce's caliber.
_The Third Policeman,_ as I said before, I regard as a minor
masterpiece. O'Brien's other work is, I think, consistently
entertaining. More ambitious claims for O'Brien's later
novels should not be made.
"College humor" is, as you suggest, a good description of large
sections of _The Dalkey Archive_ and _The Hard Life._ But
it is, in these cases, particularly well-executed college
humor. The grotesque comedy that concludes, say, _The
Hard Life_ could not, it is true, hope to "spiritually
regenerate" Ireland. Nor, it is true, was it intended
for such lofty purposes.
The bulk of O'Brien's writing is in this sense closer to
_Fawlty Towers_ than it is to _Dubliners._ I can't imagine
either _The Hard Life_ or _Fawlty Towers_ figuring largely
in anyone's map of the history of the 20th-century mind --
but I'm immensely grateful for the great deal of laughter
both John Cleese and Flann O'Brien have provided me over
many re-watchings and re-readings.
A couple of minor points of disagreement:
> All the grace and
>assurance of The Third Policeman can't conceal the fact that it's
>about a universe dominated by a very Catholic idea of Hell, a point
>which is driven home in rather clodhopping fashion by the repetition
>of the hero's arrival at the police station.
Those last few pages are one of the most extraordinary feats of
literary engineering that I know of. As Hugh Kenner describes it:
"_The Third Policeman_...is profuse in local ratiocinations as it
spins an elaborate disorienting world, the larger coherences of
which grow less and less graspable until the final pages when
everything suddenly does cohere, into a map of hell." Hitchcock
couldn't have done it better.
> At a time when Irish
>writing was dominated by the unexciting realism of O'Faolain and
>Frank O'Connor, the most avant-garde writer in the country seemed to
>be obsessed by original sin; not a good prospect for a young literature
>trying to find its feet.
I'd call it an "obsession," though it's surely an important element
in _The Third Policeman_) would disqualify him from making a
significant contribution to the literature of Ireland or to
English-language literature in general. The fall of Adam and Eve
and original sin figure, after all, even more prominently in
the last work of one of those Irish exiles you list: namely, in
Joyce's _Finnegans Wake._
In any case, thanks again for the very intelligent and thoughtful
posting.
Ken
Alex Johnston
>I appreciate your very thoughtful posting, and much of it I
>agree with. What can be said with certainty is that O'Brien's
>was one of the more DISAPPOINTING literary careers of the
>century. A careful reader of _At Swim-Two-Birds,_ noting
>O'Brien's superb intelligence and ear (deployed, as we both
>agree, to juvenile ends) would have guessed that great things
>were forthcoming. The young O'Brien/O'Nolan was, remember,
>regarded as being brighter than Joyce.
By whom, pray ? I hope they were taken out and shot.
>Needless to say, O'Brien
>never produced anything of Joyce's caliber.
>_The Third Policeman,_ as I said before, I regard as a minor
>masterpiece. O'Brien's other work is, I think, consistently
>entertaining. More ambitious claims for O'Brien's later
>novels should not be made.
>
>"College humor" is, as you suggest, a good description of large
>sections of _The Dalkey Archive_ and _The Hard Life._ But
>it is, in these cases, particularly well-executed college
>humor.
I disagree. Particularly in the case of "The Dalkey Archive",
which I regard as a thoroughly inept book in every way. "The
Hard Life", on the other hand, fits into a tradition of Dublin
humour which is familiar to Irish readers and indulged by the
less discerning amongst them. To the rest, it's a pain in the
arse.
It's perhaps worth noting that O'Brien once wrote a few episodes
of a disastrously unfunny sitcom about a railway signalman,
entitled "Th' Oul' Lad of Kilsalaher". Ireland has never produced
any really successful television comedy and it wasn't for the want
of contributions by a writer of his reputation.
>The grotesque comedy that concludes, say, _The
>Hard Life_ could not, it is true, hope to "spiritually
>regenerate" Ireland. Nor, it is true, was it intended
>for such lofty purposes.
No indeed. Nevertheless, the more conscientious members of his
literary generation (such as Kavanagh) were aware that, for all
Myles' blather about what a dull and ridiculous place Ireland
was becoming, he himself was contributing nothing at all except
a sense of ultimately destructive cynicism.
[snip snip]
>A couple of minor points of disagreement:
>
>> All the grace and
>>assurance of The Third Policeman can't conceal the fact that it's
>>about a universe dominated by a very Catholic idea of Hell, a point
>>which is driven home in rather clodhopping fashion by the repetition
>>of the hero's arrival at the police station.
>
>How anyone can regard that conclusion as "clodhopping" is beyond me.
>Those last few pages are one of the most extraordinary feats of
>literary engineering that I know of.
Excuse me. He inserted a short bridging passage and copied out
several pages from earlier in the book. This is hardly what I
call "literary engineering." It seems to me more like an attempt
(which noticeably fails) to make a virtue out of imprecision.
>As Hugh Kenner describes it:
>"_The Third Policeman_...is profuse in local ratiocinations as it
>spins an elaborate disorienting world, the larger coherences of
>which grow less and less graspable until the final pages when
>everything suddenly does cohere, into a map of hell." Hitchcock
>couldn't have done it better.
I don't think that The Third Policeman is successful on the level
you seem to be describing. Kenner makes it sound as carefully
figured as Kafka, whereas to me whatever virtue it has derives from
a successful attempt to record the literally stunning boredom of the
landscape of the Irish midlands. That is, it's a kind of allegory of
boredom.
>> At a time when Irish
>>writing was dominated by the unexciting realism of O'Faolain and
>>Frank O'Connor, the most avant-garde writer in the country seemed to
>>be obsessed by original sin; not a good prospect for a young literature
>>trying to find its feet.
>
>And beyond me, too, is how O'Brien's use of original sin (I'm not sure
>I'd call it an "obsession," though it's surely an important element
>in _The Third Policeman_) would disqualify him from making a
>significant contribution to the literature of Ireland or to
>English-language literature in general. The fall of Adam and Eve
>and original sin figure, after all, even more prominently in
>the last work of one of those Irish exiles you list: namely, in
>Joyce's _Finnegans Wake._
I don't mind writers dealing with original sin. I object to the
extent that O'Nolan's personal morality affected his work. Insofar
as it went against the grain of his (it seems to me, essentially
anarchic) talent, there's something about him of the later Tolstoy.
Joyce was able to make the effort to overcome a Catholic upbringing
and education that would otherwise have stifled him. O'Nolan might
have been able, or he might not, or (worst of all) he might not have
_wanted_ to: at any rate, he didn't, and he became in my opinion the
most wretched kind of creature in the literary food chain: a humorous
writer.
Perhaps all this amounts to is that I take his obvious failure a bit
personally. I also see the seeds of it in his first and most
obviousy promising book. Why I should feel so disappointed in him is
a mystery to me, since I was brought up as a Lutheran (one of the
smallest religious communities in Ireland) and have had no nasty
experiences with original sin.
It's nice that people outside Ireland take an interest in O'Nolan,
and you make some good points - I think the comparison with Fawlty
Towers is a just one. But the way some people here go on about him,
you'd think he was Jonathan Swift.
Incidentally, I hate Hitchcock. Except for Rear Window.
Alex
Jeffrey Davis
+Alex Johnston writes:
+
+> At a time when Irish
+>writing was dominated by the unexciting realism of O'Faolain and
+>Frank O'Connor, the most avant-garde writer in the country seemed to
+>be obsessed by original sin; not a good prospect for a young literature
+>trying to find its feet.
+
+And beyond me, too, is how O'Brien's use of original sin (I'm not sure
+I'd call it an "obsession," though it's surely an important element
+in _The Third Policeman_) would disqualify him from making a
+significant contribution to the literature of Ireland or to
+English-language literature in general. The fall of Adam and Eve
+and original sin figure, after all, even more prominently in
+the last work of one of those Irish exiles you list: namely, in
+Joyce's _Finnegans Wake._
"Original sin" doesn't seem to be the issue. The absence of any consolation
or redemption or even companionship -- the other characters in _The Third
Policeman_ act as hallucinations of some sort -- seems to mark the
book as something even bleaker than Beckett. Why not pass the time by
making jokes or pursuing pointless scholarship?
--
Jeffrey Davis <da...@ca.uky.edu> scuppers awash
Laura Moe
>And I agree with your criticism of "creative writing" programs.
>One would be hard pressed to find writers of real artistic power
>who come out of those sorts of environments. The only exception
>I can think of at the moment is Flannery O'Connor, who was
>involved with the Writers' Workshop at the State University
>of Iowa. I'm sure I might be able to come up with one or
>two others if I thought long enough. But I bet I could come
>up with MORE interesting writers who were, say, sailors at
real lives and not hidden behind university doors. Writing is about
life, so you gotta live a little in order to be accurate.
But maybe that's just my opinion.
Laura
Alex Johnston
>"Original sin" doesn't seem to be the issue. The absence of any consolation
>or redemption or even companionship -- the other characters in _The Third
>Policeman_ act as hallucinations of some sort -- seems to mark the
>book as something even bleaker than Beckett. Why not pass the time by
>making jokes or pursuing pointless scholarship?
Because Beckett had the good taste to deal with such things at
what I believe to be the very extremity of his art. O'Brien,
on the other hand, passed it off as popular literature. (A
glance at his correspondence will show how seriously he at
any rate wanted people to *think* he regarded his own work.)
That's what I think is so unforgivable. Not that I think
"popular literature" is in itself a terrible thing, just that
his is a peculiarly (and, in a complex way, offensively)
pretentious branch of it.
He was also an ignorant git. But here's me bus. Cheers !
Alex
Fox Willard
I agree and don't agree with the creative writing (recreative
writing comments). While I feel it's true that most good writers
have NOT come out of these environments (yes, O'Connor is the clear
exception), many writers (and MOST POETS) now teach in these programs.
Robert Creeley, for instance, is not a product of such a program (nor
are most of the important poets who began teaching in the late 1960s
and early 1970s) yet he now teaches in such a program. Ted Berrigan
also taught at Iowa, yet his authority did not come with an M.F.A. (He had
an M.A. but refused to accept it.)
The products of such programs, in poetry, tend to promote what sounds to
me like a period style. Call it Country Western Poetry--based on a few
good lines, repetition, and sentiment (the sentimental is "a failure of
feeling," Stevens noted). One can, if he or she cares to, distinguish
the work of Sharon Olds from that of Carolyn Forche, but the differences
are minimal and uninteresting. but the "thing," the "thing itself,' as
Whitman would say, has not changed, is the same, the dull, flat average,
competent and dead.
Compare the work of Creeley, Olson, and Duncan. A wide range, an ioncredible
range of difference. Yet all called Black Mountain Poets. Compare
O'Hara, Ashbery, and Berrigan. Again. And energy and intelligence and
artistic quality gleaming off of every surface.
So much different from this mandarin class of mannered poets all balancing
their little images and metaphor to create a well-made poem in such a
dummied-down sense than was called for by the New Critics (who, at least,
honored 2nd rate verse). Ah! The "Post-Confessionals," as they are
beginning to call themselves. And not worthy to hold Sylvia Plath's oven mitts.
Tom Listmann
fiction from Diane Johnson.
Tom