NAAL stats

Sheida White, Mark Kutner, Elizabeth Greenberg, Ying Jin, Bridget Boyle, Yung-chen Hsu, Eric Dunleavy. *Literacy in Everyday Life: Results From the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy * Washington D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, 2007.

I want to look at this data because I think it shines a light on American literacy in a way theory cannot and because it helps me think about "literature" in terms of its social and political context.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) tested adult Americans on a specific set of literacy skills, which they saw as essential to participation in the economic and political life of the nation. They divided these skills into three categories: prose, document, and qualitative literacies. Prose literacy will be the only category of concern here, since it is the one that most directly relates to the reading of creative work.

NAAL defines prose literacy as follows:

Prose literacy. The knowledge and skills needed to search, comprehend, and use information from continuous texts. Prose examples include editorials, news stories, brochures, and instructional materials. (iii)

Adults who are tested for this type of literacy achieve a sore between 0 and 500. NAAL divided these scores into four "levels" of prose literacy: proficient, intermediate, basic, and below basic. Adults unable to respond to the questions were not scored and were considered "non-literate in English." I've excluded "below basic" since this group is essentially unable to read and understand novels, poetry, or drama in English.

Here is how NAAL defined each level, by skill set and by score:

Basic: reading and understanding information in short, commonplace prose texts. Score: 210–264

Intermediate: reading and understanding moderately dense, less commonplace prose texts as well as summarizing, making simple inferences, determining cause and effect, and recognizing the author’s purpose. Score: 265–339

Proficient: reading lengthy,complex,abstract prosetexts as well as synthesizing information and making complex inferences. Score: 340–500 (4)

To give a more precise understanding of what skills were involved at each level, NAAL published a gradation of types of skills, each assigned a score according to its difficulty. For example, whereas below basic readers could not explain the meaning of a metaphor in a narrative, comprehension of metaphor increased in each literacy level:

241 [basic] Explain the meaning of a metaphor used in a narrative.
304 [intermediate] Infer the meaning of a metaphor in a poem.
345 [proficient] Compare and contrast the meaning of metaphors in a poem. (5)

I don't think I'm alone in saying that I consider the ability to compare and contrast metaphors in a poem to be a basic, essential requirement for reading and understanding literary poetry, and that persons not possessed of this skill are not likely to possess the necessary skills to read literary prose either. Consider, for example, this passage from *Ulysses*, which Wayne Booth makes us of in his study *The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction*:

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, *maestro di color che sanno*. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the *nacheinander*. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the *nebeneinander* ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, *nebeneinander*. Sounds solid: made by the mallet of *Los Demiurgos*. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy kens them a'.

*Won't you come to Sandymount,
Madeline the mare?*

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: *deline the mare*.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. *Basta*! I will see if I can see.

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end. (273-4 in Booth)

Booth recommends we read the passage aloud. He's right. It's lovely to hear. High modernism at its finest. And it is, not, I think, a stretch to say that the skill set require to read such a passage far exceeds the ability to compare and contrast metaphors. One must be much more than proficient to get anything from the passage at all, except, perhaps, a feel for the music. Here's Booth explaining his reaction to the text:

When as a nineteen-year-old I first read the passage, in my often baffled but exhilarated plunge through the novel, I felt completely out-classed. I had never read Aristotle or Aquinas or any other philosopher bald or hairy who grappled with this problem in this way; all I knew was that Stephen is troubled by some mysterious phrase, one that was meaningless to me...And I can remember looking up some of the strange words, and mumbling that mouth-filler: "ineluctable modality of the visible."...One must, in short, become at least a bit philosophical to be able to enjoy the passage at all...//

The possible effects are of course not confined to philosophical inquiry. I am asked, secondly, to mime "being learned."...Even if I can't catch many of the allusions, I will suspect that many allusions are being made—at least that phrase in Italian, if that *is* Italian, is an allusion to *something*, as is the "*Basta!*" Who *is* this "he," this "bald millionaire"? Who or waht is "Madeline the mare?"...

If I happen to recognize the quotation from *King Lear*, I will feel that I am a *little bit* learned, but I'll suspect that there are more allusions that I miss. And what does *nacheinander* mean? I may look it // up, if I happen to recognize that it's German. Or I may simply aspire to become the sort of person, someday, who knows languages and doesn't *have* to look it up. (274-6)

Booth's point it to explain how good literature can inspire a young man to become a better, more intellectual man—philosophical and learned. But we have to remember that he is already a young man capable of reacting so positively due to his early literacy experiences, shaped by the value placed on reading and writing in his family of origin, his early schooling, his experience in the Morman Church, etc. When nineteen-year-old Wayne Booth first read Joyce, he was already functioning at the high-end of proficiency, and Joyce came along to show him that reading could be so much more, that he as a reader could be so much more.

Consider the same passage as read by someone at a low-proficient or intermediate level. There is every chance that he or she will find the passage meaningless. Perhaps the lower-level reader will recognize in it some literary value. If so, he or she may feel intimidated, or challenged, or humiliated, or disenfranchised, or whathaveyou. But he or she will *not* likely feel the same kind or degree of inspiration as Booth. He was at the apex of measurable literacy skill, ready to take wing; average readers, at best, simply recognize a gulf of skill and learning that stands between them and understanding the text.

This raises a line of ethical consideration not taken up by Booth in his reflection on Joyce: What is the meaning of such a text to the general public? How many people are able to react like Booth? Who are they? How do they get to be at their level of skill? How is this skill distributed among readers? By who and according to what criteria? Yes, *Ulysses* is lovely, but for whom?

Here are the NAAL stats on levels of prose literacy across the entire US population:

Below Basic:
1992---14%
2003---14%

Basic:
1992---28%
2003---29%

Intermediate
1992---43%
2003---44%

Proficient
1992---15%
2003---13% (13)

So if 15-13 percent of the US populace is proficient, and a smaller portion of that group is "high proficient," meaning capable of getting something from artists like Joyce or Pynchon or whoever else you want to name that writes difficult prose, then we have to conclude that *Ulysses* is lovely for only a few.

Three hundred million Americans (give or take). Maybe five percent at what I'm calling "high" literacy (which, admittedly, was not a category measured by the NAAL, so I'm guessing here, and I think I'm being generous with that 5%). That still makes 15,000,000 potential Joyce readers in the US. Not a bad audience for him at all, really. Even at 1% (more likely) there's still 3M potential fans for his type of thing. But still, a vast majority excluded. 297,000,000 Americans Joyce leaves out of his conversation.

In her new collection of essays, Elif Batuman asks: "What did craft ever try to say about the world, the human condition, or the search for meaning?" I want to answer that craft can't help but say something about the world, the human condition, the search for meaning. At all times, and in every way, craft is inextricably linked to such questions. Craft choices are choices from among social conventions, which themselves stand in relation to questions of equity, political questions concerning the relationship of the author to the reading (and non-reading) public. When an author makes craft choices, that author sets the terms of access to their text, including some readers, excluding some others. It is not possible to write an all-inclusive text, but this does not mean that as authors and as educators of future authors we should pretend that craft exists in a vacuum, apart from issues of race and class.

Here are the NAAL figures for average prose literacy score by race:

White
1992---287
2003---288

Asian/Pacific Islander
1992---255
2003---271

American Indian/Alaska Native
1992---254
2003---264

Black
1992---237
2003---243

Hispanic
1992---234
2003---216 (15)

The report acknowledges that "Hispanic" is an overly broad term, and then further breaks down that category by nation of origin, or ancestor's origin. Puerto Ricans were the only group that gained over the period.

Notice that no group is proficient on average (cut off for that level is 340) but, until 2003, only whites were intermediate on average (cut off 265). In 2003, whites were joined by the Asian/Pacific Islander grouping. All other groups are of basic proficiency on average. However, we should also note some significant gains in black and native populations. Inequality remains, and change is happening.

NAAL stats on the percent of adults at proficient or intermediate levels by race:

White
proficient
1992---18%
2003---17%
intermediate
1992---48%
2003---51%

Asian/Pacific Islander
proficient
1992---9%
2003---12%
intermediate
1992---36%
2003---42%

American Indian/Alaskan Native
proficient
1992---5%
2003---10%
intermediate
1992---35%
2003---41%

Hispanic
proficient
1992---5%
2003---4%
intermediate
1992---28%
2003---23%

Black
proficient
1992---2%
2003---2%
intermediate
1992---27%
2003---31% (16)

So, in 2003, when 68% of white adults were at intermediate or above, only 43% of black adults performed at the same level, and only 27% of Hispanics. Again, Puerto Ricans were the only group who gained over the period, with 44% of adults at intermediate or above in 2003.

An author who makes a choice to write complicated, beautiful, demanding prose, is an author who consents to exclude most Americans, including a disproportionate number of non-whites.

And, of course, money is a factor, too:

NAAL stats on average prose score by annual household income

<$10,000---229
$10,000-$14,999---237
$15,000-$19,999---244
$20,000-$29,999---257
$30,000-$39,999---268
$40,000-$59,999---282
$60,000-$99,999---303
$100,000 and up---316 (31)

That, I think, is a very impressive finding. Every increase in income bracket is an increase in prose literacy score.

Authors who aspire to write like Joyce also do so at the cost of excluding minorities and the poor.

The biggest objection I can think of to my reading of these stats is this: why should it be the author's job to set these things straight? Society is unfair, unequal; this is a question of social reform, not artistic integrity. If we were to take me seriously and attempt to write as inclusively as possible, it would mean the death of high literature in English and an impoverishment of our literary culture. Instead of asking authors to compromise their art, why not insist that society promote more minorities and more of the poor to "high proficient" literacy levels? Why not ask authors to help in this effort. In fact, Authors like Joyce, it could be argued, are the best advocates for the highest levels of literacy, since they show us what beauty can be achieved at those levels.

A good objection (if I do say so myself). And I can't disagree with it. Of course we should promote literacy more equitably. Of course we should not do anything to impoverish literary culture. We need Joyce. And we need more readers who can read Joyce. Absolutely.

So let me nuance my position a bit:
Authors who write in English for an American audience send their work out into the social realities of that audience. These authors have choices to make about audience. Who will read their work? What would they like their work to mean, do *do*, and to whom? As they consider these questions, they must have access to clear data about the realities of American literacy to guide them in their "craft" choices. All craft decisions, from genre to "level" of prose, are decisions that shape the potential audience for the work, including some and excluding others. Responsible participation in creative writing literacy requires that authors make their choices purposefully and address both form and content to the included recipients of their work.

The English Lit folks owe it to America to create more Wayne Booths. And especially more black, Latino Wayne Booths. Wayne Booths who are granted a leg-up from poverty.

We CW folks owe it to America to produce more black, Latino, poor James Joyces, yes. But also to create creative writers to are aware of and act as conscious participants in the social realities of American literacy.

Booth citation:
Booth, Wayne. *The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction.* Berkley: University of California Press, 1988. Print.

Data on masters degree recipients

So, in searching out data for the gender/class/racial demographics of the MFA graduate, I've come across a little bit of data relating to race, not about the MFA specifically, but about the English major in general, of which the MFA comprises some part.

First, racial demographics of the USA, according to the US census. Here's the breakdown for 2008:

White----79.8%
Black----12.8%
Hispanic----15.4%
Asian----4.5%
Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander----0.2%

It's important to note that persons who responded "Hispanic" could also report other categories, which I don't think is the case for the data that follows.

As far as I can tell, what we would hope from a progressive society is, at the very least, that the number of masters degree recipients by race would be roughly proportionate to the racial demographics of the nation. And this is pretty much what we get when we consider all masters degrees received between 2006 and 2007 after subtracting non-resident aliens from the total population measured:

White----74%
Black----11.6%
Hispanic----6%
Asian+pac islander----6.7%

White and black numbers suffer a slight decrease, apparently due to the disproportionately large number of Asian and Pacific Islander recipients. It is not clear whether the number for Hispanic recipients represents a drop from the proportion of the total population since these respondents, I believe, could not double report ethnicity.

So, more or less, this is good news for American education in general. Unless I'm reading the numbers wrong.

On the other hand, things are far bleaker when one turns to the number of recipients of masters degrees in English by race over the same period, again taking non-resident aliens out of the picture in order to get a more accurate representation of domestic racial demographics:

White----85%
Black----5%
Hispanic----4%
Asian+Pac Islander----3.7%

What can we call this but a failure on the part of American English departments? Racist, since it represents an institutional inequality based on race.

What this means for MFA programs is that, assuming the numbers in MFA programs are roughly equivalent to the numbers for the English department at large, in their role as sponsors of creative writing literacy, creative writing programs in the United States are favored white students and disfavored students of any other ethnicity.

Who gets to be a writer in America? Well, it helps if you're white.

Book purchasing data

Greco, Albert N. *The Book Publishing Industry* 2nd. Mahway, New Jersey: Lawerence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.

Greco cites *2001 Consumer Research Study of Book Purchasing (New York: Book Industry Study Group)

Subject category and % of Total units sold
Popular Fiction 55%
Nonfiction Religious 10%
Cooking/Crafts 9%
General Nonfiction 7%
Psychology/Recovery 4%
Technology/Science/Education 4%
Children's 3%
Art/Literature/Poetry 3%
Reference 2%
Travel/Regional 1%
All Other 1%
(216)

Ouch. Pretty devastating figures for "literature."

Greco, Albert N., Clara E. Rodriquez, and Robert M. Wharton. *The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century. Stanford: Stanford Business Books, 2007.

Cites NEA 2004 study as follows:

Popular fiction is still, by far, the most common type of book bought, with the majority (57.3 percent) of all books purchased for adults being in this category. The next largest categories are nonfiction religious (8.9 percent), cooking and crafts (8.4 percent), and general nonfiction (7.6 percent), each of which accounts // for less than 10 percent of all purchases. The remaining 18 percent is accounted for by purchases in the areas of psychology and recovery, technical, science, and education; art, literature, and poetry; children's reference; travel and regional; and all other. In addition, while the popular fiction are has been growing consistently since 1997, all of the other areas have either declined or fluctuated during this period. (175-6)

The numbers are essential the same. Add the figures of all besides pop fic, cooking, non-fic, and religious and you get the same 18%. So it looks like "serious" literature and art and poetry have been sharing that 3% share since at least 2001.

Here is more or less how that 55 percent breaks down:

Fetto, John. "Reader Request." *American Demographics.* July/August 2002. (page numbers???!)

Fetto cites Ipsos Book Trends research as follows:

Unit share of adult books sold by selected genres.
General fiction: 1999---6.4% 2001---10%
Mystery/Thriller: 1999---13.8% 2001---15%
Romance: 1999---20.7% 2001---20%
Science Fiction: 1999---6.5% 2001---5.5%

We can't confuse "general" fiction with "literary" fiction, since this category comprises all kinds of stuff not collected by the other named genres. So, if you want to reach an audience, write romance. Or thriller.

More depressing news about poetry reading in America:

*Who Reads* (cite author date and publisher!...it's a study from the '80s)

In estimating the size of the audience for poetry, the distinction between those who read classic works only and those who read contemporary as well as classic literature makes a substantial difference. If one includes those who read well-established poetry then the ARTS and BISG [Book Industry Study Group, more recent figures cited above] surveys indicate that the audience for serious poetry is about six percent of the adult population...On the other hand, if one restricts the audience to those who read contemporary "literary" poetry, then, as noted above, the poetry audience ammounts to once percent or less of the population. (33)

And that is in the 80s. NEA surveys indicate that poetry reading has declined since then. Even the latest report "Reading on the Rise" suggests that popular fiction is up again, but poetry and drama reading continue to decline.

Declining from less than one percent of the adult population...there can't be much left...

This presents a difficult situation. For fiction writers, it seems crazy to insist on "publishable literary" fiction, since the market for this is like 1.5 to 2% of the book market. This is a very small audience, and is not likely to be the audience that many writers actually want to address. Seems like an educated move into genre fiction allows for a larger cultural impact for work and perhaps reader demographics somewhat closer to what is desired (although this is not guaranteed; the presence of the white, middle-class, suburban female still dominates fiction). Opening MFA programs to genre writing seems like an obvious move.

For poets...what the hell do you do? There's no cultural capital available outside of the academy. Green's "useful" poem is the only way out. You have to already have a community for whom the poem will be useful and meaningful and then write directly to them. So your choices are: the academic-poet crowd, the Slam scene, some kind of June Jordan community project scenario, or whatever else you can pull together. Whether it's high brow or grass roots, you're still very limited in who you can reach.

Maybe that's not a bad thing... If it's about community more than it is about reaching a mass audience, then poetry may be the better choice.

Anyway, all these figures add up to the reason why this guy is my new hero.

bishop and ostrom: Colors of a different Horse

*Colors of a Different Horse: Rethinking Creative Writing Theory and Pedagogy.* Ed. Wendy Bishop and Hans Ostrom. Urbana: NCTE, 1994. Print.

Camoin, Francois. "The Workshop and Its Discontents."

In favor of theory:

I would like to argue, I think, that just as war is too important to be left to the generals, so critical theory is too important to be left to the critics. (4)

The "law" of silence:

[I]t is the Law of the Workshop, as powerful as the law of incest is int he culture at large, that *the author must not speak*. This fundamental Law shapes the workshop, makes it what it its. (4)

Totally nuts. But generally accepted, I think.

Unexamined theory is still theory, and a theory already explicated by some other theorist:

The theory (whether we want to call it that or not) is always there, though it's often suppressed, disguised as craft, or common sense, or literary taste, or *what-I-have-learned-in-twenty-years-of-being-a-writer.* But, finally, it comes down to speaking about how texts mean, what they do, how they exist in the world, how they function. We can look into our hearts all we want; what we will find there will always be somebody else—Henry James or Percy Lubbock or E. M. Forster. Or Barthes, Kristeva, Irigaray. (5)

Theory helps us with revision:

It's not a bad thing, this critical theory...It gives us a way to talk to ourselves when the Orphic fever has died down, the first draft is done, and we're faced with the problems of craft. (5)

Tips his hand that his "theory" is mostly formalist stuff:

The student who learns that he has // no intentions worth talking about—that he has nothing to say when he sits down at the typewriter, only something to make—will write much better fiction. The student who thinks about narrative logic, writing strategies, the foregrounding or erasing of the narrative act, who has learned that writing fiction consists largely of putting off telling a story, (that in fact the ingenious devices by which she delays the story *are*, in the end, the story) will write better fiction than when she is trying to make the reader feel what she felt when her aunt Maggie died. The reader will still weep, if weeping is called for. (5-6)

These next two name the key difference between the writer and the critic:

I'm writing the story...I have options. The question is how to think about them in such a way as to write a better story. Or else I'm reading the story in a workshop, and the question is then how to talk about the options effectively. (6)

My critical colleagues—it's not a fault, it's the nature of what they do—never see the text at that instant where it must become something else. Sometimes they burrow through the special collections and come upon first drafts, or incomplete attempts, but those are texts already frozen, traces of a process always already completed. (7)

Domina, Lynn. "The Body of My Work Is Not Just a Metaphor."

We apprehend truth, as writers, at least as much with our bodies as with our minds...yet the form or hue or movement of our bodies will suffer [dis]approbation from a community of writers much more quickly than any movement of our mind—though this [dis]approbation will almost inevitably be vehemently disguised as criticism of our work. (28)

She's something of an expressivist, saying things like "one of the primary tasks of the student writer is to learn trust and acceptance of the self" (28) and "Know thyself...and the metaphors will come" (29). And yet she offers qualifiers like: "literature is not primarily therapy, workshops are not therapy sessions" (30). So I suppose she means that confidence in identity precedes good writing, and that workshops ought to be self-aware in their identity politics if they are to offer an environment supportive of a student's best work.

in the undergraduate classroom many students confront difference to a much greater extent than they have in the past, which can be very good for writing, but which also can have devastating effects both in execution and reception—to the extent that difference is threatening rather than engaging, to the extent that difference is hierarchialized // and hierarchy condoned in the classroom as it is outside the classroom. (29-30)

Here's her best point, I think, that unexamined workshops can suppress good writing:

what many traditional-age college students...long to do *is* to write mildly embellished autobiography. Much of the time, this is completely appropriate. Much more dangerous is s student's internal or external pressure to avoid autobiography.

For many students, this risk of revelation is exacerbated by their place in society. The dictum to write about what they know about means writing as a person of color in a racist culture, writing as a gay man or lesbian in a homophobic culture, writing as a woman in a sexist culture—and the culture of workshops consists of instructors and classmates who are as likely to be bigoted as anyone else in our reputed melting pot. If a writer's obsessions arise from experiences of exclusion, changing the proper nouns hardly suffices as protection when the excluder is running the workshop...And although students // who impose self-censorship may write competent, even eloquent sentence, the body of their work will lack the requisite investment and passion of the truly promising writer. (31-32)

Writing about what you know about often implies writing about what other members of the workshop will not know about, which is easily enough dealt with if what you know about is running a dairy farm or swimming competitively or communicating with an Australian via short-wave radio, less easily dealt with if what you know about is prostitution or incest or addiction, and much less easily handled if what you know about is anger at your exclusion from a culture by white people or by wealthy people or by men or by heterosexuals, who are all your classmates and/or your teacher. (33)

It seems to me that this is good justification for a workshop that begins with student intent. Who are you writing to and why and how can we as a class help you achieve that goal? How ought we to read? If we start there, then at least these issues are foregrounded in the workshop itself.

Berry, R.M. "Theory, Creative Writing, and the Impertinence of History."

His best line is his first:

One could persuasively argue that in America the most influential theory of literature since World War II has been Creative Writing. (57)

And, of course, that is exactly what he intends to argue. Not sure why he needs to be cute about it. Nevertheless, he's saying that CW *is* theory or is itself *a* theory. Smart move.

On the public influence of CW:

Most concretely, this influence makes itself felt on the public audiences for the writers' festivals, summer workshops, and readings sponsored by Creative Writing programs or faculty. Less noticeable but possibly more significant is the presence of Creative Writers on literary awards committees, editorial // boards, government funding agencies, small and large presses, book reviews, magazines, and virtually all other organs of contemporary literature. (57-58)

He brings in the training of poets in antiquity:

That Creative Writing is a theory of literature seems less peculiar when Creative Writing is compared to the literary apprenticeship it replaced. Prior to the nineteenth century the most widespread European model of the poet's education tended to de-emphasize individual creativity and to foreground the deliberate imitation of other poets...According to this pedagogy, the apprentice poet learned to replicate and adapt various models under the supervision of someone who had established his...reputation as a master. (58)

Contrary to modern expectations, what the Greek or Roman apprentice gleaned from models was not technique only, but plots, themes, scenes, vocabulary, and even the topics of characters speeches, as though becoming a poet involved both learning a skill and acquiring a repertory of stories or lore. (58)

What did strike them forcefully—the Greek and Latin writers as well as their Renaissance imitators—was the sharp difference between a master's transformation of a model and a novice's copying of one. (59)

He examines Castiglione's *The Courtier* as an explanation of Renaissance apprenticeship:

Where the difference between the Renaissance and our present institution appears sharpest is in their directly opposite remedies for affectation. Whereas Creative Writing might advise a mannered writer to find a subject, style, or voice truly her own, *The Courtier* advises further and wider-ranging imitation. Given all else in sufficient measure, Castiglione insists, imitation can make any voice, style or subject the writer's own. (60)

the old pedagogy imagined no unembattled realm // within which learning could occur. Education was, from the outset, a venture into occupied territory...*The Courtier's* assumption that nothing is inviolably one's own—except one's limitations—seems the vertiginous downside of the idea that anyone can learn to become just about anything. (60-1)

He turns to Bakhtin to show that perhaps the early pedagogy has more merit than we might expect:

For Bakhtin, imitation is the inescapable condition of speaking because language is no abstract for or tool to be picked up and layered back down. (61)

Then he turns to the theory that is CW:

Creative Writing's differentiation of itself from literary study appears—to an imitative poetics—as the severing of practice from its ground in the real life of language, the history of saying. The distinctive pedagogical innovation of Creative Writing—viz., the workshop—is a forum oriented exclusively to the present. (63)

Treating writers' language as unoccupied territory, Creative Writing from the start suppressed its own otherness. (72)

An early poet confident of the tradition and community he inhabited may not have felt // particularly self-conscious about imitating, but for poets—both in the Renaissance and today—whose relation to tradition is what modernity has rendered problematic, making one's writing answerable to and for some past may be precisely what's needed for that writing to count. This task can seem overwhelming, for it demands nothing less than the full acknowledgment of the nightmare that history threatens to become. To the extent that Creative Writing protects present poets from this nightmare, it obscures obstacles to practice and lulls poetry into continued sleeping. A political task of literary study today, and of its theory and practice, its creation and criticism, its teaching and writing, is to wake up. (72-3)

All in all a compelling argument for an imitative practice, or at least for some responsible ("answerable") engagement with language and its history.

Leahy: Power and Identity

*Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project.* Ed. Anna Leahy. Clevendon: Multilingual Matters, LTD, 2005. Print.

Royster, Brent. "Inspiration, Creativity, and Crisis: The Romantic Myth of the Writer Meets the Contemporary Classroom."

And Royster has good leads on creativity studies. And a solid summary of Csikszentmihalyi, applied to CW:

What, then, is at stake if a dynamic model is never implemented in the creative writing classroom? If creative writing workshops are growing in popularity, why is a revised notion of creativity and a restructuring of the workshop necessary? Simply put, a product-centered stifles growth. Such a system places too much emphasis upon particular, validated modes of writing, while devaluing other valid, though unfashionable, styles and voices. Equally important is an awareness of those students whose abilities are driven by an intense need to know or, rather, to explore...Many students delight in tinkering with language or are fascinated by the writerly mystique, some value current trends in writing and theory, and still others wish to explore writing as an extension of political aims. In other words, if ew place too much emphasis upon individual poems or stories submitted to workshop, we may neglect to consider the real reasons students enroll in workshops and the variety of benefits they might gain. (35)

LEADS
for a conception of the process-oriented workshop:
Don Bogen (1984) "Beyond the Workshop: Suggestions for a process oriented creative writing course." Journal of Advanced Composition V, 149-61.

Brophy, K. (1998) *Creativity: Psychoanalysis, Surrealism, and Creative Writing.* Victoria, Australia: Melbourne University Press.

Study of artists on inspiration:
Marsh, Diane and Judith Vollmer (1991) The polyphonic creative process: Experiences of artists and writers. *Journal of Creative Behavior*. 25, 280-8.

Minot, S. (1976). Creative writing: Start with the student's motive. CCC 27, 392-4.

This guy comes up again with a rather sophisticated idea of creativity:
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1999) "Implications of a systems perspective for the study of Creativity" In R.J. Sternberg (ed) *Handbook of Creativity*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lefevre, K.B. (1987) Invention as a social act. *Invention as a social act* (pp. 33-47) CArbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Clark, Timothy. (1997) *The Theory of Inspiration: Composition as a Crisis of Subjectivity in Romantic and Post-Romantic Writing.* Manchester University Press.

Taylor, B. (1995) *Into the Open: Reflections on Genius and Modernity. New York: New York University Press.

Weisberg, R.W. (1986) *Creativity: Genius and other Myths.* New York: W.H. Freeman.