Ritter & Vanderslice: Can it really be taught?

Ed. Kelly Ritter and Stephanie Vanderslice. *Can It Really Be Taught?: Resisting Lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy.* Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2007. Print.

Haake, Katherine. "Against Reading."

Haake presents a problem that reinforces Shelnutt's critique of CW status quo as taking power and effectively diminishing the quality of writing in America:

to the extent that we continue to proceed by presenting unproblematized literary models in our classrooms as a primary teaching strategy, we will work toward reinforcing already anachronistic twentieth century views of what counts as writing...Curiously, this remains the single sacrosanct element of our profession. Aren't we, after all, training our students to read us? It's not polite to say so, but if not them, who?...Students who emerge from such workshops...will have internalized some vague notion about what contemporary writing is supposed to look like, and in the best tradition of imitative pedagogies, will try to produce it. And this is precisely how we have earned our reputation for an MFA-homogenized // literature in what Patrick Bizzaro describes as a "...workshop-writing phenomenon [that] no doubt works vertically, where sameness is passed from teacher to student who, in turn, becomes a teacher who passes certain literary biases to yet another generation of students" (Bizzaro 305). (Haake 21)

Here's a sad outcome to an inspired assignment of "reading" the world:

I began to require that my students keep a "fact of the week" journal, utterly convinced that though many seemed dispassionate about, even uninterested in, the broader world, it would take little more than a glace to awaken their latent curiosities and vital sense of connection with [what] Bahktin has called the "open-ended present." But in the relative stability of post-earthquake, post-uprising L.A., my students were generally confounded by the assignment and had trouble finding even one fact in the whole world to command their attention and interest each week.

Today, that world is a vexed and altered one, and though it may not be the job of the creative writing teacher to tell the students how to think about that world, surely it should be to expect them to look at—to "read"—it. And as they do, they should ask hard questions about the role of writing in the particular world that turns out to be thiers, and how they would have their own work engage and move through it, defining their own intersection with history and what they would have their writing both *be* and *do* in it. (24)

That second paragraph is key. A great orientation for the CW workshop. Dovetails nicely into what I'm thinking of doing with literacy theory and CW.

LEADS: that bizzaro: "Research and Reflection in English Studies: The Special Case for Creative Writing." *College English* 66.2:294-309.

Cross, Michelle. "Writing in Public: Popular Pedagogies of Creative Writing."

Cross presents a typology of popular CW pedagogies. That is, CW pedagogy as it appears in public. There are four: Literary, Commercial, Holistic, Iconic. Literary focuses on craft.

Commercial pedagogy:

focuses on literary texts in the context of a market-driven public culture. It implicitly conceives of creative writing as a vocation and of the writer as a professional labourer engaging in economic activity in an industry, more so than pursuing a path of artistic or spiritual self-discovery. As such, the lessons therein may vary in their specific suggestions for the craft of writing—from codified genre conventions to loose principles of plot and character development—but are linked in their explicit recognition of the market as having a palpable presence in and influence on the writer's life and work. (69)

You'd think she was describing Marxist analysis, and she may well include such analysis in this category, but Cross is mostly referring to tomes like *Writer's Market* and *How to Write Short Stories That Sell* etc.

Here's where she brings it home:

But despite its apparent vulgarity, commercial creative writing pedagogy may deserve credit for its lack of illusions, having looked at and engaged with the current literary publishing business for what it is—a profit-oriented industry—and having made the most out of it all the same. The industry has not changed, but has only become more massively corporatized, and the commandment that "thou shalt not be in it for the money" has served publishers better than writers...Like the myth of the hardworking immigrant, the fatalistic idea that 'good' literature will transcend the fate of the starving artist and prevail over the market is an attitude that serves to further naturalize the market-driven nature of the industry, and potentially propels unsuspecting aspiring writers into creative writing programs that do not properly credential students for professional survival, let along success, after graduation. (70)

Holistic pedagogy is all about self-discovery and echoes what Myers said about CW in its earliest from in American junior high schools:

[It] focuses on engendering a writing experience that contributes to the discovery, development, and healing of the writer's spiritual and emotional *self*, first and foremost...it values process over product, writing over literature, and individual concerns over social concerns. (70)

Iconic pedagogy is essentially the "star" system in the public sphere. Name authors write books about how they write, etc.

LEADS:
Epstein, Jason. 2002. *Book Business: publishing past, present, and future.* New York, NY: Norton.
She quoted him in her commercial pedagogy section to good effect. Something about "mass merchandise for the mall" on 105 and celebrity of authors on 19.

Vandenberg, Peter. "*Lore* and *Discipline*"

So many good things in such a small space....

It is a sad fact that when we complain about "theory," we are almost always complaining about something else—nominalizations, bald professionalism, myopia, professional turf-grabs, arrogance, elitism, and so on. We are rarely complaining about *a particular set of provisional concepts, definitions and propositions that, by specifying relations among variables, functions to explain and predict phenomena.*

to do so is to engage in theory, to be a theorist, rather than to simply complain.

What irritates us—even those of us who write and profess "theory"—is someone else who doesn't seem to share our language or location attempting to govern our understanding of "our" concepts, definitions, and propositions. *As an institutionalized practice,* the production and circulation of theory in textual form functions to empower some and disempower others. It is not theory, then, that threatens, but a particular, institutionalized *version* of theory-as-practice. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak—rejecting "theory" when one means to reject the authority of a particular institutional practice—tends to deny creative writing and its practitioners critical tools and a self-reflexive ethos.

While there is much of interest in discussions about the appropriateness of theory in and for creative writing, when such discussion reifies scholarly debate and dismisses it derisively as "theory," creative writing defines itself in opposition to critical inquiry. (107)

A nice, succinct rebuttal to the anti-theory folk. Thanks, Vandenberg.

He's also got some great stuff about "postprocess theory" and how he expects that CW theory will catch up to it someday soon.

The term "postprocess"

comes not from a desire to abandon a commitment to the writing act over the finished rhetorical artifact; rather, it signifies that there is too much to consider to remain fixated on the individual writer's act of composing.

and here he is on the future of creative writing theory:

A more self-consciously critical discourse of creative writing will most certainly refuse to continue bracketing conventionally defined literary genres, instead pulling them into a theory of relation with other writing practices and decidedly *un*literary text types. It also seems likely that these relations will be understood to be as they are because the circumstances in which writing is produced have an inevitably local and material dimension. To talk of creative writing as the product and preoccupation of a generalized and dislocated "workshop" will no doubt seem to explain less and less about what mean by *writing*. As has been the case elsewhere in English studies, creative writing will no doubt be increasingly studied as a function of the places where it is learned as well as where it is deployed; we are sure to hear much about creative writing as a *situated practice*. Signifying as it does an expanded attention beyond the individual writer's cognitive process, postprocess theory will open creative writing to the notion of positionality. (108)

Again, a nice tie-in to literacy theory and its application to creative writing. Strikes me that another solid hour or so of class discussion would flow from assigning this essay along with Harris's. Anti-theory process guy vs. pro-theory postprocess guy.

He gives an interesting example, applying Anis Bawarshi's work on first-year comp to the CW workshop. By examining "the syllabus, the written assignments, the margin notes and formal written comments developed by students in response to their classmates' work, and the teacher's informal and formal assessment" the postprocess analysis of the workshop finds that "the student's poem—as a response to an assignment sheet—is not only a poem in the conventional sense of a literary artifact but also a reflection of intention and subjectivity *organized by* particular relations specified by the genre set" (109).

LEADS: should look this guy up and see if he's written anything lately that expands on his application of postprocess to CW.

Myers: Elephant Teach

Myers, D.G. *The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880*. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. Print.

Let me see if I can nutshell the history: Creative writing as a university subject came into being at about the time of the decline of philology and the rise of criticism. Creative writing instruction before "creative writing" proper consisted of "how to" handbooks and courses in writing (mostly the short story and mostly by correspondence) that emphasized formulas for commercial success. Creative writing proper began in a middle school and spread in the K-12 public school system as a part of the progressive movement in education. This CW was characterized by a lack of concern about the quality of prose/poetry produced and, instead, a focus on the development of creative expression in students. CW at the university level began when Norman Foerster took over the School of Letters at the University of Iowa. He opposed the progressive/expressive model of creative writing and felt that creativity and criticism ought to be taught in conjunction for a more complete understanding of literature. Since then, creative writing has shifted its emphasis from teaching literature to creating professional writers. Then, they taught writing as a means to another end. Now, we teach it as a distinct, even isolated, branch of English studies. The "elephant machine" is in full swing.

Seems to me there are branches of progressive and critical still in practice. The progressives still have K-12, more or less, as is evidenced by the latest CTA magazine. (I'll have to dig that up) And I had an undergrad workshop that was more or less a progressive deal. Wandor and others complain of this "therapeutic" tendency in the contemporary workshop. And there are some who advocate for CW as an education in "reading."

Here are the quotes I pulled, which more or less flesh out the history outlined.

CW as distinct from lit studies and rhet/comp:

Creative writing...has been an effort to treat writing as an end in itself. As such it has acted with hostility toward two different conceptions of literature and writing, which for convenience might be labeled the scholarly and the socially practical. On one side are those for whom literature is primarily a genre of knowledge...On the other side are those for whom literature or writing is a social practices that either serves the dominant powers or the forces of opposition...The one side has been content merely to *understand* literature, the other merely to *use* it. (8)

Historically, creative writing has beckoned a third way...They [the writers who taught writing] wished to substitute an approach that was grounded (in the words of their allies) on a practical experience of writing. they sought to impart the *understanding* of literature through a *use* of it...Creative writing was originally conceived as a means of teaching literature from the inside, as familiar experience, rather than // from the outside, as exotic phenomenon. It was intended to be an elephant's view of zoology. (8-9)

That's a nice reversal of the "elephants teach" deal. Basically accepting but also affirming the value of that premise. He uses the term "constructivist" to define CW.

Hughes Mearns is the dude who brought creative writing to education as a part of the progressive education movement. He wrote the books *Creative Youth* (1925) and *Creative Power* (1929), both of which might be worth looking up.

Mearns begins the whole expressive take on CW.

For Mearns:

Creativity was not exactly the same thing as productivity. It involved a shift from *product* to *process*. And in literary terms, this mean the poem carried little weight next to poem-producing. "[F]rankly, we do not care much about the product itself," Mearns said; "our interest goes out to the value in growth of personality that comes from genuine self-expression."...Mearns's view of poetry: it was continuous activity. The poem as something *made* or *said*, as something thta has finality, was foreign to him/ and thus to his conception of creative writing, too. Even the term *creative writing* implies something in progress, imperfect, not yet complete. (118)

Mearns's approach is allied with what Myers calls "creativism" which had to answer to critics:

The message of 1920s creativism was that the conditions for cultural renewal were political and educational: first creative ability had to be democratized, then education had to find to set it free. Left unanswered, though, were two questions. To create anything at all (including a new culture) did it suffice merely to liberate creative talent? and even if it did—even if creative talent were just as democratically distributed as creativists said—did not a culture also depend upon undemocratic distinctions between greater and lesser creative achievements? Wasn't *criticism*—not helpful criticism, not communal criticism, but unsparingly evaluative criticism—also necessary?...By shifting attention from the aesthetic object to the aesthetic experiences, creativisim tried to sidestep this problem. (120)

I like the idea of the democratization of creativity. That's huge. And the expressive approach strikes me as totally appropriate in K-12. Less appropriate at the college level.

[Mearns's Creative writing] was a course in personal development by means of self-expression for its own sake, not for the sake of demonstrating mastery of concepts in English language and literature...the business of making professional poets—something with which Hughes Mearns had never had the least interest—was left to take care of itself. (121)

When CW comes to the university, it begins in Iowa under Norman Foerster, who brings criticism into the mix. Foerster wrote a manifesto for the study of letters: *The American Scholar*, in which he laid out his plan for the University of Iowa, which included an emphasis on creative work:

He was clear about his objective: "We must set about restoring the traditional alliance of scholarship and criticism, the divorce of which has worked injury to both and played havoc with education." The time was ripe for a restoration: "the age of philology and minute historical research," he declared, "is drawing to a close." An age of criticism was dawning. And creative writing (as one of his assistant's phrased it) would be criticism's natural ally. (125)

Myers provides some helpful nuance on the new criticism:

Originally the name [new criticism] referred not to any special method of criticism but to the academic condition of the subject prior to 1941. The emphasis was not upon *new* but upon *criticism*. What was new was the argument that criticism was the best means for studying literature, not the kind of criticism itself. (129)

[The new critic's] conception of autonomy—to say nothing of their special method—had been badly misinterpreted. It was set forth in the Letter to the Teacher attached to *Understanding Poetry*: "thought one may consider a poem as an instance of historical and ethical documentation," Brooks and Warren said, "the poem in itself, if literature is to be studied as literature, remains finally the object of study." *If literature is to be studied as literature*: right there was the major premise of the new criticism. The blunder of most commentators has been to treat this as the minor premise, assuming the new critics set to work by stipulating that literature is virginally isolated from the social and historical context in which it is created.
Literature was not so much *defined* in this way as *studied* in this way. The new criticism was first of all a pedagogy. (130)

In other words, if you study a poem historically, you study it *as history*. If you study it biographically, you study it *as biography*. If you study it in terms of its effects, I suppose you study it *as psychology* or something to that effect. Etc. If you study the poem in terms of its poetry, you study it as such.

The interrelated nature of creativity and criticism:

the new criticism was distinguished by its confidence in the identity of criticism and literary creation...[They] argued that criticism must be grounded upon a practical experience of writing. This was perhaps the central doctrine of the new constructivist approach to literature. (131)

To write a poem, on their understanding, was to decide critically among the many creative directions it might take; to read it was to reenact those decisions. And to write criticism, then, was to duplicate the poet's experience—in a different medium. (132)

Criticism and creative writing went hand in hand at the Iowa School of Letters. As Foerster explained in his inaugural address, literature would be studied there from both the creative and critical points of view. Approaching it creatively means "[w]e are to study it from the inside, we are to see it, so far as possible, with the eyes of the creative artist." The ultimate aim, as he had put it in *The American Scholar*, was "to assist in an inner comprehension of art." (133)

A long quote here, Myers's paraphrase of what sounds like a valuable, unpublished essay by Foerster. Foerster argues for a middle ground on the "can it be taught?" issue, and he rails against the solipsism of "expression":

Foerster did not accept the essentialist dogma that writing could not be taught, though he also rejected the practical vocational alternative to it. In an unpublished lecture on "The Education of a Writer" delivered after he had left Iowa, he identified two popular fallacies: (1) "That a writer can be trained—that if he is promising, and take enough courses in various types of writing, he will be started on his career and thereafter advance by a natural process of growth"; and (2) "that formal education has *nothing* to offer the writer, that he develops from within as he grows in experience of actual life, especially life in the raw." Although seemingly antagonistic, the two ideas were really two sides of the same sentimental naturalism. They merely expressed an unwillingness to undertake the responsibility of educating writers. Foerster sought a mean between these two extremes: "I would have the writer go to college," he declared, "but I would not have him become what we call an 'academic.'"

Writers plainly needed a college education, but what they plainly did *not* need was undisciplined practice in creative self-expression. "Expression is a type of solipsism," Foester scolded, "based on the view that the self can known and depict only its own states." And the literary counterpart to the philosophical fallacy of solipsism was this: "While representing a private perception or experience, [the self] communicates doubtfully at best, unless the artist in some way explains." This was why he looked to bind creative writing tightly to the activity of criticism...in order to come truly into possession of creative power, he was convinced, a writer must ally his or her "precious idiocracy" [Whitman's term] to a discipline of ideas—that is, to a critical power. (135)

After Foerster, CW grows and spreads and stays "constructivist".

[As it grew] creative writing remained a discipline of criticism, but the criticism was neither "know-how" nor an absorption in technical detail; perhaps even "vocationalism" is too hidebound. Creative writing was the knowledge of how literary texts are made, how they work; it was a discipline of constructive knowledge. (159)

Morton and Zavarzadeh

Morton, Donald and Mas'ud Zavarzadeh. "The Cultural Politics of the Fiction Workshop." Cultural Critique, No. 11 (Winter, 1988-1989), pp. 155-173

M&Z present a Marxist critique of the realist fiction workshop. My feelings about their work are similar to my feelings about Marxist critique in general: I appreciate their work in opening up the political dimensions of the workshop for examination, and when they make clear their own agenda, I lose interest.

They draw from another Marxist to show that realism isn't just an aesthetic category, but is an ideology that reinforces patriarchal Capitalism by affirming for the reader the status quo. They feel that realism has this effect as its "political agenda." Odd to think of an abstract category as in and of itself motivated to support anything at all outside of itself.

They begin by listing some of the assumptions of the workshop that have come under attack by postmodern critical theory:

the idea of the free "subject," the integrity of "experience," the sharp separation of "reading" from "writing," the individual "voice," the "authority" of the author, uniqueness of "style," the obedience of the reader, "originality," and "intuition." (155)

They certainly could have demonstrated all of these points without the Marxist slant, but the political agenda is important to these authors:

The fiction workshop is not a "neutral" place where insights are developed, ideas/advice freely exchanged, and skills honed. It is a site of ideology: a place in which a particular view of reading/writing texts is put forth and through this view support is given to the dominant social order. By regarding writing as "craft" and proposing realism as the mode of writing, the fiction workshop in collaboration with humanist critics fulfills its ideological role in the dominant academy by preserving the subject as "independent" and "free."...a subject who perceives herself as self-constituted and free so...can then "freely" collaborate with the existing social system, a collaboration that assures the continuation of patriarchal capitalism (161)

So by excluding the examination of cultural and historical forces, the workshop preserves these forces in their present form.

Their critique of the realist workshop's view of creativity:

"Creativity," in other words, is the ability to transcend the political, the economic, and in short the "material" conditions of writing (transcend the "order external to" oneself) as a social person and arrive at a transdiscursive space. It is in this unbounded space, free of all political, social, economic, and linguistic constraints, that the creative person is able to penetrate the opacities of culture and experience reality in its absolute plenitude. (163)

The emphasis on "voice" and "finding" one's unique, singular, personal voice reinforces the political agenda of the independent subject:

Far from being "singular," the voice is in fact a "construct"-a politically needed cultural product produced // by professionals of ideology such as...writers who direct fiction workshops across the country. The commodification of"voice" and of individuality in the fiction workshop is in fact the major political role played by creative writing programs (165-166)

On character:

Character (the model for the free subject) is depicted as a unitary and coherent individual who is always unique and, in his most authentic mode, solitary-like an entrepreneur, he works all by himself. Through individual characters realistically portrayed, the reader discovers his own subjectivity. The valorization of character in the fiction workshop, in other words, is part of its cultural politics in legitimizing the ruling values of capitalism. (167)

They don't like causality, either. Character, realism and causality are forces of patriarchal Capitalism. Seems kind of arbitrary. What if a-causal, non-realistic fiction without characters sold like hot-cakes? Wouldn't that make "experimental" fiction an ideological apparatus of the state? And what of realist fiction published in communist and/or socialist nations? Is that capitalism creeping in? Or simply a reinforcement of their own status quo, making realism exactly the neutral aesthetic M&Z don't want it to be.

Here's what they have to say about Nadine Gordimer, of all people:

Her texts work to legitimate a reformist program by offering a local critique of apartheid and thus help to forestall a radical reorganization of social arrangements in South Africa. In this respect, she is actually undertaking the same ideological program being undertaken by many white South African investment bankers and other capitalists against the wishes of the
present government. (171)

Which exposes the problem with Marxist criticism. It's all very smart and interesting and then eventually reveals that nothing short of full Marxist propaganda will ever be good enough. If you're not advocating the overthrow of the state and the installation of worker control over the means of production, you're just a puppet of capitalist ideology no matter how socially progressive your message.

And, of course, these guys are hypocrites. They publish marketable prose that in no way upsets the status quo. For all their talk of radical theory, M&Z have adjusted quite well to the comforts of the academy and the security of tenure (or the tenure process). In fact, publications like this are little more than efforts at tenure, since Marxist critique is a salable good in the academic marketplace. Journals are likely to publish, publications are likely to please tenure committees, and tenure makes for happy "Marxists", securely positioned in the Capitalist regime, their work appropriated by an intelligentsia with no interest in large-scale social reform.

Here's what they think the workshop should be doing:

Instead of "resisting" theory in the name of the free subject, the fiction workshop should be the pedagogical space in which the processes of signification in texts of culture are to be examined and the construction of what is represented as "reality" is made intelligible. By undertaking such an inquiry and political critique, rather than adopting the traditional stance of the humanist ideologies and "resisting" theory, the radical fiction workshop will propose theory as resistance to all semiotic constructs of culture which are offered as "natural," "eternal," and "unchangeable" and will discover under their seeming eternity the historical interests of the dominant social class and its texts. (173)

So essentially, they want to do to student texts what they did to Gordimer: "Can't you see, dear student, that you are merely a puppet of patriarchal Capitalism?" They want to forward their own ideology in the classroom, and their own postmodern aesthetic which they mistakenly feel best expresses their ideology. (*Gravity's Rainbow* was a bestseller, right? As was *Underworld*.) There is no indication from M&Z about how Marxism will make students better writers, but then, making students better writers is not the goal of these authors. They are not interested in helping students learn to write, they are interested in posing as radical social critics in order to forward their careers in the academy. Just like the rest of us.

Anyway, they do provide a valuable service in opening a conversation about the politics and culture of the workshop. They point out all the right problems, even if their solution lacks integrity.

LEADS:
Pierre Macherey, A Theory of Literary Production, trans. Geoffrey Wall (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 66.

Derrida *On Grammatology*

Marjorie Perloff, " 'Homeward Ho!': Silicon Valley Pushkin," American Poetry Review (November-December 1986): 45

Moxley: CW in America

Just picked a few articles that looked the most useful.

Valerie Miner "The Book in the World"

Really interesting stuff here. She describes what sounds like a vital class, one that should be required rather than labeled "experimental." Students take internships and examine the social realities of publishing and sales of books. "Social issues in publishing" is the name of the course.

Her list of theoretical issues reads like a recipe for a chapter of my thesis:

The theoretical issues include: literacy in the United States; regional identity in publishing; the economics of conglomerate houses and independent firms; the role of the critic in society, the treatment of under-represented cultures in publishing, First Amendment rights and responsibilities. (228)

Or close, anyway. She found the connection between literacy and CW, and its "social issues" related to publishing creative work. Smart.

Here's her defense of the course against those who feel that students should be shielded from the social and economic realities of publishing:

I'm not teaching people to compromise their art to suit the bestseller list or the elite list of celebrated literary houses. Quite the opposite, I'm saying that writers need to know about the world around them to understand how to protect the integrity of their work. // As artists, it's crucial to understand how we function as social agents...it is essential to understand what does and doesn't get published and why...By studying the *context* of the making of literature we can preserve good writers from early discouragement...the more we understand how our work is treated in the world, the more likely we are to survive and succeed as writers. (233-234)

And here's her take on one important aspect of the racial inequity involved in publishing:

[An] American legend worth examining is the notion that "any good book eventually gets published." If we live in a country where—as popular myth would have it—anyone can grow up to be president, certainly anyone can be a writer. The truth is that in either case you may succeed more readily on the basis of race, gender, social or geographic status. (234)

I agree on both points, President Obama's incumbency notwithstanding.

A few LEADS, and other books I found while on Amazon:

editors on editing

book publishing industry 2nd ed

Books: the culture and commerce of publishing


Eve Shelnutt "Notes from a Cell: Creative Writing Programs in Isolation"

Shelnutt's article offers a powerful critique of CW programs and the state of literature in America. I'll let her do most of the talking:

The unsettling fact is that in America the majority of new "serious" imaginative writing is being produced by writers trained in M.F.A. programs staffed by teachers who themselves are products of M.F.A. programs.
The intellectual climate in these programs ceases to be of provincial concern when publishers, the reading public, and alumni of M.F.A. programs are congruent...Moreover, when so many aspiring writers and publishing teachers are gathered under the umbrella organization of the Associated Writing Programs (AWP), which concerns itself, among other things, with developing connections with publishers, it becomes difficult to discern how much the publishing industry is influenced by writing spawned in M.F.A. programs (4)

I remember at Alice James books that decisions on the poetry contest (the only way they published) were made by the board, and that the board was made up primarily of graduates of Iowa City. While I was there, we published three or four poets, all of them fellow alumni. I don't think this was intentional, or the workings of a good-old-boy network. Rather, Iowa City produces a particular aesthetic, valued and promulgated by its graduates. When the board read from the submissions, they naturally gravitated toward their own. That said, these were not blind readings, so a the more cynical explanation could still be true. Either way, this to some extent verifies Shelnutt's complaint.

Shelnutt connects the proliferation of literary journals with the rise of MFA programs and the new availability of federal and state money for the arts. Graduates and teachers needed places to publish, and CW departments needed a public face that would legitimize their "contribution" to letters, so the journals filled these needs. Because they are motivated by these needs rather than a desire to find and encourage the best available writing, these journals are not, according to Shelnutt, providing much of a service to contemporary literature. And small university presses, since they base their decisions to some degree on an author's track record with the lit journals, these presses are not exactly a beacon of hope, either. Intellectual fiction, and the writer as a public intellectual, are not supported by this state of affairs.

the relevant questions seem to me to be, *what* are we teaching students who come to us wanting to learn how to write fiction, poetry, and nonfiction? And how does what we teach or fail to teach affect contemporary literature? (8)

The assumption is that the AWP, or the collective CW programs, exercise a great deal of influence over the direction of American lit. If it's all McPoetry or whatever, then that's bad news.

I have come to believe that M.F.A. students are largely separated from the broader intellectual life of the university, and...I see this separation as augmenting publishers' economic moves away from quality literature (9)

Interesting how she ties the MFA to publishing and economic factors...

Then there's this:

There are no theorists of the teaching of creative writing equal to the theorists in literature and composition. (15)

If that isn't a call to arms, I don't know what is.

Important to address are "considerations of a writer's attitude to language and form as carriers *in themselves* of political and social assumptions as well as methods by which subtle social and political affects are or can be expressed in imaginative writing. (20)

In defense of theory:

Knowing of and thinking about contemporary theories of criticism does not mean an M.F.A. student must embrace the theories...The M.F.A. student may want to consider new ways of thinking about literature when encountering new literary works. (21)

LEADS

Looks like we gots to get Gass's article. Solid critique of the MFA.


Moxley's article "Tearing Down the Walls: Engaging the Imagination"

Moxley surveys comp theory, like Bishop, and is most helpful for his leads

He suggests Erika Lindermann *A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers* OUP 1987 for a survey of prewriting strategies.

This guy did a really interesting experiment on productivity under constraint:
Boice, Robert. "The Neglected Third Factor in Writing: Productivity." *College Composition and Communication* 36: 472-80.

these two sources suggest that teachers comment on student writing based on a student's intentions and purpose:
Knoblauch, C. H., and Lil Brannon. "Teacher Commentary on Student Writing: The State of the Art." *Freshman English News* 10: 1-4.
Sommers, Nancy. "Responding to Student Writing." CCC 33:1-3, 7.

He make this weird claim:

Many creative writers reject all the have read when they sit down to write. Instead of mimicking work they admire, creative writers turn their focus inward toward the depths of inner speech...Many creative writers look inside, assessing what they've internalized, as opposed to mimicking what they admire (37)

Then he quotes Salinger...or one of Salinger's narrators to this effect:

Ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself (38)

This may reflect what many writers report of their process, and so, for those writers, it may be appropriate to leave well enough alone. However, Moxley proposes that writers are actually doing what they thing they are doing, which is rather impossible. No one can "reject all they have read" nor is there any "inner speech" somehow essentially separate from public speech. The writer can't really originate text out of thin air; writer's draw on what they know, what they have read. They may do something new, but only new in relation to and in conversation with what has come before. Moxley needed more emphasis on the "internalized" and less emphasis on the "reject".

As for Buddy Glass, he is not claiming that audience does not matter, but merely that he, himself is also a reader and is therefore his own best chance of understanding what readers think like, what they like, what they want from a work of fiction. "You were a *reader*" he says "long before you were a writer."

Moxley goes on:

Contrary to the rhetorical paradigm, writers like Aldous Huxley don't bother with the thoughts of external audiences when they're writing: "I've never made a point of writing for any particular person or audience; I've simply tried to do the best job I could and let it go at that." (38)

But what is a "good job" for Huxley? How does he know when he's done one? Surely he can't think his standards for good writing are wholly original, private, originating in himself. A "good job" of writing is always a good job of saying something in a way that achieves a desired effect for a particular audience, even when that audience is not consciously addressed and the writer never bothers to investigate his/her concept of "reader."

Janet Emig comes up again:
"Writing as a mode of learning" CCC 1977 28: 122-28

Weis brings brain research from the 80s into her work:
Weis, Monica R. "Current Brain Research and the Composing Process" In *The Writer's Mind: Writing as a Mode of Thinking,* edited by Janice Hays, Phylis Roth, Jon Ramsey, Robert Foulke, 25-34. Urbana: NCTE, 1983.

*The Courage to Create* by Rollo May looks really good, and that in conjunction with *The Mirror and the Lamp* would make for the beginnings of a decent paper on creativity.

Selzer Jack, "Exploring options in Composing." CCC 35 1984: 276-84

Why do I feel like I'm stuck in the 80s???

Murray, Donald. "Teach Writing as a Process not a Product." In *Learning by TEaching* Upper Montclair, N.J.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., 1982, 14-39.

Because I AM stuck in the 80s. Cue the Wham!


Finally, a quote from Moxley's intro, which summarizes the content of the collection:

Taken as a whole, these authors and editors make the following recommendations: (1) student writers must be readers—a background in literature and criticism enables student writers to identify and produce creative work, (2) academic training in writing must be rigorous and diverse; (3) student writers must have an understanding of the composing process and a knowledge of a variety of composing strategies; and (4) student writers must master the fundamentals of craft. (xvi)

LAST LEAD:
To catch me up on process pedagogy, Lad Tobin's article in this book might help. In fact, the whole book should offer a nice overview of comp pedagogy and what it might have to teach CW. Maybe it ends in the 80s, maybe there's more to read. either way, Tobin will fill me in.

Writer's Chronicle

Just got the AWP rag in the mail and I have to say I'm disappointed. There's not much to it, and what there is...

I read "Odds on Ends," an article about "How to Stop Writing," by which the author means how to end a short story. Here she is being offensively dismissive of other writer's work:

The end of Ian McEwan's novels are all dreadful...Michael Ondaatje's endings leave readers hanging. No Country For Old Men felt like the first part of a two-part serial, and as for the last paragraph of The Road? Ridiculous.

Yikes. How can she get published, saying things like that? Maybe the endings are bad, I don't know, but to dismiss the work of authors without any discussion of the work, without any explanation at all...jeez.

And then there's this:

Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary soldier on long after their heroines have disappeared, to their detriment I might add.

It just strikes me as odd that the professional journal of writing programs would publish a paper that is so flagrantly dismissive of other writers. Without any analysis or argument even. Maybe she has a good point to make. We might even benefit if she explained herself. But she doesn't. And she doesn't have to. Apparently.

As for the last line of Joyce's "The Dead":

We would tear that apart in a workshop—too many adverbs, too much alliteration.

And it's honestly hard to say if there is any self-aware irony to that statement. Maybe just a glimmer. If so, she doesn't bother to stop and reflect on workshop practices that work against lyrical endings by imposing restrictive aesthetic standards on student work. There is nowhere in the article any pedagogical reflection whatsoever.

Her article, when not dismissing (or sometimes praising) novels in passing, consists mostly of "suggestions," which are supposed to help...who? Any other writer, apparently, although it's hard to imagine that the author really intends such advice for her peers.

Be careful not to end with a dream...readers tend to skip them.

We want our evil characters to be punished before they go and our good guys to be redeemed before they go.

Mirror-image your scenes.

Think circularly.

Aim for a beautiful ending.

Then, slipping from "craft" suggestions to "process" suggestions without apparently recognizing the distinction:

Meditate.

Keep a dream journal.

Be attentive to any ideas that come to you in the shower.

Find a stick and write in the sand.

Etc.

Missing from the paper entirely is any survey of critical literature that might help illuminate the question of what an "ending" is and what qualities make a "good" one. There's plenty she could draw from. But she doesn't mention any of it. Hasn't read it by all appearances. Her "lit review" covers only "how to" manuals. And these she quotes without even citing them or providing references. It's just not even remotely academic. I guess that's what's so shocking to me. Maybe I just have to get over it.

But I can't let this one go without comment:

This, by the way, is why I think we say that writing can't be taught. So much of it is based on the body's physical response. If you don't feel that sick twitch of shame, even when the sentimental or manipulative is pointed out to you, no one can teach it to you. This doesn't mean your work won't sell or be popular. I just means it won't be any good. If you don't hear that little "click" when the end snaps into place no one can teach that to you either...there is no other way for me to describe it—you hear "click" and the treasure box opens.

The passage assumes a special intuition belonging only to great writers (like the author of course) that can't be taught (even though the author makes her living teaching CW). It also sets the author up as arbiter of "good," which strikes me as the foundation of really bad workshop pedagogy. Writing instructor as guru of goodness. I don't think I want to look inside that "treasure box."

Her article does shed light on the state of the current conversation in CW. It suddenly makes sense to me that so many folks who actually are writing academically about CW pedagogy and theory argue for the value of formalist criticism. Judging by the AWP's publication, the scholarly conversation is at square one and will have to be moved forward one step at a time.

No wonder there is so much negative feeling toward Theory. People are working toward tenure without having to be academic, and any push in the direction of scholarly discourse must feel like a threat. Much safer to publish "advice" in the Writer's Chronicle and call it a day.

This means to participate in the conversation, I have to be really, really careful about how I make my points. I'm going to have to keep reading this thing and thinking about ways to make a bridge between the unconsidered stance of writers like the one I quoted above, and the hyper-considered work in Theory.

How do you convince these folks that Theory matters? That there actually are things you can teach beyond "suggestions"?