Saturday, October 30, 2010

A LOOK AT A STUDENT'S WORK W/COMMENTS

Hi folks,
I thought perhaps a glimpse at one of my student’s work for the week and the comments I furnished him might prove useful to others undergoing the same struggle. I’ve changed the student’s name (to protect the guilty…)—I’ll call him “Ben”—and have his blessing to use this. He’s a terrific student in the best sense of the word. He started as a true beginner and while his fiction isn’t yet ready to be up for the National Book Award, it’s improved considerably in just a few weeks. He takes notice of everything and doesn’t just pay lip service to it, but goes out immediately and implements the lessons learned. Every single week he has gotten better and better, and you can’t ask for anything more of a student in any discipline. I’m proud to call him my student and I hope he’s equally proud to call me his teacher.

I ask all of my students (and clients) to begin with a 15-20 word outline, to serve both as a road map for them on their novel journey and for me to be sure they’re delivering a sound structure for their novels.

I also ask each of my students to comment on each other’s work. At the end of my own comments, I’m including those of one of Ben’s classmates, whom I’ll call “Brenda.” Many times (as in this case), other students come up with even better criticisms than I had as you’ll see.

Here’s Ben’s story in progress:

Inciting Incident: Davis gets caught getting high.
Development:
  1. Davis enters treatment to save marriage.
  2. Davis leaves treatment.
  3. Wife leaves with daughter.
  4. Davis reenters treatment to win family back.
Resolution:
Davis loses wife but becomes a better father.

The Second Chance
Davis had pretended to be asleep for nearly an hour. His mind tossed and turned but on the outside he remained motionless. When he heard his wife’s familiar snore, he inched backwards beneath the covers until he reached the edge of the bed.
He slipped free of the bed and watched Michelle to be certain she hadn’t moved. He continued to watch for any movement and stepped backwards toward the door.
Outside the room he began to walk with confidence. He headed down the hall and paused at his daughter’s room. Out of habit he peeked into the room to be certain that she was asleep.
He could lose hours by the side of her crib. He loved to watch Samantha sleep—the way her lips moved, the way she smiled, the way she cooed—she was his little angel. He couldn’t watch her tonight though. He was a man on a mission.
His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. At the end of the hall he entered the living room and navigated the furniture. He reached behind the blinds, unlocked the sliding glass door, and slipped into the night.
When he sat down in the comfort of his patio chair, he reached for the pack of cigarettes hidden behind the potted rose bush. He lit a cigarette and took a long, steady drag.
He had anticipated getting high all day. He wanted to please his wife, but the 12-step meetings and sobriety chips did nothing for him.
Tonight he was going to please himself.
He set the cigarette in the ashtray and stuck his fingers back into the pack. He retrieved a small glass pipe and turned the pack upside down until a few tiny rocks fell into his hand.
He put one into the pipe and lit the end until white smoke filled the chamber. He kept the flame steady and inhaled until his lungs were full. His ability to wait all day for this moment was the only proof he needed to convince himself he was in control.
With the smoke in his lungs his body immediately began to feel the cocaine—a warm rush flooded through his veins and his body began to quiver.
The first hit was always the best.
But now his addiction was wide awake. He forgot that he was supposed to be in control and smoked a night’s worth of crack in less than half an hour.
And the night had only just begun. He crept back into the house, grabbed some clothes and his keys, and snuck out the front door.
He went to the ATM, the dealer’s house, and was home before midnight. He didn’t even stop to take a hit.
He pulled into the driveway but something didn’t seem right. Oh shit—had he left the kitchen light on?
He was stuck. Maybe he was just being paranoid. He tried to think of a story. But the door opened and there was Michelle—crack pipe in hand.
“It’s over” she said. “I’m done with you.”
“Baby…” he said.
“Don’t baby me, you blew your last chance” she said.
“Baby, it’s not what you think…” He started to recite his lie.
“It’s not what I think? You’re not high? You didn’t choose drugs over your daughter? You didn’t choose drugs over me?” She threw the pipe at him. It bounced off his shoulder and landed on the passenger floor.
“Baby, I messed up. I’m sorry.” He started to get out of the car.
“No, I messed up by giving you another chance.” She pushed the car door closed. “Samantha will never see you high again.”
“But baby…” he said. “I need my family. I love you.” He started to work up tears.
“You love getting high” she said. “I won’t let you hurt us ever again.”
“Baby, I’m sorry. I need you.” He continued the apology.
“No, you need help. And I can’t help you anymore.”
“What am I supposed to do?” He couldn’t hold back his tears. He hoped they would have their usual effect. They didn’t.
“Check into treatment, check into the hospital” she said. “Be a man for once.”
She walked into the house and slammed the door.
He was mad at himself for getting caught. His tears failed and he wiped his eyes. He punched the dashboard and reached for his cell phone. She didn’t answer.
He tried again. No answer.
The pattern of arguments with his wife had been fairly consistent. She yelled, she screamed, she threw things at him. She complained about his selfishness, his weakness, his lack of concern for the marriage. The fighting would go on for hours and he would wind up sleeping on the couch. Something was different this time. Yeah. It didn’t go on for hours. It lasted maybe 25 seconds. Kidding, Ben, but also to illustrate a point. This really should be a bigger scene than it is. Don’t worry about it now—just keep going and come back to this on your first major rewrite. Not a bunch of arguing, which gets tedious quickly, but a scene where it’s developed more fully, instead of a “wham-bam, thank you, ma’am” kind of thing. Give us his thoughts as the scene progresses, that kind of thing. Make sense? Again, don’t address it now, but when you finish the novel, this is one of the places I’d go back and address.
He thought about his options. He felt the world close in and knew she was right about treatment. He didn’t want to admit he was an addict. He didn’t want to admit he was out of control.
He thumbed through the papers in the center console. He looked for the info he picked up at one of his meetings. It had numbers to a drug detox center and treatment facilities. Had he thrown it away?
He looked through the trash on the floor until he found the crumpled paper. He couldn’t read the phone numbers scribbled on it and he turned on the dome light. He went through the motions and found the name of a man he recognized from one of the meetings. He wasn’t sure he was making the right move when he dialed the phone.
“Hello,” a man’s voice said.
“Is this Jessie?” he said.
“Who wants to know?” the man said.
“This is Davis. You gave me your number at one of the meetings.”
“Cool. What’s up? How are you?” Jessie said.
“Not well, my (Comma splice.) wife caught me getting high.”
“Guess you relapsed, huh? The idea is to call someone before you pick up,” Jessie said.
“I fucked up. I need to get into treatment or my wife is through with me.”
“Do you want to get clean?” Jessie said. “Are you willing to do what it takes?”
I need to, I don’t have a choice, can you help me?” (Two comma splices here.)
“Hold on, I’ll call you right back.”
He looked at his phone to make sure the ringer was on and stepped out of his car. The front door was locked and when he opened it he realized the latch was in place. How many times had he broken the latch to get in when he was intoxicated? Tonight this didn’t seem like a good idea.
“Baby, please let me in,” he said. His face pressed against the door. The light came on.
“Go away! I swear I’ll call the police on you.” Her response was cold.
“Baby, I’m on the phone with a friend from the program. I need you and Sam, just give me a chance.”
“Don’t talk to me again until you’re sober.” She slammed the door close and bolted it. The kitchen light went out.
He put his head into his hands and sighed. He started pacing in the driveway. His phone rang, it was Jessie.
“There’s a bed for you at detox if you’re interested,” Jessie said. “Are you drunk or just high?”
“High,” he said. “How does detox work?”
“Have a few drinks so you’ve got liquor in your system. They’ll keep you for a couple of days and work to find you the best treatment options.” He’s telling him to drink? Would a person interested in helping him say this? This just doesn’t ring true. I imagine most readers are going to be thinking the same thing, so I’d address this. If Jesse has some kind of reason for this advice, I’d give it. In fact, I’d think Davis himself would want to know why he’s advising him to get drunk and ask him. Make sense?
Jessie gave him directions and offered to pick him up.
“Thanks, I can find it,” he said. He hung up the phone with a plan in place. The crack in his pocket had been calling to him throughout this ordeal. He could finally respond to that call.
He dialed his wife one more time. He knew she wouldn’t answer but his plan was to leave a message anyway.
“Baby, I love you and Sam and am going to do everything right this time. I am on my way to detox and they’ll help me find the treatment I need. Please have faith in me.”
He turned the dome light back on and found the crack pipe she threw at him. It was intact.
He knew exactly what he should do. His addiction knew exactly what he would do. He turned on his car, put it into reverse, and pulled out of the driveway.
He followed Jessie’s instructions and made a beeline to get some booze. A couple miles later he pulled into the drive-thru at the liquor store.
            “A 12-pack of Budweiser, a pint of Jack Daniels, and a pack of Camel filters in the box.” He reached for his wallet and pulled out some bills.
            He broke the seal of the Jack Daniels bottle with his teeth before he pulled out of the parking lot.
            “At least you love me.” He took a long swig. Several miles later he pulled his car into Falcon Park. No one was around so he parked the car and turned off the ignition.
            “Now where was I…” he He cracked open a cold beer and reached for his crack pipe. He settled into the routine of hit, swig, drink a beer. Occasionally(,) he broke up the routine with a cigarette.
            Halfway through the bottle the remaining beers started to get warm. He decided to take one last hit and head towards detox.
He looked at his cell phone. No calls. The drugs and the alcohol weren’t doing their job. His wife was really mad at him this time and he wished he could go home. “I’ve got to set things right. Ben, this is the second time you’ve got him talking out loud to himself. I’d try to avoid that kind of thing. A guy talking to himself comes across as a kind of loon. I’d just have him think it.

Ben, you’ve come an incredibly long way since we started and should be extremely proud of yourself. The problem you need to attack now is that while this is written so much better, there’s just no sense of urgency or tension to it. It’s coming across as mostly a “sort of” bad situation for Davis and not much of a sense of this being a life-altering event for him. Sentences like: His wife was really mad at him this time and he wished he could go home serve to render this as merely a “bad day at the office” kind of thing. We don’t see any desperation, much of anything besides a kind of ennui or mild frustration.

This is one of those tough parts of writing. At this stage, I suspect you’re still learning the difference between melodrama and drama and it’s a steep learning curve. For instance, characters arguing isn’t usually drama at all—it’s mostly tiresome and melodramatic. But, until a writer learns the many nuances of how to impart emotion, it seems to be the only choice. How does one overcome that? By reading people who do it well and appropriate their techniques. I’m going to share a story beginning in a bit to show you what I mean.

First, a great way to infuse this with drama and make his inciting incident ring true and impact the reader emotionally, is to show the depths of his addiction. If you do that, then it doesn’t take much of a scene between him and his wife to complete the inciting incident.

Here’s a story beginning showing a guy in the throes of addiction that do just that. This is from John Sandford’s Easy Prey. It begins:

            When the first man woke up that morning, he wasn’t thinking about killing anyone. He woke up with a head full of blues, a brain that was too big for his skull, and a bladder about to burst. He lay with his eyes closed, breathing across a tongue that tasted like burnt chicken feathers. The blues rolled in through the bedroom door.
            Coming down hard.
            He had been flying on cocaine for three days, getting everything done, everything. Then last night, coming down, he’d stopped at a liquor store for a bottle of Stolichnaya. His bleeding brain retained a picture of himself lifting the bottle off the shelf, and another picture of an argument with the counterman, who didn’t want to break a hundred-dollar bill.
            By that time, the coke high had become unsustainable; and the Stoli had been a bad idea. There was no smooth landing after a three-day toot, but the vodka turned a wheels-up belly landing into a full crash-and-burn. Now he’d pay. If you peeled open his skull and dumped it, he thought, his brain would look like a coagulated lump of Campbell’s bean soup.
            He cracked his eyes, lifted his head, and looked at the clock. A fewminutes past seven. He’d gotten four hours of sleep. Par for the course with coke, and the Stoli hadn’t helped. If he’d stayed down for ten hours, or twelve—he needed about sixteen to catch up—he might have been past the worst of it. Now he was just gonna have to suck it up.
            He turned to his left, where a woman, a dishwater blonde, lay facedown in her pillow. He could only see about half of her head; the rest was buried by a red fleece blanket. She lay without moving, like a dead woman—but no such luck. He closed his eyes again, and there was nothing left in the world but the blues music bumping in from the next room, from the all-blues channel, nine-hundred-and-something on the TV dial. Must’ve left it on last night…

And so on. See how we’re into this guy’s head and into his addiction at the very beginning? This is what you’re missing. We’re kind of “told” he’s a crack addict, but since we don’t get a very good account of how that addiction impacts him, we don’t feel anything emotionally. Picture Sandford’s opening here and then picture how you can use something like this in yours. This is what writers do—we steal techniques. Why it’s so important to read widely and avidly.

Also, look at how a master like Sandford uses original language to convey an image. “Tasted like burnt chicken feathers.” “His bleeding brain.” “Woke with a head full of blues.” “Blues music bumping in from the next room.” There are more, but these few give you the idea. While a nonwriter might look at a guy suffering from addiction and just see a guy nodding off, Sandford gets us inside the guy and delivers how he’s feeling and suffering with wonderful, wonderful language. At the end of reading this, is there any doubt this guy has a jones?

He also begins with the very first sentence, promising trouble about to happen, with:

When the first man woke up that morning, he wasn’t thinking about killing anyone.

This is the kind of thing to work on, Ben. Painting a picture with words. Delivering emotion. Showing Davis as an addict, not telling us. Not writing a scene just showing the character’s actions. That’s screenwriting, not fiction.

Hope this helps!

Read, read, and read some more… and then steal the stuff that works.

Blue skies,
Les

Now—here’s Ben's fellow classmate Brenda’s take on his work:

The Second Chance
Davis pretended to be asleep for nearly an hour. His mind tossed and turned but on the outside he remained motionless. When he heard his wife’s familiar snore, he inched backwards beneath the covers until he reached the edge of the bed.
He slipped free of the bed and watched Michelle to be certain she hadn’t moved. He continued to watch for any movement and stepped backwards toward the door.
Outside the room he began to walk with confidence. He headed down the hall and paused at his daughter’s room. Out of habit he peeked into the room to be certain that she was asleep.
He could lose hours by the side of her crib. He loved to watch Samantha sleep—the way her lips moved, the way she smiled, the way she cooed—she was his little angel. He couldn’t watch her tonight though. He was a man on a mission.
His eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. At the end of the hall he entered the living room and navigated the furniture. He reached behind the blinds, unlocked the sliding glass door, and slipped into the night.
When he sat down in the comfort of his patio chair, he reached for the pack of cigarettes hidden behind the potted rose bush. He lit a cigarette and took a long, steady drag.
He had anticipated getting high all day. He wanted to please his wife, but the 12-step meetings and sobriety chips did nothing for him. So his previous drug of choice was alcohol? Not just crack?
Tonight he was going to please himself.
He set the cigarette in the ashtray and stuck his fingers back into the pack. He retrieved a small glass pipe and turned the pack upside down until a few tiny rocks fell into his hand.
He put one into the pipe and lit the end until white smoke filled the chamber. He kept the flame steady and inhaled until his lungs were full. His ability to wait all day for this moment was the only proof he needed to convince himself he was in control.
With the smoke in his lungs his body immediately began to feel the cocaine—a warm rush flooded through his veins and his body began to quiver.
The first hit was always the best.
But now his addiction was wide awake. He forgot that he was supposed to be in control and smoked a night’s worth of crack in less than half an hour. You’re doing a lot of telling and not much showing. I’m not feeling like I’m getting a lot from him personally. A lot of this so far is reading somewhat impersonally. How can you make this seem more real to us? What details can you give?
And the night had only just begun. He crept back into the house, grabbed some clothes and his keys, and snuck out the front door.
He went to the ATM, the dealer’s house, and was home before midnight. He didn’t even stop to take a hit.
He pulled into the driveway but something didn’t seem right. Oh shit—had he left the kitchen light on? See, here feels personal. He’s asking himself something. Much of the above feels like reporter-mode.
He was stuck. Maybe he was just being paranoid. He tried to think of a story. But the door opened and there was Michelle—crack pipe in hand.
“It’s over,” she said. “I’m done with you.”
“Baby…” he said.
“Don’t baby me, you blew your last chance,” she said. You need commas at the end of dialogue that would typically end in a period.
“Baby, it’s not what you think…” He started to recite his lie.
“It’s not what I think? You’re not high? You didn’t choose drugs over your daughter? You didn’t choose drugs over me?” She threw the pipe at him. It bounced off his shoulder and landed on the passenger floor.
“Baby, I messed up. I’m sorry.” He started to get out of the car. Sorry, but so far the dialogue is reading like every cliché stereotype of this scene I’ve heard of. How can you make it more unique? Less expected? More lifelike?
“No, I messed up by giving you another chance.” She pushed the car door closed. “Samantha will never see you high again.”
“But baby…” he said. “I need my family. I love you.” He started to work up tears. I don’t believe him. I believe her, even though her speech is wooden and predictable. There isn’t enough internalization of his thoughts on their loss for me to believe he’s sad or in any way moved by the conversation.
Hmm. You weren’t getting the comma/punctuation thing earlier, so let’s try this way.“You love getting high, YOU NEED COMMA HERE” she said. “I won’t let you hurt us ever again.”
“Baby, I’m sorry. I need you.” He continued the apology. Still not believing him. There’s no heart here. No feelings, no emotions to be read. So far, he’s reading like a robot, and she like a bad soap opera actress.
“No, you need help. And I can’t help you anymore.”
“What am I supposed to do?” He couldn’t hold back his tears. He hoped they would have their usual effect. They didn’t.
“Check into treatment, check into the hospital, YOU NEED COMMA HERE” she said. “Be a man for once.” Okay. Now here is some personality. You need a lot more of it. For her, for him. Etc.
She walked into the house and slammed the door.
I think you’re struggling with something I used to a few years ago. Setting emotions on the page. So far, there’s no real thought process. No vulnerability. Nothing relatable to this fellow. If you want us to sympathize with him, you gotta let us in on what he’s thinking. What his thought process is. You’ve got to show us the internal struggle. Addiction is all about internal struggle. Weighing the pros against the cons, and doing what feels good. You aren’t showing us any of that struggle with him. In fact, he seems so utterly disconnected from his actions, his dialogue and his setting, that it’s almost like he’s operating on a totally separate wavelength that we don’t have access to. Which is bad for your reader, because they’ll never make the necessary connection with him in order to keep reading. He needs redeeming features. Internalization goes a long way in helping with that.
He was mad at himself for getting caught. His tears failed and he wiped his eyes. He punched the dashboard and reached for his cell phone. She didn’t answer.
He tried again. No answer.
The pattern of arguments with his wife had been fairly consistent. She yelled, she screamed, she threw things at him. She complained about his selfishness, his weakness, his lack of concern for the marriage. The fighting would go on for hours and he would wind up sleeping on the couch. Something was different this time. Here’s some internalization. But it’s not enough and not soon enough. You need to launch into his thoughts a lot earlier than this.
He thought about his options. He felt the world close in and knew she was right about treatment. He didn’t want to admit he was an addict. He didn’t want to admit he was out of control.
He thumbed through the papers in the center console. He looked for the info he picked up at one of his meetings. It had numbers to a drug detox center and treatment facilities. Had he thrown it away?
He looked through the trash on the floor until he found the crumpled paper. He couldn’t read the phone numbers scribbled on it and he turned on the dome light. He went through the motions and found the name of a man he recognized from one of the meetings. He wasn’t sure he was making the right move when he dialed the phone.
“Hello,” a man’s voice said.
“Is this Jessie?” he said.
“Who wants to know?” the man said.
“This is Davis. You gave me your number at one of the meetings.”
“Cool. What’s up? How are you?” Jessie said.
“Not well, my wife caught me getting high.”
I like this guy’s dialogue. He sounds real. You need to spread that goodness all around.“Guess you relapsed, huh? The idea is to call someone before you pick up, YOU NEED COMMA HERE” Jessie said.
“I fucked up. I need to get into treatment or my wife is through with me.”
“Do you want to get clean?” Jessie said. “Are you willing to do what it takes?”
“I need to. I don’t have a choice. Can you help me?”
“Hold on. I’ll call you right back.”
He looked at his phone to make sure the ringer was on and stepped out of his car. The front door was locked and when he opened it he realized the latch was in place. Can you show us this without directly reporting it from his eyes? What did it look like? What sound did it make? How many times had he broken the latch to get in when he was intoxicated? Tonight this didn’t seem like a good idea. Ah. It took a second to make the connection that this is his own house. You need to tell us that a bit sooner.
“Baby, please let me in,” he said. His face pressed against the door. The light came on.
“Go away! I swear I’ll call the police on you.” Her response was cold. Really? Cuz with that explanation point, it sounds more angry than cold.
“Baby, I’m on the phone with a friend from the program. I need you and Sam, just give me a chance.” Technically, a lie. The dude hung up. He’s waiting for a call back, right?
“Don’t talk to me again until you’re sober.” She slammed the door close and bolted it. The kitchen light went out.
He put his head into his hands and sighed. He started pacing in the driveway. His phone rang, it was Jessie.
“There’s a bed for you at detox if you’re interested,” Jessie said. “Are you drunk or just high?”
“High,” he said. “How does detox work?” He doesn’t already know? Hasn’t he be going to meetings? Don’t they talk about how things like that work?
“Have a few drinks so you’ve got liquor in your system. They’ll keep you for a couple of days and work to find you the best treatment options.”
Jessie gave him directions and offered to pick him up.
“Thanks, I can find it,” he said. He hung up the phone with a plan in place. The crack in his pocket had been calling to him throughout this ordeal. He could finally respond to that call.
He dialed his wife one more time. He knew she wouldn’t answer but his plan was to leave a message anyway.
“Baby, I love you and Sam and am going to do everything right this time. I am on my way to detox and they’ll help me find the treatment I need. Please have faith in me.” I’m not buying this instanteous “Oops. Shit, I got caught. But ho-hum, I’m immediately off to detox because you’re pissed and I want to appease you. Diddly-dee, Here I am at Detox. Surely, this will not make her mad at me anymore.” Does this make any sense to you?
He turned the dome light back on and found the crack pipe she threw at him. It was intact.
He knew exactly what he should do. His addiction knew exactly what he would do. Here’s some of that internal struggle I was talking about. But it’s not enough. Stretch it out. What does everything mean to him? We need a longer thought-process.He turned on his car, put it into reverse, and pulled out of the driveway.
He followed Jessie’s instructions and made a beeline to get some booze. A couple miles later he pulled into the drive-thru at the liquor store. Okay. This makes no sense. The guy said it’d be okay to show up high. Now he thinks that’s an excuse to show up drunk AND high? Even if it doesn’t make good sense to us, you need to make us believe that HE thinks it’s a good idea. Otherwise, we’re too lost in disbelief.
            “A 12-pack of Budweiser, a pint of Jack Daniels, and a pack of Camel filters in the box.” He reached for his wallet and pulled out some bills.
            He broke the seal of the Jack Daniels bottle with his teeth before he pulled out of the parking lot.
            “At least you love me.” He took a long swig. Several miles later he pulled his car into Falcon Park. No one was around so he parked the car and turned off the ignition.
            “Now where was I…” he cracked open a cold beer and reached for his crack pipe. He settled into the routine of hit, swig, drink a beer. Occasionally he broke up the routine with a cigarette. Why did he even call the guy for a room if he was joe-cool with hanging out intoxicated in his car? We need to see HIS logic behind this. Help us make sense out of it. Even it’s a comforting reaction, to make the loss of his wife feel less painful. I can understand that logic. Maybe even relate. But unless you give us a reason for why he does what he does, everything he does will seem nonsensical.
            Halfway through the bottle the remaining beers started to get warm. He decided to take one last hit and head towards detox.
He looked at his cell phone. No calls. The drugs and the alcohol weren’t doing their job. His wife was really mad at him this time and he wished he could go home. “I’ve got to set things right.”
            Hi Ben.
I’m not really sure what to add that I didn’t already mention above. Really think about your character’s logic and the motivations they have as to why they’re acting the way they do. Even if what they’re doing seems stupid or illogical, as long as they have a reason that makes sense to them, more often than not, the reader will follow along with them.
Hope this helped! –Brenda

As you can see, we’ve got some sharp students in class! They’re all like this, believe me. There are about ten left in class (we started with more, but as always happens, some can’t stand the heat in the kitchen so they… relocate. Which makes the class really work well.) I could have included all the rest of the class’s comments, but Brenda’s is fairly representative.

What this does is give each writer ten teachers instead of one. And, as you can see, they don’t provide “pitty-patty” feel-good comments, but tough, intelligent ones, delivered with good manners and in a spirit of helping each other get better. They’re all committed to becoming good writers who will have a solid chance at getting published eventually as a result of what they learn, and they take no quarter. And, everyone accepts the others’ criticism. It’s never delivered maliciously or to show that they know more than the other person, but always in the spirit of helping out a fellow writer. We have no competition in class. We feel there’s room for everyone to get published and a fellow writer’s success is only going to help other writers. There’s also no competition for grades as I abolish them at the beginning. They know at the very beginning that their grade doesn’t depend on how good they are or how brilliant or bad their writing may be. There are only two things that are required: that they show up each week and that they try their best. If they do that, their writing will get better. And, they get that A, which is the least of their motivations.

Another thing that's important to know. Students don't wait for me to send my comments before they make their own. And, I don't read theirs before I post mine. It wasn't until after I'd posted my comments on Ben's work to the class that I read Brenda's comments. Which means she hadn't read mine, since they hadn't been posted yet. None of the class members are trying to cue in on what I said and vice versa. We all have faith in each other to make our own judgments, independent of each other. 

I love my classes! They’re always composed of great students. It makes me feel so good to get the same compliment each class at the end of it. It always goes something like this (this is from an actual email I got and is similar to many others I’ve received): “I never worked so hard in any class I’ve ever taken as I have in this one. I’ve taken other classes and all I ever get is some faint praise—‘this works well’ or ‘I like this’—and it’s obvious the instructor didn’t spend much time really looking at my work. I’ll get comments I can see are designed to make me feel good, but they don’t since there’s no thought behind it other than to… make me feel good. You give very little praise, but it’s always earned and I value it more than all the ‘you write description well’ kinds of “compliments” I usually get.”

Well, it makes me feel good also to know that they earned every bit of the praise I’m admittedly stingy about giving out. People want to know they’ve actually earned their blue ribbons, I think. My writers have.


 Just a wild-eyed teacher...

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Political Correctness - A Venal Concept


 Hi folks,
In light of recent developments where a man was fired from his job because of his honest opinion, I thought perhaps it might be timely to rerun a blog post I ran some time ago. The following is what I gave as my graduating talk at Vermont College upon graduating with my MFA in Writing degree in 1997. I thought perhaps it was a particularly timely post for today. In fact, if you didn't know it was written over a decade ago, you might think I just dashed it off today...

One of the faculty, Pam Painter, told me she'd taught at VC since the very beginning and that the audience for my talk was the single biggest ever, for student or faculty. We not only filled the main hall, there were people gathered in the entrances into the room and all along the stairs leading to the second floor. I kind of had the reputation for saying things that upset some folks and that other folks liked, and this kind of proved out that, as when it ended, I received comments from both ends of the spectrum. That made me happy. No expression of an idea is any good if everyone is in agreement with. That usually means... it sucks.

Bring popcorn. It's a long one...




CENSORSHIP AND WHY I LOVE CHARLES BUKOWSKI

By

Leslie H. Edgerton

(Lecture Delivered to MFA in Writing Students & Faculty at Vermont College, January 8, 1997)


          Like most of you in this room, I’ve always written, always had to write. I had this thing inside me that said I had to be a writer. Notice, I said had to be. Not “wanted” or “yearned to be”. Had to be. There was no choice in the matter. God looked down and saw this little runty red thing laying in his bassinet, sucking down a PBR with a formula chaser, and He said, “I need another writer for my Grand Scheme,” and Bingo! There I was. A writer. When God Himself says you’re gonna be a writer, then, boy, you better be a writer. You play the hand you’re dealt.
          I didn’t have any argument with that. I mean, who argues with God? Except, maybe Francois Camoin. But I didn’t have the advantage of being French and cynical and all that like Francois did- I didn’t even know where to begin to buy a beret or a black painter’s smock or an attitude. I mean, for Christ’s sake, I was a kid in Texas. None of those things could be gotten in Texas. If you couldn’t barbecue it or shoot it, fuck it or ride it, forget it. Not available west of the Pecos.
          So I had to be a writer who grew up in Texas and my opportunities were pretty limited because of that.
          Unfortunately, I was the product of a traditional American education. I say “unfortunately” because the literature I was exposed to in that system included what might be termed “safe” writers. Thackery, Milton, Shakespeare, Melville, Whitman, Steinbeck, Faulkner...you know the list. It’s the list we’ve all been exposed to.
          I tried. Believe me, I tried. But my models for writing were all wrong, in a way. They were guys like Balzac and Dickens, Henry James and Jonathon Swift. Ladies like Louisa May Alcot. Great writers, sure, but from another planet as far as I was concerned. I grew up in a bar, saw my first man killed when I was twelve - shot six feet in front of me. I was the night dispatcher for my grandmother’s cab company when that happened and had to phone the police. Nothing like that ever happened in Little Women, near as I could tell.
          One by one, I tried all the genres and styles I became exposed to and one thing or the other doomed each experiment. I mean, I loved the books I read and of course I tried imitating them in style and content, but even though they were wonderful books, they weren’t about worlds I inhabited. I guess I assumed you weren’t allowed to write about the planet I happened to find myself on.
          I just didn’t realize you were allowed to write about real life, at least life as I knew it. It was my first brush with censorship, although I didn’t know it. Our local public library, which was my only source of reading material just didn’t carry anything in the contemporary realism category. Looking back, I know now the head librarian hauncho probably felt those kinds of books would damage my tender and developing character, so even if they had such books on their shelves, they were kept from youngsters like myself.
          So, for years, I continued writing what I thought was the only kind of stuff that could get published and little by little became more and more disillusioned with writing and literature in general. Perhaps if I had gone to college at an earlier age, I might have discovered there were books out there to which I could relate, but I didn’t. I was in the Navy and then in prison, and in those kinds of environments you just don’t run across literature that’s much different than what you’d find on your average high school English recommended reading list.
          I quit writing for a number of years, because, frankly, I was bored. It was by chance only that I came upon a writer who relit the literary fires.
          Charles Bukowski.
          Wow.
          Lights went off.
          This guy was doing things I didn’t know you were allowed to do. He was writing about life, about real life. Nitty-gritty, down and dirty life. Lots of it was funny, most of it was sad, but it all touched me, way down deep there in that literary G-spot all writers (and readers) are forever trying to connect with.
          I read another guy about the same time that turned me on fire inside as well. Kurt Vonnegut. I read this interview in the Paris Review in which he said, “Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.” Big spark of understanding there. Ol’ Kurt said exactly what I had been unable to articulate for a long time, ever since I started reading the “masters.” The old boys (and girls) had some good stuff going for them, but it seems like literary sphincterism had set in by the time I came along, all these deified contemporary writers were sitting around contemplating their own navels, it seemed. I was reading all this stuff about upper-middle class angst. Really jazzy stuff, like how some guy was sorrowing because all he had out of life was his Chrysler agency and ten million bucks and was searching his soul and was in this big blue funk because he hadn’t gone off with Easy Sally that time at the senior prom way back in H.S. Every book I picked up at that period seemed to have a similar theme. I just couldn’t identify. Hell, I never was able to afford a used Chrysler, let alone an entire agency, and I had run off with Easy Sally--yeah, I was that guy, the one in the leather jacket and the slicked-back hair--really! I had hair, back then--and believe me there isn’t a lot of angst to be used for material in the writing trade when you’re sitting in the trailer and Easy Sally is looking like Even Easier Sally and you don’t know where your next PBR is coming from and the TV is flashing those little tornado warnings across the bottom of the screen and you’re trying to quiet the little rascal on your knee that has your last name but the propane delivery man’s hook nose. I just knew somewhere deep inside my bones I couldn’t fake writing a whole, entire book out of what it meant to be the Executive Vice President in Charge of Sales for Southeastern Florida for the Tidy Bowl Corp and sorrowing over the lost babe of his childhood or the sad fact that he’d chucked it all and gone off to paint Tahitian sunsets. Or that his wife had. Crap like that.
          All of a sudden, here’s this guy Bukowski writing about shit I knew about. About whores and hustlers, winos and fathead bosses who were always worried their wives would go to bed with the help so they got their mad out in the open right away.
          I picked up a book of his, a collection of stories called “The Most Beautiful Woman in Town and Other Stories.” I loved those other stories. It was like sitting down with a homeboy or your rap partner in the joint and swapping lies. Better yet; it was entertaining. All of a sudden, I remembered why I had first started writing. To make someone laugh. Or cry. Learn something about another human being. Just feel something. Feel what I was feeling. Here was this guy, Bukowski, and he was doing exactly what I’d always wanted to do.
          Bukowski’s stories weren’t about middle-aged English professors who were all in a fret because their wives no longer get excited sitting around listening to them conjugate French verbs and deducing that their lives, the meaningful portions of them, anyway, were over. Some of these guys, it seemed, took 400 pages to figure out why the major babe in their life was leaving. They were bored, Jack.
*                                               *                                               *
          I know this was billed as a lecture on censorship and you may be wondering where the censorship angle comes in. Well, where it comes in is that not only were folks like Bukowski not being published by so-called “respectable” presses in this country, but other books by writers like him were not generally available to people like myself. They weren’t talked about by our English teachers, they weren’t on the shelves of our hometown libraries--or if they were, they were kept from our view and knowledge. In other words, there was a form of censorship operating that kept this kind of book from me and others that exists today and it is this and other forms of censorship, overt and covert, that I’ll get to, by and by. I want to show what it is about Bukowski that turned my whole life around. Well, not my life--I mean, I still have to mow the grass on Saturday and take out the garbage--but this story saved my writing life, which is, after all, the only life worth having.
          The story was The Fiend. You may have read it. If you did, you either became a fan of Bukowski’s or you hated his guts. Personally, I became a fan.
          Basically, it’s a story about a middle-aged guy named Martin Blanchard, who’s been defeated by alcohol. He’s lost his wife and family, two wives, two families, actually, his job, everything. Twenty-seven jobs he’s gone through. That’s a lot of jobs. This guy’s just your basic average slob who can’t leave the juice alone. He’s reduced to living in this squalid apartment, four flights up, and drinking wine. His only source of income is his unemployment checks and money left in parking meters. Badly educated, yet he listens to classical music, preferring Mahler.
          He begins to notice this little girl outside playing. He begins to notice she has on these interesting panties...and... you guessed it, he finds himself masturbating. Afterwards, he feels relief. It’s out of my mind, he thinks after he gets off. I’m free again. Only, he’s not. It’s just the beginning of a new obsession, a perversion. For the first time in months, perhaps years, he has an interest. It repels him, but he can’t resist it, either.
          At first, he thinks it’s just something weird that overtook him and now it’s out of his system, but after he drinks his last bottle of wine, he sees the little girl outside in the street and begins to get hard again. He decides to go to the store to replenish his wine supply and as he walks outside he notices the little girl and the two little boys have gone into the garage across the street. He finds himself walking into the garage behind them and shutting the doors.
          He then proceeds to rape the little girl, in very graphic detail. When you read this part, if it doesn’t make you sick, you’re probably beyond the kind of help counseling can give you at this late date. All the while he’s committing this heinous act, the two boys are asking him questions. They express genuine curiosity and don’t seem to be overly-frightened, exhibiting more of an amoral attitude than anything. Bukowski does something quite skillful here. Instead of having the two young boys be scared shitless, he shows them to be mainly curious about what Martin is doing to their friend. These kids are witnessing something pretty horrible, but then they’re just kids, and there’s an amoral innocence about their reaction that blurs the morality. Raping a child is without doubt a truly horrible crime, with no redemption in such an act, but since it’s hard to wholeheartedly condemn the two boys the reader is moved into an area of moral ambiguity that creates a kind of complicity with the boys. The reader then becomes, like the boys, a kind of voyeur to Martin’s act. This also helps humanize the monster Martin is, inasmuch as any such person could be seen as having human qualities.
          The kicker for me in this story was a line a little earlier on in the story, as Martin is kissing the child, just before he rapes her, and the narrator says, “Martin’s eyes looked into her eyes and it was a communication between two hells--one hers, the other his.” When I read this line, it was as if I’d been struck by literary lightening.
          What I have always thought good writing was about was people, all kinds of folks, and what made writing about people good, was that it showed you something about them. Something you didn’t know or were confused on or were ignorant of. And not just politically correct folks, either. In fact, preferably not politically correct folks. Is there a more boring bunch in the Solar System? You see, I was in jail, I was an alcoholic, I was a drug user, I was all those kinds of dudes that aren’t allowed to buy a house in Westchester County--well, that’s not right, exactly, according to my New York friends, most of the citizens in Westchester fit that description--but you know what I mean--and I knew they weren’t all weak or stupid or worthless. They didn’t all start out that way. Something happened along the road. Some of the most intellectual conversations I’ve ever heard were in soup kitchens. I met a guy once who used to teach physics at M.I.T., one fine Thanksgiving Day at the free turkey blowout the Salvation Army was hosting in Baltimore. This guy could make hydrogen bombs in his sleep and probably cure cancer if he got a year off the sauce.
          Anyway, back to Bukowski and his story about the child rapist. Bukowski doesn’t excuse this motherfucker, nor make him out to be anything but the monster he is, but he does show us something about the guy which we probably wouldn’t have known in any other way. He shows us there’s a human being running around inside the guy someplace. A somewhat troubled human being, but one of us at any rate. And this is what literature should be all about. Showing us to one another. The good, the bad, the ugly as well as the downright perverts.
          All his stuff isn’t good. In fact, a lot of it stinks. Kind of masturbation-on-the-page type of stuff. He considers himself a genius--well, he is, actually--and Bukowski seems to have thought that everything he had a thought on was important because it came out of his brain. Not true. That virtually everything he wrote got printed may not have been his fault, but more the fault of publishers who bought into his self-created myth.
          Almost any other writer that this same story would have occurred to, would have taken the point of view of anyone but Martin’s. The little girl herself, the boys, the cops who came and arrested him, the parents. An adult who discovered the crime. A fly on the wall. To write this kind of story from the pov of the perp, in my mind, is the stuff of literary courage. It’s very dangerous stuff. It you don’t bring it off, it almost makes the writer appear as if he excused Martin for what he’s done, which would have made Bukowski an even bigger monster than his character. What he’s been able to do is present Martin exactly as he is - a hideous member of the human race...but amazingly, yet...still a member of humanity. It’s interesting in one respect, too, in that Bukowski wrote this story in the third person, while most of his other writing is first person and confessional autobiography. It looks as if he wanted to make sure readers didn’t confuse the narrator with the author, which, if he did, renders him just a little less courageous. I don’t want to think of him that way, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
          With that one little sentence, “Martin’s eyes looked into her eyes and it was a communication between two hells--one hers, the other his.”, Bukowski gives us an insight that is deeply profound. And that, in my opinion, is what great writing is all about.
          It takes enormous courage to be able to write about the kinds of people Bukowski does. Readers, even intelligent readers, tend to associate the writer with the narrator. In my first semester, I wrote a story about a character who was a criminal, and I had the concern that the reader of the piece would want to know if I had been a criminal myself. I addressed my concern to my first advisor here, Phyllis Barber, and she said, “an intelligent reader will never ask if a piece of writing is autobiographical, so don’t worry about it.” Well, Phyllis meant well, and in a perfect world, this would be true, but believe me, even very intelligent readers at least wonder if the stuff they’re reading comes from the writer’s own experience and even the brightest of readers will wonder if very negative or dark stuff is what the author really thinks and feels. It’s just human nature. It’d be nice if readers accepted work labeled as fiction as just that--fiction--but the truth of the matter is, there’s something of the prurient in all of us that makes us hope that the stuff on the page--especially the dark, forbidden stuff--is derived from the real experience of its creator. It gives most of us a delicious little shiver of horror to be standing this close to depravity without actually having to get any of it on ourselves. There is some part of almost all our souls that craves the darker side of life. We are alternately titillated and repulsed by immoral behavior and I think that is the reason books and stories and movies about bad guys are so well-attended. We can satisfy this baser part of our souls in a safe and acceptable manner, so long as they get put in their places in the end.
          Most of my own writing output has been about such people, and without exception, those who read it and are acquainted with me, will come up and ask, in almost an embarrassed fashion, “Was that yourself you were writing about?” Up until just recently, I would usually answer that, uh, no, I just know some people like that. I’ve usually taken the coward’s way out. Just recently, I’ve begun to admit that, yes, I’ve done many of the things that show up in my stories. I’ve been a criminal, done time, sold drugs, been involved in various sexual aberrations, broken many and diverse laws. I don’t do them any more--well, not as many--I’d be room temperature by now if I’d continued doing some of the things I used to. And, I’m a different person than I was when I was involved in those things. That’s why I’ve usually lied when asked if the author of my work was the same as the narrator. Most folks, no matter what they say, will assume you’re still that kind of person and that kind of reputation will keep you from getting some of the nicer rewards of our civilization.
          The thing that writers like Bukowski represent to me is truth. As a group of animals endowed with a superior intellect--as compared with, say, monkeys or tse-flies--and if we do indeed have this intelligence, then what we ought to be about primarily is the pursuit of truth. This is what education should be about, although sadly, it seems not to be the Holy Grail it once was. Back in “my day” which was the nineteen-sixties, that’s what a lot of us were interested in. Truth. We were into toppling institutions. Institutions we felt were based on lies. And, I guess that’s why writers like Bukowski appeal to me so much. The one thing we weren’t being in the sixties was safe. Although, that’s not entirely true. There was a large contingent of folks that were concerned mainly with making sure they didn’t go to Vietnam and get shot at. A lot of the hyperbole in that era was, in fact, centered around changing a system that could put one’s physical unit in jeopardy. But for many of us, especially those of us who had been in the military at the time, the things we were involved in were anything but safe. That’s what seems to be missing today. Most of the stuff I pick up and read, while quite good in many instances, is for the most part, safe writing. The mood has changed, as it always does, but the direction it has moved to is a dangerous one.
          I’m speaking here of the phenomenon sweeping through this country referred to as being “politically correct.” Like many grandiose ideas, there is a noble intent at the center of this outlook, but also like many other popular notions, it has been perverted until it is the antithesis of what it originated as. Being PC nowadays amounts to out and out censorship in my opinion. For every writer like Bukowski, William Vollmann, and David Sedaris who breaks through and becomes a cult hero, there are hundreds of writers who are being stifled, vilified, and destroyed, simply because they do not preach the party’s message nor do they conform to the parameters set up by the PC folks who seem to be in charge. Too often they are stifling themselves by trying to placate society. What used to be considered simply bad taste nowadays takes on a more sinister connotation and that is dangerous if we value freedom of thought and value the time-honored tradition of the debate of ideas which is the only viable method for advancing knowledge and understanding.
          Plato himself spoke about political correctness in The Republic, when he said:
          “Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only.” How about that.
          In another of Bukowski’s stories, 3 Chickens, he continually beats his girlfriend. Definitely not a PC story. Here are some direct quotes from the story:
          once she was screaming these insanities from the fold-down bed in our apartment. I begged her to stop, but she wouldn’t. finally, I just walked over, lifted up the bed with her in it and folded everything into the wall.
          then I went over and sat down and listened to her scream.
          but she kept screaming so I walked over and pulled the bed out of the wall again there she lay, holding her arm, claiming it was broken.
and
          now, another time she angered me and I slapped her but it was across the mouth and it broke her false teeth.
          I was surprised that it broke her false teeth and I went out and got this super cement glue and I glued her teeth together for her. it worked for awhile and then one night as she sat there drinking her wine she suddenly had a mouthful of broken teeth.
          the wine was so strong it undid the glue. it was disgusting. we had to get her some new teeth, how we did it, I don’t quite remember, but she claimed they made her look like a horse.
and
          the bar was full, every seat taken. I lifted my hand. I swung. I backhanded her off that god damned stool. she fell to the floor and screamed.
          There are more abusive incidents in the story. This is horrible stuff to anyone--and I imagine that’s most of us--who is interested in consciousness-raising about spouse abuse and battering--but there is a value to being exposed to this kind of material. How else can we understand anything about violence unless we observe and portray it accurately? It exists, just as surely as serial killers exist, and how can one combat evil unless one understands its nature?
          Gordon Weaver, who was on the faculty here at Vermont until a few years ago, told me in an interview, that, “If our special interest, as writers and/or editors, is the precise use of language toward the end of a viable perception of and effect on reality, we may argue there is some virtue implicit in any utterance (written or oral) that confronts the consensus of any gathering.” He gives an example. “There is a cost that will be paid by all concerned if one tells a Polack joke in the presence of Poles, but I contend the cost is greater if one stifles or sanitizes the anecdote.” Gordon has something here, I think. Weaver also told me that academicians are perhaps the newest bullies on the censorship block and perhaps the most dangerous of all. He stated that, “There is a greater danger, it seems to me, when the censors come from the ranks of the presumably ‘enlightened’. It is not surprising that a number of college and university communities nurture factions who wish to control free speech; it is unsettling when more sophisticated citizens (faculty) add their clout to movements desiring to police our utterance in the interests of what minority or another deems politically incorrect.”
          Whether or not you agree with writers like Bukowski, or Weaver for that matter, is unimportant. What is important is that they and others of diverse opinions have a forum to be heard and read. That forum is disintegrating under the onslaught of those who wish to stifle speech that disagrees with theirs. Truth is in danger of being extinguished, and it may fall to us who write to be the last vanguard of free speech. That is why writers such as Bukowski need to be published and need to be read by establishment presses and before they’re dead. There are some of us who feel we are plunging back into a Dark Age. History would confirm that to be so. After nearly every period of enlightenment, anarchy prevails again for awhile, and this is what I see us heading toward, as a nation and as a world.
          It is the nature of groups to want to stifle opposing viewpoints. In this country, supposedly the land of free speech, attempts at suppression have been with us since the adoption of the First Amendment, but the preponderance of that type of activity has been traditionally borne by extremists of the far right and far left political and societal spectrum. Those with the hot fire of righteousness in their bellies have been the usual standard-bearers for the termination of ideas contrary to their agenda and such should probably be expected.
          Gordon Weaver told me that although he dislikes boorish and bigoted expressions, he sees a greater danger in disallowing their spokesmen an opportunity to be heard.
          “The censors will always be with us,” he said. “It is the nature of both institutions and individuals to desire the silence of those they wish to suppress. Institutions with political power or ambitions for same (government, churches, schools) can probably be fended off--as they have been in modern times at least--by organized responses. The American Civil Liberties Union has a pretty good record in this regard. Simple crackpots (racists, militant feminists, and other self-appointed arbiters of community morality) seem to wither away if studiously ignored.”
          Repression comes in many forms, not always overt. Kathleen M. Sullivan, a professor of law at Harvard Law School, in talking about the censorship issue as it affects funding for the NEA, says of the PC issue, “An artist who receives a check in the mail (from the NEA) with a ‘hit list’ of forbidden ideas attached will forego too much valuable and innovative expression for fear it will come too close to the line. As (US Supreme Court) Justice Thurgood Marshall once put it, the problem with a ‘sword of Damocles is that it hangs--not that it drops.’”
          Fred Grandy, former actor on the Love Boat and now a Congressman from Iowa, says, “I am no artist and have 10 years on TV to prove it. But I have spent enough of my life around creative minds to know that you cannot have art without risk. You cannot write language proscribing the human imagination that will not turn artists away in droves.”
          Speaking of Congress in terms that could be applied to college professors and publishers as well, Grandy said, “Trying to eliminate smut by allowing Congress to tell America what is and is not artistic is as misguided as attempting to legislate patriotism by amending the Constitution to prohibit flag burning.”
          And publishers. How do they, as deciders of what news is fit to print, view the censorship debate? Reactions range from the moderately perplexed to the horrified doomsayers.
          Robert McDowell, who publishes the Story Line Press, wrote an opinion piece for the Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon, which perhaps synopsizes the publisher’s view. “The debate pits a democratic majority believing in our First Amendment rights of free speech against a well-financed and well-organized minority extolling the virtues of all that is wholesome and the government’s right to control the subject matter of the books we read, the music we enjoy, the paintings and plays we experience.” McDowell calls Senator Jesse Helms and other individuals and groups’ efforts to censor materials funded by the NEA, “the most severe legalized censorship in this country since the McCarthy era,” and labels such censorship efforts as being “shameful attacks on free speech and the artist’s right to represent the truth as he or she perceives it.”
          Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist, Larry McMurtry, in a Washington Post article, accused the Jesse Helms-led forces of attempting to “eliminate all sex from American art if they can. Rembrandt’s sketch of a fully clothed heterosexual couple attempting the missionary position behind a bush would likely not be thought fund-worthy by Helms, whose stated preferences would limit us to snow scenes, pictures of bird dogs or romantic landscapes involving, if possible, humble tobacco farms.” McMurtry goes on, “The narrative as these individuals see it, in their determination to tell Americans what they need and don’t need in the way of publicly funded art, is rigidly chaste: no public money for anything with sex in it! (They may claim that (they) only want to withhold public money from art that depicts or describes ‘wrong’ sex-- i.e., homeoerotic (no grants to Leonardo or Proust!) sadomasochistic (no Westerns, no film noir), exploitive of children (no Lolita, no Lewis Carroll), but it’s clear that they really mean to eliminate all sex from American art if they can.”
          Kathleen Sullivan puts it even more succinctly, when she says, “A free society can have no official orthodoxy in art any more than in religion or politics. And in a free society, such orthodoxy can no more be purchased by power of the purse than compelled by power of the sword.”
          Just a couple of years ago, Stanley Banks, Kansas City playwright and poet, offered the balance of such cost: “We will begin to see dull art which has no freshness of vision. Certain points of view will be silenced. When that happens our society will be seriously threatened without a bomb being blasted.” He warns us not to “call for laws to censor artists who challenge our consciousness in ways that might be uncomfortable, irritating, risqué, etc. For those who don’t want to see or hear or read about acts or points of view contrary to their own, he advises, “simply don’t look, buy it or let the kids have access to it!”
          Banks’ “dull art which has no freshness of vision” is already upon us. It has always been with us, since censorship in one form or another has always been around--it has only increased mightily in the past few years. The result is art which is becoming blander and blander, much resembling the “art” that was allowed to surface in totalitarian governments such as the USSR of a few years past and in many other governments. America is not yet at that stage, but if current developments continue in publishing, in the university, and in government, we are not far from achieving total censorship, imposed by the group in control.
          What scares me the most is that universities should be the bastion of free thought but the state of the matter is that free debate of ideas is rapidly disappearing from the college campus. As more and more writers come out of university settings and are being influenced by teachers with a decided political bent, the writing they produce becomes more and more insipid. These same writers take over the litmags and editor positions at publishing houses and impose their political beliefs on those who submit, publishing only those that can pass the PC test in the content of their creative material. As Kurt Vonnegut said in a quote cited earlier, “Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.” Well, it’s in great danger of doing just that. It’s about halfway up the anus.
          In interviewing folks for an article I wrote on censorship for Circle K Magazine, I was referred to the brother-in-law of a friend of mine, an Australian, who was teaching physics and doing research at one of America’s leading universities which I cannot name because I’ve promised him anonymity. This man says, “I think it’s a myth that censorship doesn’t exist on college campuses. I believe universities should be places where anybody can say whatever they want and everybody should be very tolerant, but it’s just not true. Students are punished for saying certain things. You could say whatever you wanted at the University of Sydney (where he’s from). They were much more tolerant there. In student publications there was much less concern about libel, for example. The litigation aspect puts a lot of pressure on what ideas you can express.” This man only agreed to give me his views when I swore several times I wouldn’t use his name or even tell what university he was at, for fear of losing his job. It’s a sad day when a person from another country is allowed a greater freedom of expression there than in his adopted country which professes to be the freest nation on earth.
          This professor went on to say, “I think there’s more of a tradition in European-style universities for freedom of speech--that that’s what universities are for. In America, the impression I get is that universities are for other purposes...for training professionals and for football games. It’s not about intellectual freedom. You pay us (educators) your money and you want something at the end. You want a guaranteed elite job in society, and it has nothing to do with expanding your mind. You’re buying a product. It’s more of a consumer orientation.”
          He adds, “The government is trying to censor more and more science that they are actually paying for. For example, on sensitive subjects as global warming, the government wants to see research results first, because of the possible political consequences.”
          Americans should be ashamed when they have prided themselves on theirs being the leading example of a free society, when others in the world community may be seeing us very differently, as evidenced by my anonymous critic and source.
          Anita Manning, writing for USA Today, says that the issue is different in colleges than it is in the lower levels of education.
          “In K through 12, there is a school board or some sort of governing body that chooses what books are included in the curriculum...whereas in the college setting, the individual professor or instructor chooses the books for that course and students choose whether or not to take the course, leading to entire different issues.”
          In June, 1992, Brenda Suderman, acting media relations officer for The Bulletin, the student newspaper at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, reported that the university deleted about 170 files containing material on sexual bondage and pornography from the Internet computer system the university subscribes to. Gerry Miller, Director of Computer Services, made the decision in consultation with Terry Falconer, Vice-President (administration), saying the material was removed because “we felt they (the deleted files) didn’t support the mission of the university and we felt they were objectionable.”
          Alisa Smith, co-editor of The Marlet, the student newspaper at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, published what university officials deemed objectionable material as exampled by a lesbian, gay, bisexual issue put out in 1991 which featured male and female genitalia on the cover. About 2,000 copies were thrown into dumpsters by campus traffic and security functionaries upon administrative order. Even so, Smith feels the press is becoming a bit freer. (Yeah, well--go figure…)
          She says, “The mainstream media is covering a lot of issues that only the alternative press used to cover. I suppose the backlash against political correctness is sort of an attempted censorship, like trying to silence people, but not by directly shutting down their newspapers. (Universities) are trying to shut down thought, rather than newspapers. All the articles that you see are about how PC’s have sort of gotten a grip on society and how people can’t say what they want anymore. I guess it’s like a left-wing phenomenon.”
          Let money talk, though, and censorship takes on yet another clever form: the economic kind.
          “Personally,” says Smith, “I think the biggest form of censorship right now is the fact that the economy is so bad, making advertising really hard to come by. A lot of papers used to have a fairly idealistic boycott list for advertising that they wouldn’t use because of things those advertisers were funding--like nuclear systems contracting or because they were pro-apartheid in South Africa. Editors are finding they can’t make ideological choices any more because of monetary pressure. If you’re really dependent on advertising dollars, you have to basically write the kinds of things that won’t offend your advertisers and don’t disagree with their stances.”
          This latter statement seems to contrast with her earlier one that “the press is becoming a bit freer,” and is perhaps a good example of why censorship is unnecessary. If you allow anyone to talk freely long enough, they may provide sufficient evidence by their own words that they should not be taken that seriously when giving us the benefit of their opinion.
          Fearful of bad publicity during stressful economic times, it is not so surprising college and university administrations are increasingly acting to suppress anything that might bring adverse publicity to their campuses. What is surprising is that faculty members are increasingly joining in, even in the supercharged Politically Correct environment that has permeated most higher-education campuses in one way or another.
          A 1992 incident at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana, exemplifies the debate and poses difficult and perplexing arguments for both sides of the issue.
          A cartoon ran in the student newspaper, the Nicholls Worth, poking fun at three black singers in a rap group that had performed on campus. Black students who were offended, protested by burning about 150 copies of the paper publicly. Their complaint was that they were greatly upset by the exaggerated features of the cartoon figures and the stereotypes it reinforced. Eric Knott, president of a black fraternity denied that the protest had anything to do with being politically correct.
          “I’m not one to hide behind racism and claim that everything in society is racist, (but) the cartoon clearly degraded the black race,” Knott says.
          Marty Authement, student editor of the paper, said that he “used poor judgment” in allowing the cartoon to be published, but was also concerned that “political correctness is limiting what journalists can do. These days you have to be more sensitive than you usually would be. If you live by the strict law of political correctness, there’s not much left.”
          I had a very jarring and dismaying experience with PCism with my own novel THE DEATH OF TARPONS. A few years before it actually got published, a regional publisher in the Southwest wanted to buy it. A very few months before this offer, I was sleeping on a garage floor in California and eating out of a Bob’s Big Boy dumpster, so the money he offered had the same value as a million dollars to me. I almost signed the contract until the publisher said, “Well, we have to change a lot of this. There’s stuff in here that might make certain folks upset.” He gave as an example a scene in which the boy’s father whips him with a live king snake. This might offend the snake lovers, he said. That’s got to be what?--seven or eight in the U.S.A.? Not counting, of course, the folks who use them in church services. He cited about twenty other scenes I’d have to change because they might offend this person or that. Reluctantly, I withdrew the book, not knowing if it would ever be published, and indeed, it was another five years before I found a publisher who wasn’t as concerned about snake lovers’ feelings and was more concerned with putting out a book that she felt had literary value.
          Mind you, this was several years before the wholesale PC attitude took over the country. This asshole--and I don’t excuse myself from the term--was merely the forerunner of what is a terrifying fact of life today.
          If you believe this to be the ravings of a paranoid mind, consider these facts:
          A record 348 incidents of attempted censorship occurred in the 1991-92 school year, according to The American Way, a liberal watchdog group. That’s an increase of 20% over the previous high, a figure they claim poses an alarming advance in assaults on a basic Constitutional right--a right almost universally assured in most of the free world.
          The Literary Network, a project jointly administered by Poets&Writers, Inc. and the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses report over 6,000 attempts to remove books from shelves in American libraries in the 1980’s and ‘the number of incidents is noticeably on the rise.”
          Concerned Women for America, a conservative, pro-family group asserts all censorship attempts are not necessarily bad. Caia Mockaitis, speaking for the organization, says the issue is one of selection, not censorship, many times, in that “there are some materials that are appropriate for kids and some that are not,” no matter what adults’ political bias, liberal or conservative.
          Mockaitis has plenty of like-minded supporters. Censorship attempts at banning outright or restricting access to books and magazines in secondary school libraries were successful in nearly one-half of instances between 1987 and 1990, reports a University of Wisconsin survey of 6,600 schools. Challenged publications were removed 26 percent of the time, restricted by age or grade level 22 percent of the time, and more likely to occur at small schools.
          The book challenged most? Judy Blume’s Forever, a story of a teenage girl who loses her virginity. Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue and Rolling Stone were the most-challenged magazines at secondary schools, according to USA Today, Jan. 20, 1992.
          Consider this item: “Pornography Victims Compensation Act” was a bill on the U.S. Senate floor that would enable victims of sex crimes to file civil suits in an effort to recover damages from producers and distributors of obscene materials (including publishers, wholesalers, and booksellers) if the victims can show that the materials “caused” the crimes. This “third-party liability” bill is a way of imposing censorship through a back door. This item was reported by the American Booksellers Association.
          Here’s another: In May, 1990, Ferris Alexander, operator of a chain of bookstores, theaters and video stores in the Minneapolis area, was found guilty of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) obscenity forfeiture law. His crime? Selling four magazines and three videotapes found to be obscene and valued at less than $200. Alexander was sentenced to six years in prison, fined $200,000 and forfeited a $25 million dollar business. This was reported by The Media Coalition.
          Here’s another. Three editors of the Ohio State University student newspaper, The Lantern, resign when members of the journalism faculty issue a policy statement that the faculty advisor had the authority to review articles for libel before they were published. This story from The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 4, 1992.
          Censorship is everywhere and rising in attempts and more frightening, in successful attempts.
          Free speech advocate Nat Hentoff, the author of Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other from HarperCollins, feels that in too many cases, publishers, school boards and principals remove or change material for students rather than face the wrath of militant parent groups. Seeing authorities suppress ideas in some cases, and being in a school in which books keep disappearing, gives a graphic lesson to students, Hentoff feels, in that they may have doubts that theirs is a country of intellectual freedom.
          And it appears it is special-interest groups that are behind these efforts and that the majority of Americans are against censorship. A survey conducted by Louis Harris for the American Council for the Arts and sponsored by Phillip Morris Companies, Inc., in February, 1992, polled 1,500 adults over the age of 18 by telephone. Part of the findings were that 91% felt it important for school children to be exposed to and participate in the arts; 67% felt learning about the arts as important as learning about history and geography, 60% say as important as math and science, and 53% believe the arts are important as learning to read and write. It’s evident that it’s a small but vocal and politically-powerful group of minorities who are succeeding in censorship activities and these groups emerge from both ends of the political and societal spectrum.
          Virtually every publisher in the country, from the smallest litmag to the largest publishing conglomerate, is terrified of antagonizing any reader whatsoever, unless the person offended is not part of a highly-organized, highly-vocal political group. This includes both right and left-wingers. It seems everybody in America has now organized, has a group with a slogan, a newsletter, a home page on the Internet, and a secret handshake. The battle is being waged over who gets ultimate control of the presses. And it doesn’t matter who wins. We all lose. What we lose is freedom of expression. And once that happens, we are done as a free society. I go to Gordon Weaver once again, who said it as best as it can be said. “Censorship from without is bad for the language, bad for those who speak or write it; self-imposed censorship, whatever the motive is worse. If you won’t say what you think, you run the risk of losing the powers of both speech and thought. I suspect we’ll be safe just as long as we refuse to accept censorship for anyone.”
          Again, I quote Gordon Weaver for perhaps the best take on the situation. “If the king is naked, we’re all (including the king) better served if someone says so.”
          Well, the king is indeed, naked. The only problem is not enough of us are saying so, preferring to remain safe, keep our jobs, get our material published and so we go on, giving silent tacit agreement to what is happening. This is an understandable position for many in our society; it is unforgivable for writers, at least in my opinion. Writers should be like the canaries in coal mines, the warning system that things are not right and that danger looms. As a group, we have many of us become complacent, intent only on saving our professional selves at the expense of freedom of thought. Maybe we understand too well that although the canary in the coal mine provided a valuable service, in doing so he ended up room temperature.
          I cannot count the numbers of instances acquaintances of mine have said to me, “I cannot say certain things I believe in, to my class, my teachers, my peers, or in my writing, because I would lose my job or be censured or not see my work in print, etc. What’s wrong with us? What kinds of writers are we producing in this country that are fearful to take stands on issues they believe fervently about simply because they risk disapproval? What kind of chickenshit writer is it that the little squiggles he or she puts down on paper consist of half-truths and integrity that is compromised regularly? We are surrendering something precious more by what we don’t do than what we do. Are we so enamored of safety and comfort that we are willing to give up the freedom to express ourselves honestly? It seems that we are. It is a growing malaise that is sweeping the country and I hold that the only ones that can stem the tide are the writers in our society. But where are they?
          Some are out there. There are a few. William Vollmann. Brian Everson. Michael Tolkin. Bukowski. There are others that we’ll never know of because they can’t find a forum. There need to be a lot more such voices. What is really needed is for establishment forums to begin looking more at the quality of the writing than the content. To give an ear to voices that refuse to be influenced by a job, a smile from an empty-headed bureaucrat, publication in a white-bread magazine or by a bottom-line mentality of a publishing conglomerate.
          I think back to when I began writing as a grade school kid. One of the things I used to do was write humorous sketches of some of the more terrifying individuals I faced daily. Individuals like the bullies I and others faced, from the schoolyard rowdy to the teacher who thought her job was to intimidate her class into submission. I’d show these “pieces” to friends, they’d be passed around, and in some cases, public opinion ended those offenders’ bullying careers. Nobody likes to push someone around if he’s going to get laughed at by everyone else. It just plain takes all the power out of it, not to mention the fun.
          The problem today is, the bullies have taken over not only the schoolyard, but the university, the Congress, and the publishing house. Many of us in this room became writers because of a bully somewhere in their past. Maybe it was another kid, or a group of kids, or maybe it was a parent or a teacher. We found we could effectively combat these kinds of folks by the written word. If we were physically weaker we possessed a strength that was virtually indefensible against. The power of ideas, expressed upon the page and in open debate. Do we want to give up our only weapon against tyranny? I hope not.
          And by the way--those writers I mentioned at the beginning of this lecture--Whitman, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Thackery, Milton, Shakespeare, Melville, Alcott--and that I described as “safe”, were anything but that when they were being published. They were almost all rogues in their time and were, by turns, either censored, vilified, viewed with shock, attacked by those in power, or even unpublished in their lifetimes because of the content of their writing. It is only after many years had passed and the political climate had shifted, that the original perceptions of them and their work were considered nonthreatening enough to exist in our libraries and schools. Although many of them are still censored, even today. Steinbeck routinely makes his appearance at book-burnings and other censorship attempts, along with Faulkner, Whitman and even Shakespeare. They were “safe” to me when I read them, simply because I was reading them in a different, more removed era, but in fact, those writers who have become what we call “immortal” have largely been the risk-takers of their time, who wrote in line with their conscience, rather than the political and social mores of their period. Many of them endured great distress because what they were writing was politically incorrect at the time. The thing was, there were then and still are now, publishers who gave them a forum, often at great risk, and there were those who read them, and so the world has been enriched through those individuals’ courage. Knowing this, it would be easy to say, “well, hey, those folks got published and there are those today being published who don’t parrot the party line, so what’s the problem? The problem is, once we as writers and future editors and educators begin to think like that, complacency sets in and we get the attitude to “let someone else worry about it” and that’s when our freedom of expression becomes seriously eroded and in danger of disappearing. Freedom of expression is a value that must be continuously fought for, over and over. That war is never finished unless one side or the other lays down its arms. As part of this generation of writers, it is our duty to take up the battle.
          There is another point of view that says that it’s not the job of an artist to express a viewpoint or an opinion at all. While I respect the right of those who feel that way, I disagree. Indeed, is it possible to find a writer of note who hasn’t expressed his point-of-view, politically, through his or her writings? What else was Steinbeck commenting on in “The Grapes of Wrath” if not a political system? Perhaps he didn’t stand on a stump and proclaim to the world his political views but they sure are right there in his fiction. There are countless others I could give as examples and I’m sure you have your own list. Some artists feel it is their job to present a vision of the world, not a political opinion. I don’t see a difference. It seems to be a matter of semantics. What is a “vision of the world” except a political opinion? Or you might call such a view a “philosophy” but again, philosophies (in my opinion) are nothing but political ideologies dressed up in a tuxedo. I believe it all comes down to politics and I mean politics in the purest sense, as in I want mine and you want yours and I’d kill you for yours if we hadn’t agreed that we’re civilized and have figured out a way for both of us to keep our stuff and not worry about the other taking it. And, for me, that’s what censorship finally boils down to. It’s refuting the principle that I can have mine and you can’t take it and you can have yours and I can’t have it either. You can just substitute the word “opinion” for a particular possession. What I object to is the closing down of forums for all but those who agree with the body politic, not in an overt way but by more subtle and insidious means.
          Thank you for your time. I hope I’ve given you some food for thought. I hope you’ll read some Charles Bukowski, some William Vollmann. I don’t even care if you don’t like or agree with them. In fact, the only way this little talk will be a success if people go out of here arguing with each other. Personally, I’m like Robert Duvall in The Apocalypse Now - I love the smell of a good argument in the morning. I’d like to leave you with one of my favorite quotes. In the preface to the infamous Story of O, Jean Paulhan wrote, “Dangerous books are those that restore us to our natural state of danger.”