BFA in Creative Writing Program
It was an especially tense morning, as we were to critique a short story by a young writer who had already cast herself as one of the more vulnerable in the group. She often wore a t-shirt with the word needy emblazoned across the top, for instance. The workshop had been testy all along, as workshops can be. But this one was to be more so.
“You should scrap this story and start over,” began one instructor, a prominent novelist, evoking tears from the student and triggering a feeding frenzy, as others simply echoed the instructor’s view that the story was pointless.
I listened from the vantage point of a student with some experience—at the time, a few decades as a journalist, including twelve years of environmental reporting and book reviewing for The Boston Globe; a decade of teaching, including environmental literature and environmental writing at Dartmouth. I, too, had found the story ambiguous when I first read it, an obscure look at the life of a pathetic, middle-aged man in New York with no reason to live and a habit of witnessing hideous events. But as the workshop neared, I became curious as to why. Its author may have been needy, but she wrote well.
So I read the story a few more times and found the problem. About three pages in, it began to coalesce thematically, culminating in the sentence, “Simply put, he was going to gross himself out into caring.” The sentence was jarring, because revulsion is not really a pathway to compassion. But the passage leading to it made clear the man wanted to shock himself into caring, not disgust himself into caring. The author mistakenly thought “grossed out” meant shock. Just change the sentence to say what she meant, I suggested.
The room erupted. Yes! Of course! How could I have missed this? The novelist smacked her forehead, stunned at the revelation. But there was none. There was only an effort to be considerate, a value among many we are losing as a culture, a value essential to civility, a value at the heart of writing and teaching, a value I aspire to.
When I consider my life and work as a writer and teacher, I am restored by such stories and the values they convey. The issues I am drawn to—race, class, culture, and the environment among them—embolden me with the altruism of engagement and the imperative of justice. The writing I admire, the poems, plays, short stories, novels, essays, and reportage that illuminate what we have not seen, and where we have not been, astonish me with the eloquence of asceticism. The relationships I cherish in my life sustain me with the wonder of kindness, the refuge of trust, and the grace of generosity. As I anticipate the conversations of Goddard, already energizing me with the electricity of discovery and promise, I look forward to the values we will unearth, in the stories we will tell.
These are my compass points. This is who I am.
By the way, that young author has since launched a promising literary career, publishing her first novel in 2008 with Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The New York Times panned it in a review but at least reviewed it, no small accomplishment for any author, especially of a debut novel. I have not seen or heard from her since the workshop. But the writer and teacher in me would like to think my observation about her story on that edgy morning a few years ago has been of some help to her, as she has made her way.
Educational Background: MFA in Creative Writing and Literature, Bennington College; BA in History and English, Bucknell University.
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Robert Braile, MFA