Archive for the 'codename:MFA' Category

A day in George Saundersland

paperhaus October 2nd, 2007

george saunders

Yesterday Pittsburgh became George Saundersland, with a lunch, a Q&A session, a (rumored) dinner with faculty, and a reading (pictured) at the Frick Fine Arts auditorium. Trust me, that figure at the mic is George Saunders.

Since the students were too shy to venture many questions, the Q & A session was mostly A. Highlights?

George Saunders: Teaching writing and talking about it has got a kind of high bullshit quotient.

George Saunders on drafts: What comes out in a first draft isn’t really you.

George Saunders on revision: If I’m looking at a piece of prose and I know my main job is to compress it, that gets me excited.

George Saunders on voice: I was trying to find a voice that would respond to my world, rather than the other way around.

George Saunders on his early writing: If anyone had read the essay before the one that got me into the MFA program at Syracuse, they would have said, ‘You’re like Somerset Maugham on quaaludes — and it’s 1985.’

There was more, of course, but I’d get sucked in by what he was saying and then lose track of the notes I was taking. He spoke quite a bit about revision — a first draft isn’t you because your true voice is hidden by a lot of writerly stuff (oh, I’m paraphrasing terribly). He gave us a funny example that began with “John walked into the well-appointed living room and sat down on the yellow couch” — why well-appointed? he asked. What year is this? Then, why walked in? It’s the beginning of your story - so John’s just now appeared on the page. If walking in isn’t important to the story, cut it. By the end of his example, he’d killed everything but “John.” (too bad, I really liked the yellow couch).

It had been a long day; several of us grad students decided to go get a drink after Saunders’ reading and signing. And then, he joined us at the bar.

I know it’s too much to say that it was the platonic ideal of a writer’s visit, but it kind of was. Ideal.

New teacher as dork

paperhaus September 26th, 2007

I’m teaching for the first time — Composition — and I’ve reached the post-terror stage where everything seems like it could be a lesson.

Errol Morris on war photographs? I’m thinking about assumptions, stepping back from a text (or inherited wisdom about a text) to see it with fresh eyes. A little bit of authorial intent thrown in just for fun. How can I get those photos into class? Projecting from my laptop is possible, but the resolution is awful. Can I find the pictures in books at the library? How do we pass them around?

I imagine that, someday, I will not pick up the (internet) paper and see classroom applications on every page. But for now I am a newbie teacher dork.

I’ve been thinking of how to get my students to get actual scenes in their writing. Like many beginning students (I’m told), they tend to be vague and generalized — “Every day, I would go for a run” instead of “Tuesday, October 18, when it was bitterly cold, I put on 2 pairs of sweats and a wool hat and went for a run.” I’ve asked them to tell me more, include details, set a scene, but how can I show them?

Enter Epicurious. See, in the comments of a recipe, I found this:

Very tasty, low fat, quick and easy to make. My husband hates soups because he hates foods that float. He loved this.

Dude: he hates foods that float? That is the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard. Does he have some kind of a sink test? (Hmm, this apple floats - nope. This can of chili - down like a stone. Yum). And soup is just a fluid — it wouldn’t float, it would dissipate. Maybe he doesn’t like fluids? Things that appear to be floaty? That might have objects floating in them? I’m totally in love with “hates foods that float.”

So I will bring this quote to class and ask them to write a paragraph that shows the guy who hates foods that float. Then we’ll take one sentence from one of their paragraphs and write again, in more detail. Detail detail detail. Drill down detail. Until we see the stuff in his bowl, hear his angered bowels, see his flushed face as he shouts at his wife in frustration. “No floating foods! My first wife never made me eat foods that float!”

And then it’ll be 1:50pm, and I’ll be thinking hmm, maybe I should go look for those Fenton photos at the library.

Imaginary syllabus

paperhaus September 22nd, 2007

At Pitt’s Fuel & Fuddle reading series, which I cohost with Adri Ramirez, we asked attendees to write down the name of their favorite writer. (On nametags, which they wore, and later we had a drawing for the night’s prize). The room was full of creative writing grad students — poetry, fiction, and nonfiction — and this is who they became:

Orson Scott Card
Bernard Cooper
John D’Agata
Don Delillo
Joan Didion
Annie Dillard
Ernest Hemingway
L. Ron Hubbard
Etgar Keret
Tracy Kidder
Haven Kimmel
Yusef Komunyakaa
Milan Kundera
Ben Lerner
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Vladimir Nabokov
Marcel Proust
John Steinbeck
James Tate
Kurt Vonnegut
Richard Yates

With the exception of a joker or two, I like this as a syllabus. It’s more diverse and contemporary than the readings I’ve had to read so far in school. And now that I think about it, I’d take them all — reading L. Ron Hubbard could actually be interesting.

Falling into grad school like a well

paperhaus September 9th, 2007

And so it begins. 19 undergrad papers to grade, and I finally see that grading papers isn’t simple. Commenting on an MFA manuscript is one thing — there’s a shared language, a common knowledge of edit marks (hopefully), and we’re colleagues - I’m giving advice that my workshop compatriots may take or may throw out. (One does. Throw it out. Literally shoves notes in the garbage. But I write ‘em anyway, fool that I am).

Anyway, comp papers. The idea is to find one or two things in each one and emphasize just them in both the in-text, handwritten notes and the end-of-paper notes, which I type. So there’s the time it takes to read the paper, and to try and figure which one or two things might be the most fix-able, the easiest for the student to wrap their head around and address in their next paper. And then the little scribbles. Can I stop myself from also making grammar notes? I can’t.

At first a short, lazy paper made me sad and a little upset. But 12 hours of grading, when I’d navigated lots of proper-length, intermittently insightful and convoluted work, a short, lazy paper was a relief. I knew how to handle it. Then that made me sad — how could I be relieved to come across bad work? Oh, not enough time, and the well is getting darker, that’s how.

Then there are the workshop readings (begun), the lit class readings (yikes! and double yikes!), the prep for the meeting with my teaching mentor tomorrow, the prep for my class, and, oh yes, my manuscript. Whine, whine, we’re all busy. But sometimes the brain buckles.

This summer I stood in the bottom of an old volcano looking up. Now I am falling down, down, down, and looking up and back at the sun.

Pitt MFAs rocking the house

paperhaus September 7th, 2007

chris miller reads

The Pitt MFA reading series got off to a smashing start last night with readings by poets Chris Miller (pictured, reading poems inspired by the movie Godzilla; more pics here), Becca Marz and Julia Germaine; nonfictionistas Andrea Applebee, Jonathan Callard and Emily Stone; and fictioneer Emily Testa.

The new hostesses (Adri Ramirez and yours truly) gave away two books as prizes for what might have been the lamest trivia contest ever. But next week? Look out.

Meet your new teacher

paperhaus August 28th, 2007

Yesterday I taught my first class ever. The students seem really terrific, and I hope they thought I was appropriately dressed. And now I’m very interested in papers like this. And this.

I share my office with this literate, chocolate-obsessed blogger.

Amazingly, Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette has taken an award from the Society of Food Journalists, while no LA rags placed in any category. Did that Pulitzer for Jonathan Gold scare them off? (via)

Closing arguments in the Phil Spector trial will begin after Labor Day.

Psst, Tod Goldberg: searching the web for footage of Rick Springfield in a pink suit singing “Whenever I Call You Friend” can hardly be called sanity.

Debut author Chris Barzak (One for Sorrow) blogs at Gwenda’s and answers The Mumpsimus’ most scintillating questions.

Pink Raygun interviews many-times-over author Cecil Castellucci.

Now, time for pedagogy class. Oh yeah.

75 is more than 56

paperhaus August 27th, 2007

In other words, more Americans read a book last year than did five years ago. 3 out of 4 Americans read a book last year; in 2002, that figure was 56%.

Make sure to read Jessica’s post on why the literary sky is NOT falling.

With that, I’m off to this year’s first day of class.

After the MFA

paperhaus May 23rd, 2007

I recently had dinner with one of the most promising writers who has finished my MFA program. This writer is completing a post-degree job search, which, with any luck, will be a choice between … Borders and Barnes & Noble. That’s right, an MFA + publishing credits = bookstore clerk.

OK, not for everyone. Several Iowa MFAs used to blog at Babies Are Fireproof. While the site is now fairly dormant, following its contributor links shows what it’s like to finish grad school, get a good teaching gig and publish a book or two.

After the MFA’s After the Workshop series is a melancholoy, cautionary tale of on not making lasting creative connections with his MFA colleagues. Reminder: while in the MFA, take advantage of the MFA.

Meanwhile, Ron Hogan is looking for nominees for MFA professors who’d be the Simon Cowell in an American Idolized workshop. Wasn’t the vaunted Frank Conroy supposed to be one mean mofo?

When I started this MFA process, I was bright-eyed and optimistic. Now that I’m halfway done? I take sick pleasure in stories of how it’s not always a great idea.

Finally, some good news

paperhaus April 24th, 2007

I am now only 2 papers away from being halfway done with my MFA. Since I was 3 papers away this morning, this is an excellent development.

Pittsburgh, city of asylum

paperhaus April 18th, 2007

Salvadoran Horacio Castellanos Moya has been selected for the two-year City of Asylum residency in Pittsburgh. From the (pdf) press release:

Born in 1957, Castellanos Moya is the author of eight novels, five short story collec-tions and one book of essays. He studied history and literature at the University of El Salvador and at York University in Toronto, Canada, and worked as a journalist in Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala. As editor-in-chief of the weekly independent newspaper Primera Plana, he investigated links between El Salvador’s political and military rightist leaders and organized crime. In 1997, Castellanos Moya published El Asco: Thomas Bernhard en San Salvador, a novel exposing the political crimes of the ruling forces, including the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero, and criticizing sensitive political and cultural aspects of Salvadoran life. As a result, he received anonymous death threats and fearing for his life, went into exile.

Moya will be teaching a readings course at Pitt next fall, tentatively titled “Latin American Literature: Post Magical-Realism.” Which (damn!) conflicts with my schedule.

« Prev - Next »