John Cheever, in the preface to his inimitable collection of stories, wrote –
The parturition of a writer, I think, unlike that of a painter, does not display any interesting alliances to his masters. In the growth of a writer one finds nothing like the early Jackson Pollock copies of the Sistine Chapel paintings with their interesting cross-references to Thomas Hart Benton. A writer can be seen clumsily learning to walk, to tie his necktie, to make love, and to eat his peas off a fork. He appears much alone and determined to instruct himself. Naive, provincial in my case, sometimes drunk, sometimes obtuse, almost always clumsy, even a selected display of one’s early work will be a naked history of one’s struggle to receive an education in economics and love.
I have often stated that one does not decide to become a writer, the way one decides to be a pilot or lawyer or doctor. In those cases, you like something, it seems like a good way to make a living, so you do it, after completing the requisite training. Writing, on the other hand, chooses you. And you know it has chosen you when nothing else matters, when each day that you do not write feels like a lost day, a waste of time. You know that you are a writer when you have to write and, in fact, you do write, if only to quell that gaping emptiness.
As mysterious as all this sounds, writing, like any other craft, requires an education and training of its own. It requires a lot of reading and writing. It also requires learning the principles of the craft, even if your plan is to subvert all the rules.
For years, I wrote and read books and read books about writing fiction. The books about writing fiction repreated a few “rules” that their authors insisted weren’t really rules, but that they recited nonetheless. We know what these “rules” are — “Write what you know.” ”Show don’t tell.” And so on.
I knew the rules, the way that a law student knows the rules of evidence or a medical student the anatomy of the mediastinum. You know it in a theoretical sense. It isn’t until the law student sees the rules of evidence work in court or the medical student peers into an open chest (and discovers that the arteries and veins do not really come marked conveniently in red and blue!) that everything clicks together.
For me that eureka moment happened when I attended my first writing class. It was taught by Leejay Kline, who was then a graduate student at Florida International University, working toward a masters of fine arts, which is the terminal degree for creative writing students.
In a class that lasted six, maybe eight weeks, I wrote two-thirds of the stories that appear in my collection of short stories, The Last Flight of José Luis Balboa (Houghton Mifflin 2006). I wonder what might have happened had I never taken that class. I suspect that I know the answer. Being Lee’s student was pivotal in my career as a writer and in my life. That is the principal reason that I dedicated the book to him.
Following is an interview that Lee kindly agreed to give me. Consider it a student’s homage to his mentor.
Barr: What do you think about teaching creative writing as a means of supporting yourself while you write? Some people think it is the natural complement to writing. Others think that teaching anything is so demanding that it stands in the way of writing.
Kline: I suspect the desire for security and a steady paycheck motivates writers to teach much more than their desire to impart their small wisdom to graduate students. Many fine writers teach. Or perhaps I should say many fine teachers are writers. I suspect the great writers of our time who teach wrote first and the teaching was offered to them. Writing and teaching are separate things; one is done in a room full of people and one is done in solitary confinement. Both, if done well, take a lot of time and one, because of the time devoted to the other, will always be jealous of the other. The argument that teaching in a creative writing program places one in a community of writers is strained, I think. Maybe I will get to come back to that “community of writers” notion in another question.
Barr: How important do you think it is to earn a Masters in Fine Arts in creative writing. What are some of the benefits that going through a program has and some of the drawbacks? How about your own writing? Did getting the MFA help you?
Kline: OK, there is the “community of writers” I was hoping to touch on again. I do not think it is important at all to earn an MFA UNLESS one plans to teach in a Creative Writing program. The degree did not mean much to me (I am 67) as I did not figure to be looking for a permanent faculty position anywhere. I was encouraged to apply for the MFA program by other writers I knew in Miami who told me how much they had gotten out of meeting other writers. So being in the program, learning from other writers, both on the faculty in my classes, was more important to me than completing university requirements for the degree. The best courses for me were the literature classes in which we studied an author for an entire term. What luxury. Yet, I knew one student who dropped out of the program because she was afraid of the lit courses, if you can imagine.
Before I entered the MFA program, I was quite busy producing stories and poems that I sent out regularly and was beginning to see some of the stuff published in good places like Southern Review. For the five years, I was in the program I did not send a single poem or story anywhere. I don’t blame the program. But one of the purposes of any class in which craft is taught is to inform you of what it is you do not know and how much you have to learn, what a long way you have to go, etc. So in that respect, I wonder if my time in the MFA program was just a little bit wasted –- by me. I would not blame another for my own sloth.
Barr: There has been a charge that MFA programs mint writers who all sound alike. What do you think?
Kline: Well, Raymond Carver taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop and a lot of graduates (at one time or another) sound an awful lot like him. But “sounding like” authors we respect is part of the way we learn, is it not? I have heard of writers who typed entire novels by authors they admire to try to figure out what it was the admired one was doing. An original voice is an original voice and no graduate school can change that. What graduate school does is help those who are willing to listen to understand that writing has structure and craft requirements the same as the other arts of music, art, dance, drama, etc. Most people come to writing not knowing much about what a story is or should do. A good teacher can help.
Barr: I plead guilty to typing out Kawabata’s novella, Snow Country, which I consider one of the most beautifully elegant pieces of literature that I have ever read. And when I typed it, I saw things in it that I had failed to see when I had read it twice before. You recently finished your first novel, “Freaks All Alive.” Can you tell us something about it?
Kline: I’m a bit superstitious about this. An agent I respect greatly has asked for 50 pages. Those of you who are doing this understand how important such a request can be. So I’m not going to write in this space about the book’s story.
Barr: Fair enough. How long did it take you to write the novel and how difficult was it?
Kline: I worked on the book off and on for a good five or six years. Then I got serious and worked on it steadily for another four. The book has gone through several revisions. After reading the next to last revision, an author I respect greatly suggested the first person point of view was limiting. I changed it. An agent I would love to represent the book told me that the first 30 pages had to go. That was tough, but I did it and when I did, it opened up the book in ways I could not have imagined. Now I’m done with it. If someone takes it, hooray. If it gathers dust in a drawer, I thank it for what it taught me. I am working on another book I estimate should take about 18 months to complete.
Barr: Beginnings, finding them, is always hard. What we think is the beginning may be a lot of throat clearing or may not belong in the book at all. The beginning of The Sun Also Rises comes to mind. It wasn’t how Hemingway chose to begin the novel. That was Maxwell Perkins editing. How did you go about writing the novel? Did you outline it beforehand? Did you have it workshopped?
Kline: I did close readings of authors I admire, such as Jim Harrison, Wendell Berry, Larry Brown, William Faulkner, Annie Proulx, John Dufresne, Graham Greene –- people who write literary fiction and know how to make the reader keep turning the pages. These are also people who have, with the exception of Greene, a strong rural emphasis in their fiction, which appeals to me as a reader. Also, I researched the territory of my novel, which runs from Southeastern Ohio to Central Florida. The time in which the story takes place had to be researched, such as what was in the news, popular culture, slang of the times, everything. Not that the book is saturated with atmosphere of the fifties, but I hope it sounds true when a reader gets into it.
I did try to outline it, but it was hopeless for me. I am far too interested in seeing what the characters will do on their own. I had a general idea of where I hoped the story would end, but was open to any suggestions the characters made as well. Some close friends have read parts of the novel and commented. One person has read the completed novel.
Barr: Is there anything you would advise an aspiring writer not to do?
Kline: If you can see yourself doing something more interesting to you than writing, do it. Writing is too much work for you to waste time you could more profitably use watching TV. If you really want to write, then do not stop reading. You probably got interested in writing because of your reading habit. Keep at it. Read the stuff you admire. There are many books and you needn’t feel guilty about not finishing the great ones that do not appeal to you. Somerset Maugham said that a good reader has to be a good skipper, meaning that one should not feel guilty about passing over the parts that bore you. A friend of mine who just had his first story selected for an anthology calls himself a reader with a writing habit. You must read if you want to write.
Barr: Somerset Maugham was eminently quotable, but I have caught him fudging the facts more than once. Let’s say you are talking to your brightest and most talented student. What would you advise him or her to read?
Kline: For students, I would implore them to read Aristotle’s Poetics. Keep it handy, mark it and refer to it often. Then there is the so-called canon of Western literature. Something that always surprises me anew each time I pick up a centuries-old book is how contemporary it sounds to my modern ear. If you want proof, try Dante. Try to learn something about the lives of those great writers. That will probably lead you to other works. Finally, think about what interests you. Is it sex, travel, death, money, violence, yourself, family relationships, automobile repair, farming, mountain climbing, gardening, scuba diving, sleeping, loafing, drinking, gambling? Whatever it is, look for works of fiction that include and involve your interest. See what others have lived, observed, remembered, reflected on and written.
Barr: You taught me to look in the middle of a novel for the plot point of no return, the thing that changes everything, that makes the ending inevitable. Kurt Vonnegut said that once you write past page 150 (the middle) the book starts to write itself. Do you believe this?
Kline: Absolutely. For writers reading this, I feel this is the most important question you have asked. Of course, the difficulty with my answer is that one seldom knows he has reached the middle the first time through. Or the second or third. Expect to revise. But that’s the best and most entertaining part for me, anyway. In fact, the book I am reading now, Light in August, is 480 pages long. On page 242, the first sentence of chapter 12 is: “In this way the second phase began.” It makes perfect sense when you read what goes on in the immediately preceding pages.
Barr: What has been the most influential book you have ever read?
Kline: Hard to say. I just finished Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise, which I picked up because I had never read it and thought I should. The book is nearly a hundred years old and yet read from our perspective, remarkably insightful about what happened in the 20th century. I go back to Faulkner a lot and am currently reading Light in August. I try to read poetry every day. Everyone should read Orwell for what he has to say about language and writing. A four volume set of his letters and essays was my birthday present to myself this past year. My love of reading stems from a book titled The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Warner Chandler, that I read when I was in the third grade. I read slowly and I always read introductions and appendices. I read the acknowledgements and the dedications. If there is a bibliography, which you rarely find in fiction, but sometimes do, I read that in hopes of being led to something new to read. I’m hopeless.
Barr: What are you working on now?
Kline: A novel about a father, a son and a grandson. But if you are looking for a story to tell, here is one I just read in my umpteenth rereading of Faulkner’s Light in August: “…a fellow is more afraid of the trouble he might have than he ever is of the trouble he’s already got. He’ll cling to trouble he’s used to before he’ll risk change. Yes. A man will talk about how he’d like to escape from living folks. But it’s the dead folks that do him damage. It’s the dead ones that lay quiet in one place and don’t try to hold him, that he can’t escape from.” You can get a lifetime of writing books out of that. I could get at least on featuring my mother as the central character.
Barr: If you were interviewing yourself, what would you ask?
Kline: I would ask myself if I could ever see a time in my life when I would not be writing. The answer would be no.
Photo: Leejay Kline, Lilliam Domínguez
