Princeton University - Bric A Brac Yearbook (Princeton, NJ)

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Creative Writing 202 Short Story Workshop Shortly before Christmas break I picked up the copy of The Washing- ton Post which was littered about my room and began to leaf through its grey-and-black pages. Much to my consternation, I noticed on the front of the Style section a plug: Joyce Carol Oates ' grove of academe, D12. There are few courses at Princeton which could prompt this type of epi- sode, but such was creative writing with Joyce Carol Oates. The weekly hour-and-a-half workshops were by most accounts the mellowest classes the ten students in each section had ever participated in at Princeton. Three or so students each week — more at the end of the semester since people began to worry about failing — would photocopy their short stories and distribute them in advance of the class meeting. We would sit around and casually chat as all the students wandered into class late and then, after a long si- lence, Ms. Oates would initiate the discussion by asking in her soft, spacey voice: You all liked that story, didn ' t you? Another long pause would follow, broken eventually by comments agreeing with her assess- ment. By gauging the length of the pause and the positiveness of the comments, you could judge whether the class truly enjoyed the work or in fact loathed it. Yeah, I really liked it, one student might volunteer, while others would gradually offer more substantive comments. There were times when you would be sitting silently on a blue sofa in the funny room in 185 Nassau Street where the class met, and the dis- cussion would turn to somebody ' s lat- est work. Before you had a chance to criticize the story, which you thought was utterly abysmal, the rest of the students would be praising it as fine literature. And sometimes while you were preparing to describe in detail why you really loved a piece, the class 26

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t „ . — «j SPEAK UWDH NOISY FANS ABOVE t tent with offering edited versions of the truth, also cannot allow him to write anything but highly challenging, well-integrated, and for many people, impossible, exams. In many ways tak- ing an exam prepared by Mislow is similar to sight-reading all the parts in a symphony; one must not only be proficient with every instrument but also capable of combining them in new and unforeseen ways. Mislow makes the course both more bearable and more unbearable; bear- able (and even interesting) for the quality of the lecture, unbearable for the quality (and often, extreme difficulty) of his exams. This course is rare in that one can faithfully attend the lectures, do the reading and the problem sets, learn a great deal about organic chemistry, and still fail. But even the prospect of failure should not scare off the prospective orgo student; the course should be taken if only so one can be taught by Profes- sor Mislow, a man who can, in one lecture, discuss the relative stability of a t-butyl group in axial and equatorial positions on a cyclohexane ring and say a kind Oh, hello there to a yellow balloon at rest on the ceiling of the lecture hall. 25

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would begin to tear it to shreds. Once Ms. Oates drolly remarked, You cer- tainly get a lot of suggestions in this workshop. Not one of them is any good. You were never quite sure whether to take what she said se- riously. In truth, everyone enjoyed the course. Participating in a writing workshop with Joyce was like taking a general relativity course with a Nobel laureate — there was always present the knowledge that we were dealing with one of the most important as well as prolific contemporary American writers. Part of the problem with writ- ing seminars is that you ' re never really sure whether to take the criti- cism you received as meaningful. At least in this course, you knew your work was being complimented or cut down by someone who is good at the game. Sometimes you might choose to ignore the fact that Ms. Oates thought your piece was incoherent, but very often you would find she offered valuable insights for improving a character or redirecting the empha- sis of a work in progress. And then there was Joyce ' s bizarre but amus- ing sense of humor. A random sampl- ing of gems she told our creative writ- ing class: Last year I suggested as an ex- ercise writing in a sex other than your own — if you can find one. I know what a psychological and emotional investment writing a novel is . . . it ' s like when you ' re in the Gobi Desert and you reach for your flask and there ' s a hole in it. I could write a short story every two weeks — I have that kind of per- sonality — but most of my (writer) friends couldn ' t. They ' d be paral- yzed. If one can turn off creativity, it ' s easier to lead a somewhat normal life. And for those who found their works being bombasted by Joyce for no apparent reason, who saw the oth- er members of the workshop missing those points in his or her stories which had seemed so clear and ob- vious, there was always room for con- solation. The Post review of Joyce ' s new novel was a complete and utter pan. 27