changed my opinion a year later.

n/c, that's all.

brevity's nice, though.

ctrl-s wrote:That Philip Levine anecdote, if true, is an example of utter flaming asshattery. Humiliating a student in front of their classmates after they'd read their own poem? Without knowing anything more about the situation, it just sounds pointlessly malicious. The Tate one, on the other hand, sounds like a total cliche -- precisely what one would expect from a highly regarded older male writer teaching MFA students.

I don't disagree with you, but it's a tricky business. I know from my days as a student that it's totally stultifying to waste an hour of your life indulging a piece of crap that someone obviously put 10 minutes of thought into. Sometimes, I think you have to call a spade a spade and let people know that not only do readers have standards but people involved in a serious artistic community (which workshops attempt to cultivate) deserve not to have their time wasted.

The Jim Tate anecdote was no doubt curmudgeonly as you point out, but from my perspective, it ended up being indirectly great advice. Most of the bad poems I wrote at that time (and most of the bad poems I see from students now) fail because they're utterly artless outpourings of emotion. And how many unreadable freshman composition essays are "straight from the heart"? We all know that there's a breed of poet out there who feels justified in imposing his or her personality on the world simply because s/he feels things more deeply than the poor, ignorant populace. I think disabusing people of this notion is a good thing. Pound was wrong: "only emotion endures" is a lie. If it were true, Henry Rollins would be a great poet. Encouraging younger writers to stop obsessing over their feelings in order to develop more fully the ideas in their poems, to hone their ability to engage the senses, or simply to deepen their relationship with language is, in my opinion, excellent advice. And it works--for those who truly want to write.

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote: And how many unreadable freshman composition essays are "straight from the heart"? We all know that there's a breed of poet out there who feels justified in imposing his or her personality on the world simply because s/he feels things more deeply than the poor, ignorant populace. I think disabusing people of this notion is a good thing. Pound was wrong: "only emotion endures" is a lie. If it were true, Henry Rollins would be a great poet. Encouraging younger writers to stop obsessing over their feelings in order to develop more fully the ideas in their poems, to hone their ability to engage the senses, or simply to deepen their relationship with language is, in my opinion, excellent advice. And it works--for those who truly want to write.

this sounds like a good point...

having almost zero background in higher-level formal arts / writing education, i can only speak from intuition, but I do know from studying / teaching less "expressive" disciplines (i.e. quantitiave / expository / analytical) that there are no qualms about the critique of the information contained therein... i.e. if you write the wrong chemistry equation, it's just wrong. You have to confront the incorrect expression--which is didactic but doesn't get personal.

With art, it seems, it invariably gets personal... everyone's piece of art or writing is an expression him/herself, etc... and quite possibly a badly wrought one for novice students, and so forth. The analogue to 'getting the chemistry equation wrong' is more delicate, because it's difficult to say "this expression of your ideas is incorrect."

I read an interview with Wallace in which he said something about his role as a professor having to do with teaching the students how to tell when a piece of work is "true" or not... which is a nebulous, difficult and very un-quantitative goal. Especially, I imagine, when you (the teacher) have spent considerable time developing your sense of good writing, and you're then put in the place to critique the work of those who haven't. So it can be uncomfortable (or downright offensive) to read something about which the writer obviously didn't care... like listening to shitty music.

Brett Eugene Ralph: Oh, I'm sure. The larger point(s) contained in Tate's remark and Levine's possibly fictitious one were not lost on me, and seem entirely worthwhile as you've expanded on them. I just think that both anecdotes reek of stereotypical MFA-program-instructor ego-out-of-control assholishness, while the DFW thing may have been slightly assholish but at least was not public or cliched. There are ways and ways to administer needed smackdowns to writing students, as you obviously know.

There's an interview with Greil Marcus on Perfect Sound Forever where he talks about the emotional outpourings of singer-songwriters and how, in response to whinings along the lines of "But it's what I FEEL! There's no wrong or right about it, man!", he has had the impulse to shout "Yeah, but what you feel is FUCKED!"

Infinite Jest is quite possibly my favourite novel. At any rate, I hold it and the author in high esteem.

I can't comment on the validity of the Maths in Everything and More, but I very much enjoyed it and the way it was written.

DFW is quite possibly the Author I've most wanted to see a C/NC about. Though there remains the question of why I never did this.

I've almost finished Consider the Lobster. Quite strong overall, there are some great essays (besides the Porn/AVN awards mentioned above) on 9/11 and the reaction in Bloominton, Illinois, on Kafka and Dostoevsky, and on the George McCain bid for GOP candidate in the 2000 election. There are a couple of snoozers in there, and it's not quite as entertaining as A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, but it is definitely an enjoyable, interesting read.

Yeah, I favor the Dostoevsky, McCain, and "usage wars" ones myself. Was a trifle disappointed in "The View From Mrs. Thompson's" somehow, and found the Tracy Austin book review a bit meh, but greatly enjoyed the Updike roast. As you say, nothing in there is quite as hilarious as the Illinois State Fair essay and the title piece from A Supposedly Fun Thing..., but that pair of insane tours-de-force make a hell of a hard act to follow, so it's cool with me.

i really like david foster wallace. loved infinite jest though it took a century to get through... read part of "a supposedly fun thing" but that one really escaped me. i'm not sure if i had too many books going on at the time but i can recall flipping through it and being like "what the fuck is this guy talking about?" for some reason it seemed really academic, although when i revert to amazon or read about it here people respond as if it is just a funny wordy collection of essays. i guess i'll have to pick it up again. it's extremely possible that i was high.

Well, the essay on TV and American fiction and the one about the "Death of the Author" in A Supposedly Fun Thing... ARE both academic, though not unfun if you're at all interested in the subjects. The rest of it is pretty much a fucking blast to read, and by saying that I don't at all mean to diminish the depth of his writing, which is pretty fucking profound indeed and which I am not going to even try to approach and define, but being that serious and hardcore a thinker and that entertaining and precise a writer at the same time is, like, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY HARD to pull off, and at his best Wallace does it astonishingly well.

From experience, I recommend not reading the section of Infinite Jest where Ken E. is waiting for his pot dealer when you are high.

ctrl-s wrote:
From experience, I recommend not reading the section of Infinite Jest where Ken E. is waiting for his pot dealer when you are high.

"Where was the girl who said she would come."

That was probably the longest paragraph I've ever read. I was cold sober and it took me, like, two hours to get that paragraph finished. I'm glad I don't smoke pot.