want the world to be.”
“Do you believe that?” Sven asks me. “That we write to change the world?”
“I do. If we look like we’re trying to change the world, the writing will sink from the weight of its own piety. But in the best of our work, the idealism is there, like trout below the surface of the water. Of course you want to try to change the world. You just don’t want to show your cards. But look at the world. Who would not want to change it? Books count. They disturb people. You never heard of a tyrant who wanted to burn the TV sets.”
I ask if they know who first wrote the line, “We are the world.” Naturally, they say Michael Jackson. “Uh-uh. It was a poet. Robert Penn Warren,” I tell them:
We are the world, and it is too late
to pretend we are children at dusk watching fireflies.
We must frame, then, more firmly the idea of good.
“What if readers don’t like the way you want to change the world?” asks George. “I know you don’t want to stoop to such a practical subject, but if you hope to change the world, you ought to have a few people on your side.”
“You’re a goner if you write for any standards but your own. Some will love your work. Some will hate it. Either way, you must simply go at it. You know Bill Russell, the great Boston Celtics center? He was the best player of his day, but he was black playing basketball in antiblack Boston, and his slightest error was always crushed under boos and catcalls. Russell’s daughter asked him, ‘Daddy, what do you think when they boo you like that?’ He said, ‘I never hear the boos because I never hear the cheers.’ Your vision, only your vision, matters.”
One of the pleasures of teaching writing courses is that you can encourage extravagant thoughts like this in your students. These are the thoughts that will be concealed in plain and modest sentences when they write. But before that artistic reduction occurs, you want your students to think big—to think big and write small. I don’t tell them that in so many words. But there’s no purpose to writing unless you believe in significant things—right over wrong, good over evil. Your writing may deal with the gray areas between the absolutes, and all the relativities that life requires. But you still need to acknowledge that the absolutes exist, and that you are on the side of the angels. I have never known a great writer who did not believe in decency and right action, however earnestly he or his characters strayed from it.
“Writing is the cure for the disease of living. Doing it may sometimes feel like an escape from the world, but at its best moments it is an act of rescue. Each of you has his own way of seeing into suffering and error. But you share the desire to save the world from its blights by going deeper into them until they lie exposed. You show up the imperfections of living for what they are. You hope to write them out of existence.”
“Say that again?” says Diana. “Not the whole thing. Just the part about writing being the cure for the disease of living.”
“You like that?” I ask foolishly.
“Not especially,” she says. “But you’re the only person I know who would dare talk like that.” More laughter at my expense.
“It seems that you’re saying a writer should write with moderation, but think grandiosely?” Ana asks.
“That’s it. Trust not the humble writer. Every one of us craves immortality. Every one of us harbors a special fear and hatred of dying, both for its finality and its solitude. A writer wants to continue to live among others, many others, and that may only be accomplished through his work. This is why all writers long to be loved by younger readers. The young will imitate them and re-create them over and over.”
“We’ve spent a lot of time on the beginnings of stories,” says Nina. “What about endings?”
“Much easier, I think. Because your ending lies within your beginning. You simply have to discover it
“Do you believe that?” Sven asks me. “That we write to change the world?”
“I do. If we look like we’re trying to change the world, the writing will sink from the weight of its own piety. But in the best of our work, the idealism is there, like trout below the surface of the water. Of course you want to try to change the world. You just don’t want to show your cards. But look at the world. Who would not want to change it? Books count. They disturb people. You never heard of a tyrant who wanted to burn the TV sets.”
I ask if they know who first wrote the line, “We are the world.” Naturally, they say Michael Jackson. “Uh-uh. It was a poet. Robert Penn Warren,” I tell them:
We are the world, and it is too late
to pretend we are children at dusk watching fireflies.
We must frame, then, more firmly the idea of good.
“What if readers don’t like the way you want to change the world?” asks George. “I know you don’t want to stoop to such a practical subject, but if you hope to change the world, you ought to have a few people on your side.”
“You’re a goner if you write for any standards but your own. Some will love your work. Some will hate it. Either way, you must simply go at it. You know Bill Russell, the great Boston Celtics center? He was the best player of his day, but he was black playing basketball in antiblack Boston, and his slightest error was always crushed under boos and catcalls. Russell’s daughter asked him, ‘Daddy, what do you think when they boo you like that?’ He said, ‘I never hear the boos because I never hear the cheers.’ Your vision, only your vision, matters.”
One of the pleasures of teaching writing courses is that you can encourage extravagant thoughts like this in your students. These are the thoughts that will be concealed in plain and modest sentences when they write. But before that artistic reduction occurs, you want your students to think big—to think big and write small. I don’t tell them that in so many words. But there’s no purpose to writing unless you believe in significant things—right over wrong, good over evil. Your writing may deal with the gray areas between the absolutes, and all the relativities that life requires. But you still need to acknowledge that the absolutes exist, and that you are on the side of the angels. I have never known a great writer who did not believe in decency and right action, however earnestly he or his characters strayed from it.
“Writing is the cure for the disease of living. Doing it may sometimes feel like an escape from the world, but at its best moments it is an act of rescue. Each of you has his own way of seeing into suffering and error. But you share the desire to save the world from its blights by going deeper into them until they lie exposed. You show up the imperfections of living for what they are. You hope to write them out of existence.”
“Say that again?” says Diana. “Not the whole thing. Just the part about writing being the cure for the disease of living.”
“You like that?” I ask foolishly.
“Not especially,” she says. “But you’re the only person I know who would dare talk like that.” More laughter at my expense.
“It seems that you’re saying a writer should write with moderation, but think grandiosely?” Ana asks.
“That’s it. Trust not the humble writer. Every one of us craves immortality. Every one of us harbors a special fear and hatred of dying, both for its finality and its solitude. A writer wants to continue to live among others, many others, and that may only be accomplished through his work. This is why all writers long to be loved by younger readers. The young will imitate them and re-create them over and over.”
“We’ve spent a lot of time on the beginnings of stories,” says Nina. “What about endings?”
“Much easier, I think. Because your ending lies within your beginning. You simply have to discover it
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