I knew I was going to be a writer when
I went to college.
I thought a liberal arts degree would be good preparation.
I had already spent two hitches in the service and been overseas twice.
I'd been beat up by sailors, had the clap, and was a daily drinker, and sometimes
blackout drinker.
I was well-read. I had more time to read, as an enlisted
man in the Air Force, than an undergraduate has, if he reads the work assigned in
class. I followed the reading where it led me. I'd say I was more widely-read than
many of my instructors.
I saw a lot of movies, too, in the service, going
to the base theater every time the movie changed. They showed a lot of B movies
and foreign films, in addition to big-budget feature films.
I had the GI
Bill, and went to a state university. To Florida State University. I had done a
year's work between hitches in the service at Palm Beach Junior College and enjoyed
it. I made straight A's.
* * *
I didn't know what to major in. Something interesting. I chose anthropology.
I took the usual English classes and found that the English department faculty were
opinionated, the English majors were cowed, and that, if I majored in English I would
soon be crossways with the bossman. I didn't need that.
I had been reading,
as a writer-in-training, and writing long letters to a friend--they were like the
exchange of letters between Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady--for eight years, and had
opinions about literature myself.
For example, I thought a novel should read
like a letter from a friend, or to a friend, depending on whether you were reading
it, or writing it.
* * *
I enjoyed my undergraduate days in anthropology very much. The field work
I did in archeology was interesting, the classes in the history and philosophy of
anthropological theory were stimulating, I excelled at both, graduating magna cum
laude, making Phi Beta Kappa, being named an Outstanding Senior, the only one, of
ten, not pictured in the annual, and making the exclusive teacher's pet archeology
club the Order of the Blue Trowel.
* * *
My purpose in getting a degree was to be able to land an entry-level white-collar
job, in private industry or a government bureaucracy, a job that left me enough energy
at the end of the day to write.
The job would be an avocation, not a career.
Writing would be my career.
I would support myself by writing books that
readers wanted to read. Once I taught myself to write. After work.
* * *
I got a fellowship to graduate school. I had some GI Bill left. I would
be paid to attend school, which I was good at. Back then, Lyndon Johnson's Great
Society was going strong, and a person could enter an accelerated PhD program and
get a PhD in three years, then repay his government loans after he had a job teaching
college somewhere.
I decided that anthropology professor would be my day
job.
I met, fell in love with, and married Brenda Brown. She was going to
be an anthropologist too. We dug together on several digs, at FSU.
We each
did a year's graduate work at FSU, then were accepted at Tulane University, I with
a three-year NDEA Fellowship and tuition waiver, Brenda with a tuition waiver and
the chance of an assistantship later on. Tulane had an accelerated PhD program.
* * *
Richard Nixon got in and shut the money to higher education off. He shut
off graduate and postdoctoral research grants, grants supporting scientific publications,
and graduate fellowships, so that fewer students would enter graduate school, fewer
professors would be needed, and the whole apparat would shrink. He would starve
the beast. We were in the pipeline, terminal throughput. Tough shit.
I
saw what was happening in time to steal the last year of my fellowship to stay at
home and teach myself to write. To sign up for thesis, in order to draw my stipend,
borrow an equal amount, since I was registered for a full-time load, and have a year
for a do-it-yourself (DIY) writing fellowship.
Tulane didn't care. As long
as I was a student in good standing they got matching funds for preparing me for
a job that was no longer there.
* * *
That is, graduate school was a horrible experience for me, compared to my
undergraduate years, because of economic pressures. And the hypocrisy.
The
faculty pretended we didn't measure up. They blamed our failure on us. They were
so sad to jerk us around on our qualifying exams, asking us to take them again,
and improve our performance. It hurt them more than it hurt us.
* * *
When people tell me that an MFA program in creative writing gave them time
to write, gave them role-models and mentors, taught them something about the mechanics
of writing, certified them as qualified professionals, gave them friends they would
network with, as they advanced together in their careers, swapping awards and prizes
with each other, I think, Weren't you lucky.
Then I think, There,
but for the grace of God, go I.
* * *
In the College of Hard Knocks, an expulsion is often a promotion, Scott Nearing
said.
Herman Melville said a whaling ship was his Harvard and his Yale.
In the year I gave myself to learn to write I wrote two books and started a third.
I established my rhythm as a writer. Found my seat.
* * *
Some writers do well in graduate school.
I would not have.
I didn't know how to get a mentor.
I'd have had time to write, but time to
write what? What everybody else was writing, so that I would have that cookie-cutter
signature to my style.
You learn the rules yourself, through trial and error,
and then you break them, and you know why, too. It isn't just rebellion to be different.
A certificate as a qualified professional is bogus, since writing can't be taught,
and there are no jobs at the end, anyway, so implying that there are is bad faith
on the part of the person blowing smoke up the student's ass to protect his own rice
bowl.
Who would want to become part of a daisy-chain of reciprocal back-scratching
where you reward kinsmen and punish outsiders, like joining the masons? Who would
become a writer to do that? Have they no self-respect?
* * *
As for the notion that being a student in a graduate writing program, among
students with similar goals, similar hopes, somehow validates your struggle and makes
you part of a community of like-minded pilgrims, that won't help you when you face
the black page, year after year, day after day.
If it doesn't come from inside
of you, you're screwed.
If it does come from inside, you don't need a club
to belong to.
After the mutiny on the mound the second summer at Panacea
my membership in the Order of the Blue Trowel was revoked.