Remembrances of Papers Lost

I’ve been thinking about papers – school papers (as opposed to newspapers or rolling papers) – one especially that I wrote for high school English in my senior year. I broke every rule about how to produce the paper (someday I’ll tell the story how, but not now) and I still received an A+ on it. It was about film editing and how it was one of the defining elements of what makes a movie a movie.

For reasons that so far escape me, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I may have actually said in that paper, wondering if I still believed any of it.

Too bad the paper was never returned to me. I’d had a chance to look it over. Mr. senior year English teacher, Mr. Hurley, allowed me to see the grade he placed on it, but needed it back for whatever arcane recording purposes Chicago Public Schools teachers needed to hold on to senior papers. I saw the grade, glanced over its contents and a few penciled-in comments, and back it went into Mr. Hurley’s folder.

On the last day of classes, my last day of high school, I sought out Mr. Hurley in his classroom. In the corridors, students were emptying their lockers as if they were those German military functionaries you always saw in the World War II movies, where the Allies are advancing and the Axis minions are throwing all their maps and files into big fires. I probably didn’t see any bonfires in the hallways of John F. Kennedy High School, but it looked like the word was out that everything – EVERYTHING! – must be destroyed. The trash cans were filled to the max, so the hallways effectively became the trash cans. The other significant difference was that the students were in a much better mood about dumping textbooks into garbage bins than the gray-uniformed officers seemed to be about torching their precious documents (the moral to this side-tale appears to be that any organization which lives by bureaucracy dies by bureaucracy).

When confronted, Mr. Hurley claimed my paper was in his office and would be “difficult to locate at this moment.” I’m not sure if he was speaking of the paper or his office. Either way, he looked like a man with a briefcase filled with embezzled funds and a phony passport in the pocket of his sportcoat. Or perhaps he was afraid the First Division had already secured that part of the building. Whatever was really on his mind, he looked surprised that I would want the paper returned, but insisted he would get it back to me “somehow.”

That was in 1973.

Since then, I have seen neither the paper nor Mr. Hurley.

Mr. Hurley was never someone you’d characterize as a teacher dedicated to his subject. I don’t recall many literary discussions in his class, nor did he ever endeavor to instill in his students a love for the written word. I do recall we spent a lot of time going over selected cantos from Paradise Lost, but I also recall we were considering them more like a legal document than a work of poetry.

English as a subject for Mr. Hurley was one of those “skills” you pick up to advance your opportunities for advancement in the faceless offices of industry and commerce. Your District Supervisor might note that you can hammer out a letter more grammatically than your fellow underlings, or make a better presentation at a sales conference, and thereby you’ll earn enough to purchase a better grade of white shirt to go along with your double-knit suit and Christmas tie.

To Mr. Hurley, from what I experienced, the inherent value of literature as literature was no value at all. He was a notably uninspiring English teacher, though he may have been a good chess player (I believe he also sponsored the school’s chess team).

My adolescent thoughts on film editing are no great loss to the world, I suppose. I just wonder, as I enter (or extend my occupancy of) my dotage, what those thought were. I may have been smart, by accident. Or I may have been stupid in a seemingly smart way. In those days, I was a passionate lover of the cinema. Today, I find myself rather estranged from the medium, with notable exceptions. I find myself ranting over the shortage of great films and great filmmaking – until I encounter a great film, and my love of the form is reborn.

I am curious, though, if the paper might help me figure out if I loved cinema because it was a great storytelling medium, or if I discovered my love of storytelling from my love of movies. The difference may be slight, but it’s the slight distinctions that mean the most.

There are two other of my papers that are apparently lost to the ages, both of them dating from my grad school years at Northwestern University. The professors for whom I wrote them are now deceased.

In one of them, I came up with my most incisive thoughts on the novelist Muriel Spark and her great novel, Loitering With Intent. The paper effectively saved my grade. I was expecting a B at best from Professor Elizabeth Dipple and somehow managed to pull an A- on the strength of that paper. The thoughts came to me, though, in the midst of some 3 a.m. inspiration (and a haze of caffeine and nicotine) and for the most part now escape me. I would like to read over my “brilliant” analysis of Ms. Spark’s novel, in case I ever need to be that brilliant again. But I doubt I ever will (see the paper or ever be that brilliant, take your pick).

The other paper took on Heart of Darkness – a topic my professor specifically warned the class against because, to paraphrase, “I have read everything that has been said or ever can be said about that book, and nothing you can write will strike me as new or interesting.”

Yet I persisted, approaching the novel as a critique of reality, eventually connecting it up to the works of – believe it or not – Philip K. Dick. It all had to do with A.) the frame story, and B.) Marlow’s hatred of lies, leading to the lie Marlow tells in the end. Oh, it also had references to the “fascination of the abomination,” the description of one being “captured by the incredible that is the very essence of dreams,” and Marlow’s regarding his choice of nightmares. I linked all these to Borges, Philip K. Dick and Gene Wolfe.

How I got away with it, I’ll never know.

While I was working on a final examination in class, the professor, Alfred Appel, looked over the final papers that were turned in at the beginning of class, including mine. At a point halfway through the examination, I heard the professor loudly whisper, “Son of a bitch!” I looked up and could see he was reading one of the papers. Either from immodest egotism, or unhealthy self-contempt, I could not help but suspect he had gotten to my paper.

But I did receive an A for the course, whether on the strength of that paper or not, I’ll never know.

I kind of wish I could know, but I can’t.

So I’ll just have to come up with something better.

Happy New Year to all!

When We Were Respectable

A few years ago now, I attended a convention where, on several occasions and within several different contexts, I was assured that science fiction had become “respectable.” On only one occasion, though, did someone explain to me why they thought so.

“Because it makes so much money.”

Like an innocent lad from the farmlands who just fallen off the turnip truck, I found myself asking, “Really? Is that all it takes to become respectable?”

Reply: a shrug. As if to say, “And what’s wrong with money? You want a Nobel Prize or something?”

For the moment, let’s forget that I do want a Nobel Prize. That can wait. What I did was try to add up what I just heard, except that it didn’t add up.

I’m a writer, which in most places means that, by definition and demonstration, I have no money. In fact, I’m convinced (without research, so sue me) that in many languages the word “writer” can be literally defined “One who has no money.”

But … but … I write science fiction!

Where, then, is my respectability?

Has it gotten lost in the mails? Was it transferred to the wrong PayPal account? Did one of my neighbors pick it up by mistake?

And … this loss is not mine alone. I look around at my peers, and if any of them have any money, not to mention “so much” money, it’s because they’ve been doing something other than writing, much less writing science fiction.

We’re eating watered-down porridge from hand-carved wooden bowls.

One would think respectability would have a little more flavor.

But wait, there’s more.

I also teach science fiction writing. Isn’t it proof enough that if an accredited institution with an impeccable reputation would pay for an instructor in science fiction writing, science fiction has earned a degree of respectability in an austere and – dare I say it? – respectable corner of our great culture?

Wrong again.

Within the confines of the Ivory Tower, science fiction is at best the poor relation. The “help.” We’re used to attract the rubes (and their money). It can be pointed to, if needed, for “cultural relevance” (“See? We’re not trying to make you write reams of involuted gibberish with abstractions instead of characters and inventories instead of plots! See, we have classes in science fiction! We’re … we’re almost cool!”).

But if enrollments go down and money grows scarce, science fiction is shown the door. Science fiction, then, is just a “frill.”

And science fiction classes may not be attracting as many students as they have in previous years. Students today know what science fiction is: it’s rockets and rayguns and robots (the “Three Rs” of science fiction). It’s shit blowing up other shit. Who needs to take a class in that?

“You were here as an embellishment. You’re not essential to the core of our highly-esteemed program. You do not display the necessary academic rigor to remain here. We’ll call you when we need you again.”

When you hear the word “rigor,” you know “mortis” will follow almost immediately.

The great academic ship in the harbor has painted over the name “Higher Education” on its sides and stern, replacing it with “Pequod.” And, thanks to a liberal application of academic rigor, we know how that story ends.

If this is what respectability feels like, I’d never have thought to pursue it.

Wait a minute – I haven’t pursued it!

When it comes to education, there are many things more important than respectability. Like, well – like … education, maybe, for a start.

When it comes to writing fiction, especially science fiction, on the list of things I most need to pay attention to, respectability is near the bottom.

Why the hell should I care about respectability?

The obvious conclusion that links science fiction with “so much money” is – media. Big budget superhero movies. Franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek. TV series via cable or Netflix. Big money there. But I can’t help feeling that “so much money” is all about the media, not the message.

And science fiction is more about message than media. Or can be. Or should be. Sometimes it is. But again, I don’t feel comfortable in my seat. I keep fidgeting, even squirming.

So, let’s say science fiction is respected because it makes so much money. What kind of respect is that? It is the respect of a merchant toward another merchant – a more successful merchant. It’s a respect based on commerce, not creativity. Respect based upon the contents of our wallets, not the content of our character, much less the character of our content. It is concession to power via money. It is an approbation of the status quo.

This is not to say I wouldn’t be happier with a few more bucks in the bank, or more than a few. I am not denying the attributes of financial success. I just don’t want the two confused – success and respectability.

Science fiction does not require respectability as either a necessary or sufficient cause for its existence any more than it requires financial success – though I wouldn’t mind if the latter came along for the ride.

“Respect” is one thing. “Respectability” is another. Of the two, I’ll take the former, if and when it is offered. The latter, far as I’m concerned, can go hang.

The Semester Ends

(more notes toward more stuff, and the term that never ends)

It’s all over but the grades.

Wait a second – okay, that too.

I had a good semester. Maybe not my best, but my students did well. They always surprise me. And I always come away from my classes feeling like I’ve learned more from the experience.

I’d love to expand upon that, but what I’m left with at the end of this term is not so much about my students as about the folks who are now my bosses.

You see, when I started teaching at Columbia, I worked for a Fiction Writing department, a rare species in an academic world. For all its rarity, it proved a popular program. In fact, one of the largest in the country.

A few years later, the Fiction Writing department was forced to merge with the MFA programs in Poetry and Creative Nonfiction, which belonged to the English Department. We were now the Creative Writing department, or to be more formal, the Department of Creative Writing.

This year, another merger has me now working for the English/Creative Writing department. So we’re one big, happy family.

Happy families are all the same.

I wonder where I heard that one before.

Years ago, back when I was in grad school, I wanted to work for an English department. I really did. Creative writing was all fine and well, but students needed a solid grounding in language (at least one) and literature. You can’t go anywhere until you know where you’ve been.

To some extent, I still believe all of that, but I no longer think that the “solid grounding” is sole territory of the English department. It may be a gross generalization, but a generalization with a foundation of fact: English departments in most American institutions of higher learning, are bureaucracies. And the main objective of any bureaucracy is self-preservation. Everything else is at best secondary – like students, like education.

I’m aware that most of my colleagues teaching creative writing work for English departments, and some of them may grimace sourly as I enter their domain. To get my attention, they’ll rattle the bars of their cells with an empty soup can they use as a water cup. And they’ll mutter, “Welcome to the club.”

It’s true. All true. I was fortunate enough to work in a department that was an aberration and, apparently, an abomination, before the eyes of the MLA, the NCTE and the AWP. In my old department, we worked for the students. We shared experience. Adjuncts and tenured profs were allowed to commingle in plain sight. Academically, we were Babylon. We were Gomorrah.

Well, now that nonsense has been fixed. We are safe under the heavenly dome of the English department – the way it was, the way it has been, and the way it should always be.

Adjuncts! Renounce your ways and repent! Accept your anonymity and lowly place in the hierarchy. Wear your shame like a mendicant’s robe. And to those who teach creative writing, admit even further to your degradation! You are merely the shills and entertainers hired to lure the unwary into this holy grove. We the anointed will take over from there.

And to those lower still – those who teach writing in “popular” forms, sometimes thought of as “writing that people actually want to read” – the dishes are stacked in the sink. Make sure they’re all clean and dried before you leave tonight.

Resistance is futile.

So, here I am. A Babylonian in the City of God (or so-named; God cleared out of here eons ago). Unrepentant. Proud of my degradation, even proud of my shame.

I’m a science fiction writer – you can’t cast me into a dungeon lower than that! I accept my lot with pride, even as you lower another stack of dishes into the sink. Even from the dungeon, I can see your hierarchy for the shallow, sick skeleton it is.

I’m a science fiction writer – the kind who believes that what we do is subvert the status quo. We examine the quotidian, and insist that there are other ways. Tomorrow can be different.

We may be absorbed into the host (i.e. the English department), but we’re viral. Those who hope to change us will find themselves changed in the process.

Let us hope the change will be for the better.