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Pif Magazine
ISSN: 1094-2726
Published by:
Pif, LLC
PMB 248
4820 Yelm Hwy SE
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Lacey, WA 98503-4903
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| PAST INTERVIEWS | MORE INTERVIEWS |
Sheila Schwartz is the author of the novel Imagine A Great White Light, a winner of the Pushcart Editors Book Award. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Cleveland State University. She recently completed a novel, Lies Will Take You Somewhere…
Mary Grimm is Associate Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and a faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Vermont College. She is the author of a novel, Left to Themselves, and a book of stories, Stealing Time (both Random House titles). Her work has appeared in MSS, The New Yorker and Redbook, among others.
The following conversation took place on October 29, 1999 at the Starbucks
in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and, though it drifted far afield, was centered
on the pedagogy of fiction in all settings. The two women are not necessarily
close friends, but are clearly respectful of and comfortable with one
another.
Misha Angrist: I’m wondering how much training each of you received as writers, and of that, what was the most valuable?
Mary Grimm: When I attended Cleveland State (as a Master’s student), there wasn’t really a creative writing program, only a "concentration" in creative writing. I was one of the first people to do a fiction thesis, or perhaps I should say, to intend to do a fiction thesis since it took me seven years or something to actually finish it. The extent of my formal training there was workshops with Alberta Turner, Leonard Trawick and John Gerlach, maybe five classes in all. Alberta Turner was the first one who ever really read my writing. She was amazingly supportive – I kept hoping she’d say something bad, but she never did. And of course now, I see that was good, that encouragement. John Gerlach was more helpful to me as an editor, a detail-oriented and critical reader of my work.
Sheila Schwartz: As an undergrad at Temple University, we didn’t have creative writing courses, although somebody volunteered to teach one as a way out of having to do some "serious" work that semester. What we did in that class was write a pornographic novel together. There was a book that was popular at that time, Naked Came the Stranger—
MG: Oh, yeah. Terry Southern.
SS: It had actually been written by a bunch of journalists under a pseudonym. Anyway, it was great fun. After that, I went to graduate school at SUNY-Binghamton and studied there with John Gardner – the ultimate teacher – and Liz Rosenberg and Barry Targan. After that, I got a Stegner Fellowship and worked with some other people at Stanford – John L’Heureux, Nancy Packer and Alice Adams. But I can’t say that all those experiences were equally valuable (laughs).
MG: Did you like Alice Adams? I find myself curious about her as a person; her fiction seems to be autobiographical.
SS: She was so wonderful. At that point I don’t think she was so interested in what I was doing, or maybe I wasn’t interested in having a teacher, but she was a wonderful person.
MG: That was very true for me – I was not interested in having a teacher, and I remember feeling a strong resistance, not because people were saying "your stuff is terrible" or telling me to change things that I didn’t want to change, but more because I felt – to be perfectly honest – kind of arrogant and snotty (laughs). Looking back, I find it incredible, considering how dumb I was then. My writing was OK, I guess, for someone so young and stupid (laughs).
SS: What I’ve noticed with my own students is that the good ones really only need to hear something for maybe a semester, the ones who are going to be writers. You don’t have keep telling them the same thing over and over. (Mary nods)
MA: Recently, there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Alexander Theroux, in which he trotted out many of the same tired platitudes about how writing can’t be taught and wondering why are there all these writing programs and why don’t these people get a life, etc.
MG: (laughs) Learn truck driving!
MA: My guess is that that you don’t feel that way, but I’m wondering if you have moments of frustration when you do. Are you at all sympathetic to the idea that writing can’t be taught?
SS: Oh, I think writing can definitely be taught. I think that vision and sympathy for humanity are what can’t be taught. That’s probably the biggest sticking point I find in the classroom, having to deal with certain students who may be fabulously talented but have nothing to say. Or they have mean things to say. That happens quite a bit.
