New School 1

Rajeet Guha Synopsis and Discussion of Readings for Professor Salvatore’s class Rust Hills, the renowned fiction editor of Esquire Magazine of yesteryear, had written a lucid piece a long while ago that elaborated on the palpable difference in writing witnessed in slick and quality fiction. He has strong and uncompromising views that sift out slick from quality in fiction writing. Hills himself as a literary critic is highly opinionated and stereotypes university professors and undergraduate students as writers of slick fiction. He seems to reserve an air of animosity for university professors. I am skeptical about such a sweeping generalization. Robert Frost was a professor. Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates are university professors. Other literary critics like John Gardner and Flannery O’Connor are also guilty of such an unsubstantiated and imprecise generalization. John Gardner has praised the university system of education with its formidable and unfathomable reserves of books, articles, magazines, newspapers, periodicals, book readings, literary events, debates and stellar courses for the transformation of the budding writer into a well established author. He has not done justice however to an overwhelming majority of professors at the university in molding the reputed writer of the future. He has praised only a minority of university professors. There seems to be an intellectual undercurrent between university professors and professional literary critics. John Gardner has also talked about a mutual rivalry between writers and professional literary critics. However, university professors of English are also literary critics in their own right. Some of these university professors are also professional literary critics. I know someone who is a reputed literary critic at the New York Times. Rust Hills evaluates the works of two literary giants in the body of short story literature namely Guy De Maupassant and Anton Chekhov. Hills belittles the works of Maupassant while he lavishes praise on the works of Chekhov. He labels Maupassant’s fiction as slick fiction while he regards Chekhov’s fiction as quality fiction. He says that Maupassant’s tales are excessively sentimental, divorced from reality, glitzy, prurient, depraved, full of promiscuous women, opulent, decadent, deceptive and always have irony in them. He considers Maupassant’s works to be superficial, having unrealistic twists and lacking depth. Maupassant’s masterpiece ‘The Necklace’ is implied to be one such work. On the contrary, Chekhov’s short stories are considered by him to be the jewels in quality fiction. He lionizes Chekhov as a sublime short story teller telling full-bodied stories. He feels Chekhov precisely portrays reality as it is. Chekhov’s short stories portray the mundane and monotonous life as it actually occurs in society. He feels that short story writing is highly infatuated with the Maupassant mode of writing. Instead he feels that short story writing should shift to a Chekhovian mode of writing. John Gardner has talked time and again about the importance of being educated and well read. He has spoken of a concentrated course of classical education. He has talked of autodidacts being better than those without any learning and education. I concur with him on this. He has however remarked that autodidacts generally do not make good writers. He is firmly of the conviction that the writing of the self-taught is far lower than those of a university-educated writer. I contend with him on this. Shakespeare, Homer, Bernard Shaw, Tagore, Hemingway, Mark Twain and countless others taught themselves. Some of these are renowned fiction writers in the pantheon of great writers in world literature. Any literary critic whether it is John Gardner, Rust Hills and Flannery O’Connor believes that no one should be coerced to become a writer. They think that the world has a surfeit of writers. They believe that the pedigree of most of these writers is rather run-of-the-mill. They concur that writing pedestrian or slick literature is not an arduous task. They also feel universities are churning out plenty of pedestrian writers who write meretricious bestsellers. Most university and writing programs according to these literary critics are mills that manufacture authors who write potboilers and subsequently lead a life of opulence and fame. Nonetheless, these luminous literary critics disparage such slick fiction. They consider such ersatz, stereotyped, maudlin, razzle-dazzle, unrealistic literature to pander to the unsophisticated, plebeian readers of literature. They do not even consider such slick fiction to be a form of art in the strict definition of the term. Flannery O’Connor feels that colleges should smother the slick fiction writing proclivities of budding college writers. Rust Hills feels that most magazines feature melodramatic stories that are not worth publishing at all. Hills feels that young writers who have a burning desire to publish and amateurishly pen down kitschy or romantic stories where characterization is incomplete and shallow should try to publish their work in obscure and little magazines like Accent, Epoch and Audience. He feels that these magazines are a good place to start. He thinks it is preposterous for them to try and publish their stories in marquee magazines like Esquire and New Yorker. Hills feels the penchant to write tasteless and shoddy fiction can still be excused in the young but not in the old as the former often do not possess the right training. Hills feels that it is unpardonable for the experienced and old writers to pen down mediocre fiction as they are trying to escape from reality with such an endeavor. Experienced, well-established and old writers should write full-bodied stories and not experimental ones. Experimental stories are for writers who are uninitiated in the craft of writing. Hills heaps praise on James Joyce’s collection of stories namely Dubliners. He calls this collection of stories ‘full-bodied’ while consigning Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to the trash heap of literature. Hills excoriates Finnegans Wake and calls it experimental literature. Hills believes that every publishable story must have a point, purpose or intention. Nevertheless this is a necessary but not sufficient condition as the intention must be woven seamlessly into the rest of the part of the story comprising plot, characterization, mood, style, structure, setting, etc. such that it can be included into the rich tapestry of art. It is then that the artist reaches his apogee. The reader will visualize the story in all its complexity and everything will unfold in his mind. The reader will feel like he is actively participating in the action. Hills feels that characterization and the full development of character is the fulcrum of the story. He advises writers to make the plot of a story subservient to characterization and not the other way around. Those writers who fall into the bait of giving primacy to plot and relegate characterization to a secondary role will inevitably produce a melodrama of a mediocre merit. Form of the story (Thought, Idea, Point, Purpose, Intention, Character or Characterization) has to be wedded to the Content of the story (Theme of Story, Story, Plot, Incident or Episode). The readers will feel that the work epitomizes sublime art, blending form and content. Hills feels that being an unsuccessful author doesn’t preclude a person in judging the quality of a piece of literature. In fact he feels that it may help him become a better judge, literary critic and editor of the quality of fiction. He says the editor’s job is first to understand the intention or point of the author. The next duty of the editor is to help the author realize his intention by rewriting the story to create congruousness between the controlling intention and the theme of the story. He finally says that the quality of stories can be discerned with a combination of too approaches namely the too academic and the too emotional. The too academic approach asks four questions. It tries to understand the writer’s point in telling the story, how the writer expresses his point, whether he articulates his point well, and finally whether the point told is worth telling. The issues concerned with the writer’s point or intention in telling the story and whether it was worth telling deals with Content. The issues concerned with how the writer expresses his point or intention and whether he expresses his point beautifully deals with Form. The writer’s point or intention in telling the story and how he expresses his point is related to Interpretation. The other approach or the too emotional approach deals with instant recognition of a masterpiece in fiction. This is a rarity. These stories are full-bodied stories that are a cut above the rest. They outclass the good pieces of fiction as well. These preternatural and unique stories are a joy to behold and come once in a blue moon. Hills has also mentioned that penning down quality fiction happens from imagining and writing at night. He calls this nightdreaming. He says that the opposite of this that is daydreaming or imagining and writing during the day churns out slick fiction. John Gardner castigates John Steinbeck’s works. Gardner is not at all appreciative of Steinbeck’s prose. He takes Steinbeck to task as a spinner of shoddy yarns. Gardner says Steinbeck’s classic ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ fails to make the cut as a terrific novel. According to the Gardner Steinbeck’s Depression-era novel wallows in melodrama and looks at the novel from one perspective, from one side that is of the exploited. The Grapes of Wrath according to Gardner portrays a lamentable and lachrymose picture of the subalterns, the have nots. It portrays the haves, the exploiters, the ranchers as being the incarnation of evil. This picture is only partially correct. It is a Manichean view of life. It does not take into account the situation and the peculiar predicament of the ranchers. Thus, it does not portray the whole picture. The tale told in the novel descends from tragedy to melodrama. The necklace by Maupassant is an incredible story that is absurdly and tragically comic. The tragically ironic humor in the story is encapsulated in the last line when Mathilde’s friend tells her that the original diamond necklace was costume jewelry worth five a mere five hundred francs. The last line is the story. It is a bombshell that stuns the reader into disbelief. Good Country People is a short story set in the Southern part of America. This tale by Flannery O’Connor is dark, depressing and disturbing. The title of the tale is clearly ironic and sadistically sarcastic. Cruel irony is in ample amount at the end of the story. The tale depicts how those who are smooth talking whether a salesmen or not can ensnare extremely educated but gullible people with their charm and cunning. This is a story that is not easy to digest. The truth is bitter and hard to swallow. Flannery O’Connor says that the story has to be perceived through the senses. It materializes only after it has been seen, heard, smelt, tasted and touched. A story must portray real-life characters who have all the emotions, feelings and thoughts in their capacity. A writer also has to be concerned with concrete details. A certain amount of naturalism is required. A writer must also use the colloquial language, slang, mannerisms and the idiom of that place to make the story feel as real as possible. The reader must feel that he has been transported to that place and is experiencing the story.