Foster Dickson's Blog, page 11

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 211

Classic style does not reject plain style, although it rejects the theology behind it and sees that theology as illegitimately elevating a necessary foundation into an achieved style. From the perspective of classic style, plain style is deficient because the theology behind plain style ignores the fact that, left to themselves, people are vulnerable to special interests and prone to special pleading. People are weak, and common wisdom is often self-serving. It is perfectly possible for common wisdom to be an anthology of  a community’s complacent errors, because common wisdom does not include any principle of critical validation. Without critical testing, common wisdom becomes received opinion.

Classic style views itself as repairing the deficiency of plain style by introducing sophistication and individual responsibility. First, classic writers and readers are an elite community, consisting of those who practice the critical discipline of its theology. Anyone can take up this practice and so join, but the style is aristocratic, not egalitarian. Second, classic wisdom cannot be the wisdom of children because it depends upon a wealth of adult experience. In plain style, everyone is equal; truth is everyone’s birthright. It is seen by all; it is everyone’s possession. It can come out of the mouths of babes. In classic style, truth is available to all who are willing to work to achieve it, but truth is certainly not commonly possessed by all and is no one’s birthright. In the classic view, truth is the possession of individuals who have validated common wisdom; for them, truth has been achieved, and such achievement requires both experience and a critical intelligence beyond the range of babes.

– from “The Principles of Classic Style” in Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose, second edition by Francis-Noel Thomas and Mark Turner

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The Work (as 2023 winds down)

This writing life has changed dramatically in recent years. Not long ago, I was reading one of my old blog posts titled “The Work,” from June 2015, and back then I was churning out this and that, taking on projects as fast as I could . . . Eight years later, things are quite different.

Last month, I finished the commissioned work Faith. Virtue. Wisdom. about Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, and for the first time in twenty years, there is no other book project to move into or continue working on. From the time I started interviewing Clark Walker in January 2004 (for I Just Make People Up) until the release of Faith. Virtue. Wisdom. in October 2023, I have had at least one full-length book either in process or being promoted. What has been unusual for me about the Montgomery Catholic book is that it won’t require the traditional kind of promotion that commercial works need: author events, book signings, etc. The book was completed, was printed, and is being distributed by the school for its sesquicentennial. When we sent it to press, I was basically done.

Another significant change to the work has been the decision to close level:deepsouth. This was a tough thing to do, but I think made the right call. I wrote more about that in a post published last month. Its premise was one very close to my heart – growing up Generation X in the South – and the short version of this story is: the project had gone as far as it could go, but that wasn’t far enough. In the South, we have an old saying “You gotta fish or cut bait,” and it was time to cut bait.

However, despite those significant changes, some of the same work is still here: the Southern movies posts, coordinating the Fitzgerald Museum literary contests, and editing Nobody’s Home. For the first of those three ongoing projects, I recently published number 65 about the Civil Rights drama Nothing But a Man. I’ve been writing these posts since 2013, which means that I’ve published about seventy of them (including the samplers) over the last ten years. As for the Fitzgerald Museum’s contests, we just opened things up for submissions to the sixth annual Literary Contest, which accepts English-language submissions from students worldwide, and the fourth annual Zelda Award, which is for Alabama high school students. For the last of the three, I published a new batch of essays in Nobody’s Home in August, which constitutes the third expansion of the anthology. The original compilation was complete in 2021, and these expansions have come in 2022 and 2023. The anthology now has fifty-two essays to offer, and an invitation-only submissions period could add more to the anthology this fall. I also remain open to reading submissions of reviews or interviews year-round.

My teaching life has also changed dramatically. Teaching creative writing and English for nineteen years, while periodically also teaching classes in other settings, I was always writing a syllabus, planning a student project, trying to write a grant or fellowship application, re-reading works for an upcoming class, or grading papers. Since January, when I left our college’s English department to become the Academic Writing Advisor, that kind of work is no longer a mainstay of my time. Though working with students’ writing is still very much part of my job, it is done in a writing-center setting. Additionally, my class load is now comprised of first-year student success efforts. I teach three sections of a one-hour course whose goal is to acclimate new students to college life. There aren’t readings to review, though there is a little writing to grade. In that regard, I have been working with the writing of others for over twenty years, so the fundamentals aspects of my work have not changed. However, the way that I work and the context in which I work are very different.

One thing that remains constant, though, is my role as the advisor to a student-edited literary magazine. This aspect of my work as a writer, editor, and teacher is one that I thoroughly enjoy and had hoped to hold onto as I left a high school creative writing program and moved into a college. Starting in the Spring 2023 semester, I became the faculty advisor for Huntingdon College’s literary magazine The Prelude, which was founded in 1928. We recently got my second issue from press and have organized a staff for the next issue. I am particularly pleased and honored to take on this role, picking up where others have left off to maintain a tradition that has lasted almost a century. The Prelude has had among its past contributors Kathryn Tucker Windham, Harper Lee, Andrew Hudgins, and Jacqueline Trimble.

And with my newfound free time, I’ve been able to do something that vigorous writing and teaching schedules did not allow. I have time to read again! Recently, there have been James D. Kyrilo’s The Catholic Teacher and Jacques Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy. In the summer, I read William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Thomas McGuane’s Ninety-Two in the Shade, and Ernest Gaines’ Of Love and Dust. I’ve also written three book reviews for the Alabama Writers Forum this year: Freedom’s Dominion by historian Jefferson Cowie, Outside from the Inside by poet Anne Whitehouse, and Versions of May by poet Jim Murphy. For most of the last twenty years, my mind has been so wrapped up that there has been less little mental energy to just sit and read and enjoy it. It certainly has been nice.

A few people around me seem to wonder why I’m not interested in starting another book, but there’s nothing to worry about. I set out as a college student in the 1990s to “be a writer,” and as Henry Miller put it in Tropic of Cancer, now I am one. After writing or editing seven of my own books, publishing student-written books, creating a few curriculum guides, putting out more than twenty years’ worth of school literary magazines, helping other writers with various publications, and writing a slew of smaller things, I think it’s OK to take a minute and let it simmer. It’s not like I’m quitting— not hardly. There’s still plenty going on.

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 210

Now bear with me, Gentlemen, if what I have to say has at first sight a fanciful appearance. Philosophy, then, or science, is related to knowledge in this way: knowledge is called by the name of science or philosophy when it is acted upon, informed, or if I may use a strong figure, impregnated by reason. Reason is the principle of the intrinsic fecundity of knowledge, which, to those who possess it, is its especial value, and which dispenses with the necessity of their looking abroad for any end to rest upon external to itself. Knowledge, indeed, when thus exalted into a scientific form, is also power; not only is it excellent in itself, but whatever such excellence may be, it is something more, it has a result beyond itself.

– from the chapter “Knowledge Its Own End” in The Idea of a University by John Henry Cardinal Newman

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A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 209

Again and again I witness a communication breakdown in classroom settings when individuals who were speaking found not only that they had sharp differences of perspective but that attempting to engage in dialogue across these differences aroused intense passions, including anger and sadness. Tears and sorrow were easier for students and teachers to cope with than expressions of disagreement evoking covert and overt feelings of rage. The pressure to maintain a non-combative atmosphere, however, one in which everyone can feel safe, can actually work to silence discussion and/or completely eradicate the possibility of dialectical exchange.

– from the chapter “Conflict” in Teaching Critical Thinking by bell hooks

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The release of “Faith. Virtue. Wisdom.”

The commemorative/historical book Faith. Virtue. Wisdom. was released by Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School today during the kickoff to its 150th anniversary celebration. Montgomery Catholic was founded as St. Mary of Loretto School in 1873 by the Sisters of Loretto and today operates as a busy and thriving institution. Based in Kentucky, the original mission of the Sisters of Loretto was the education of girls living in poverty. Their work in Montgomery, Alabama was begun at the request of then-Bishop of Mobile John Quinlan.

Originally a school for girls only, St. Mary of Loretto operated alongside St. Peter’s School for Boys until their merger into a coeducational institution in 1929. Later developments within Montgomery’s Catholic schools included the addition of two parochial elementary schools at St. Bede Parish and Our Lady Queen of Mercy Parish in 1958 and 1962, respectively. Then “Catholic High” (as St. Mary of Loretto would come to be known) lefts its downtown roots for a new campus in 1965. These individual schools on separate campuses were combined by a Unified Board in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Over a century-and-a-half, St. Mary of Loretto has evolved into Montgomery Catholic Preparatory School, which is now one K-12 school with three campuses. It is the longest-standing continuously operated school in Montgomery and one of the most enduring institutions in the state of Alabama.

This book-length treatment of the school’s history was commissioned for the school’s sesquicentennial in 2023. It was privately printed, and inquiries about obtaining a copy should be made through the school.

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 208

Without schools that take responsibility for what goes on beyond as well as in the classroom and [that] work to remove the walls that separate the two worlds, students will continue to bracket off all that they learn from life and keep their lives at arm’s length from what they learn. Without teachers who are left alone to teach, students will fall prey to the suasion of an illiterate society all too willing to make its dollars their tutors.

– from the essay “Education-Based Community Service at Rutgers University” by Benjamin Barber, published in Writing for Change: A Community Reader, edited by Ann Watters and Marjorie Ford

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A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 207

Conceding some territory to your opponent is always a good idea. N0 position is 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong; we are all sinners fumbling in the dark. Conceding that your opponent may have a point here or there will not weaken your defenses. If nothing else, this tactic tends to disarm the other side. Absolute positions that refuse to yield an inch create absolute oppositions that are equally stubborn. Surprise your readers. Be reasonable, be understanding, be sympathetic to their concerns, and then when their defenses are down, zap them with logic and club them to death with facts!

– from the section “Refute! Reply! Fight Back!” in the chapter “Arguing Your Case” in Sin Boldly!: Dr. Dave’s Guide to Writing the College Paper by David R. Williams, PhD

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A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 206

The book is no longer the chief custodian of the written word. Branding is a powerful variant of literacy that revolves around symbols, icons, and typographic standards, leaving its mark on buildings, packages, album covers, Web sites, store displays and countless other surfaces and spaces. With the expansion of the Internet, new (and old) conventions for displaying text quickly congealed, adapting metaphors from print and architecture: window, frame, page, banner, menu. Designers working within this stream of multiple media confront text in myriad forms, giving shape to extended bodies but also headlines, decks, captions, notes, pull quotes, logotypes, navigation bars, alt tags, and other prosthetic clumps of language that announce, support, and even eclipse the main body of text.

The dissolution of writing is most extreme in the realm of the Web, where distracted readers safeguard their time and prize function over form. This debt of restlessness is owed not to the essential nature of computer monitors, but to the new behaviors engendered by the Internet, a place of searching and finding, scanning and mining. The reader, having toppled the author’s seat of power during the twentieth century, now ails and lags, replaced by the dominant subject of our own era: the user, a figure who scant attention is our most coveted commodity. Do not squander it.

– from the chapter “Text” in Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Writers, Editors, & Students (2004) by Ellen Lupton

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The end of “level:deepsouth”

It was a good idea from the start, which made this a hard decision. In December 2023, level:deepsouth will close up shop and go offline. The project is now in a read-only format. Submissions are no longer being accepted. 

For me, level:deepsouth was always about publishing stories from Generation X in the South and sharing them with readers, not about making money or establishing a business. “Open source” – to borrow a term – is a tough model, since it doesn’t prioritize the revenue that would sustain the project. That approach to the project meant that submissions were always more important to me than dollars. However, over its first three years, from March 2020 through March 2023, submissions became harder and harder to come by. I had tried in various ways and through various avenues to attract submissions, but for whatever reasons, those efforts have yielded less fruit than I’d hoped. I bought Facebook ads and NewPages ads, and those led to clicks on the “submit” page, but few queries and submissions. In my mind, a project like this one would only thrive and become meaningful through the steady publication of first-person stories. Unfortunately, by this last summer, I had to face the sad fact that that too few of those were coming in.

Knowing that, I had to give some thought to the idea of paying contributors, which would inevitably attract more writers. But there just wasn’t money for that. I have funded the project myself and have looked into other funding sources – grants, GoFundMe, institutional support, etc. – but haven’t found any viable routes to take. level:deepsouth is not at all unique in being a non-paying literary publication. One way that it is unique, however: most non-paying, independently edited publications last about a year to a year-and-a-half. level:deepsouth lasted almost four years— three times the average. Beside that, it offered writers more than a one-issue presence. 

While I am proud of every work that was published in the anthology, my decision to close the project is prompted by what I have not been able to procure as an editor. level:deepsouth contains strong works that serve the project’s goal, but as a whole, a certain diversity of experiences from Generation X in the South is still lacking. Last March, at the three-year anniversary, I set and pursued a goal to publish a healthy number of new stories by first-time contributors. I have would have been glad to see queries from any Southern state, but particularly glad about stories from Arkansas, Mississippi, or South Carolina. Those states had no representation in the anthology at all. Equally interesting would be submissions about growing up in east Texas, Louisiana, or North Carolina, states that have one contribution each. Another striking deficiency that I tried to remedy but can’t explain is that no submissions by writers of color were ever sent in. Despite efforts to include these experiences, to achieve a fuller representation, and to fill the gaps, the works necessary to do that did not come in. After more than three years, I am accepting that I probably won’t be able to accomplish this goal (especially without funding for author payments).

My ultimate standard for whether to close the project or not was: if the anthology in its current form came across an acquisitions editor’s desk as a manuscript, would that editor say yes to publishing it? I had to admit that, as a whole, the project’s strengths are real and significant, but its incompleteness is inarguable. As the project’s editor, then, I would have to remedy that for it to be viable. Yet, if I don’t how to remedy the problems; otherwise, I would have kept the project going as a work-in-progress. An editor can keeping seeking, requesting, and soliciting works, but if the writers don’t send them . . . 

I still believe that a substantial compilation of nonfiction essays from GenXers who grew up in the South is a worthy project. To be candid: before I ever created level:deepsouth, I pitched the subject as a manuscript proposal to a couple of publishing houses, only to be told that they didn’t believe that there is public interest in such a work. I also pitched it on a two different fellowship applications as the project to be undertaken, and those weren’t approved either. In creating level:deepsouth, I took the bull by the horns and moved forward with what I did have: editorial skill, basic web skills, a personal knowledge of the subject matter, a few bucks of my own. But that hasn’t been enough to carry it all the way to where it needs to be.

Ultimately, much of the content that I produced for the project will migrate here: a few blog posts, two reviews, one essay, and all of the content in “the lists.” That last one will be published here on four pages titled GenX in the South: A Bibliography, A Discography (Plus), A Videography, and Random Stuff. 

A writer-editor-teacher’s quote of the week 205

Ludie Gutshall: Now, how come you make all the decisions and I end up taking all the risk?

Pap Gutshall: Because this time it’s a question of principles.

Ludie: Well, with me it’s a question of scruples.

Pap: What kind of scruple?

Ludie: Bad. You know how it is with scruples, Pap. Hell, you probably got as many scruples as I do.

Pap: I don’t think this here falls under the category of scruples. It leans more from your basic scruples to your basic principles. And my basic principles is that you and me and . . . all the rest of us . . . ought to do something to help that girl?

Ludie: You know what my basic scruple is?

Pap: What?

Ludie: Not to get my ass shot off for your basic principle!

— from the 1973 film adaptation Lolly Madonna XXX, based on the novel The Lolly Madonna War by Sue Grafton

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