Jeremy’s Comments (group member since Feb 01, 2011)

Jeremy’s comments from the Q&A with Adam Haslett group.

I am actually a little starstruck. Adam Haslett responded to me. ME.

Well...deep breaths.

Okay.

Funny, it just occurred to me that I never mentioned what line of work I'm in. As a graduate of an MFA program my choices are limited (almost entirely by the career "choices" I made before my late entry into academia). So now I teach college comp.

Aside from being a fallback job for artsy writer types (and yes, I like it a lot, and I get a kick out of doing it well, when I'm able to convince myself I am--helping people, being useful, blahblahblah), it's a job that makes me an early influence on a handful of students (nascent writers) who at least claim they're interested in writing literary prose. And I confess I've commented on their essays, "This run-on sentence is trying to convey several ideas at once. Revise for clarity by breaking it into smaller parts."

I wonder whether I and my ilk are also culpable.

I reckon you're unwilling to name names--impolitic, and look where it got John Gardener, calling Bellow, Roth, Elkin, et al "immoral"--but yeah, minimalism has its limits. It's lousy as a total aesthetic.

I've always admired Elkin's wacky, pages long diatribe sentences, and Moody's (not quite as ambitious), when he's not being silly about it. And so forth.

But, some writers do lovely things with wild rhythms and variations in sentence structure, and others seem to say what they need to with...not much. I think you were advocating choice and variation, yes?

How much of this problematic minimalism is the function of the MFA workshop hive-mind? How much is helpful wisdom from on high? Upon arrival at the program I went through, I told one faculty member (whom I assumed would be sympathetic and encouraging, since his sentences sometimes seemed Elkin-influenced) I was a big fan of Elkin's, and he told me, "I'm not sure you can learn from him." I forced myself not to think what that meant (yes, in part to prevent myself from engaging in unproductive loathing of my teacher, but also because I was going to read, use, and sometimes ape my hero, regardless of who did or didn't sanction it, and I figured out right quick that at least one important figure in the program would try to make me stop).

And I suppose I should also ask how much of this trend--it's a trend, right, a fashion, likely a passing thing?--is dictated by editors and the publishers for whom they work?