Fiction: Read-letter days
By Lavinia Greenlaw
Published: May 18 2007 18:55 | Last updated: May 18 2007 19:07
Famous Writers School
by Steven Carter
Old Street Publishing ₤10.99, 256 pages
FT bookshop price: ₤8.79
Creative-writing programmes provoke suspicion in some and ambition in others, even a mixture of both. Beyond the academy, there is a long-standing industry built on literary aspiration: workshops, courses, editorial services, societies and journals, ranging from the genuinely useful (and realistic) to those which will promise to make your book a bestseller overnight.
ADVERTISEMENT
Steven Carter teaches the subject himself, and his second novel is a spot-on satire of all that the dream of being a writer entails. Among the small ads for rustic artists’ retreats and short-story competitions with exorbitant entrance fees, we find The Famous Writers School (no apostrophe) - a six-step correspondence course, satisfaction guaranteed or your money back.
Wendell Newton runs this operation from a post-office box in Fayette, West Virginia. He sends his students homilies, the first beginning ”It was a bright Saturday morning 17 years ago when I first sat down to write fiction.” It might as well have been a dark and stormy night.
Wendell seems less interested in writing than in being A Writer. He mentions his Gogol mug and bust of Balzac, and describes himself using the fountain pen with which his pilot uncle wrote wartime love-letters. He composes on index cards because he heard that was what Nabokov did. His own achievements are as prolific as they are vague: ”seventy short stories, essays and reviews...” some gathered in a book published by an outfit who once made it into the year’s top 10 small presses. He wants to write a novel that will make the Japanese visit his grave.
The six lessons are simple: ”Tell me the best story you’ve ever heard, put pressure on your characters, let your characters have their own lives, make it mean something, what comes first: plot or character, and putting it all together.”
We meet three of his students, starting with Dan, a tractor salesman. Dan is writing a novel, has the nuts and bolts down, and just wants some ”fine-tuning”. Wendell is immediately enraged: ”I am your teacher, not your editor.” Rio is a singer and sociology student who has dropped out of college and who used to model kitchen appliances: ”I guess I just have that happy wife look.” She writes charmingly artless letters to Wendell, who is captivated and takes her far too seriously. Linda is disappointed in marriage, children and life. Her personal statement is numbered points: ”5. She only gives gifts made with her own hands. 6. And the gifts she gives most often are red candles.” Wendell’s response is terse.
Dan’s novel is a kind of hillbilly picaresque. His protagonist, also a tractor salesman, gives a lift to a stranger and enters a nightmare of savage dogs, trigger-happy hicks and impromptu sexual encounters. His writing is generic but also rather good, which incenses Wendell, who is put out to find that he has a talented student on his hands, particularly one who has no time for Proust. Says Dan: ”I think he would’ve been a better writer if every day for about a month someone had walked into his room, stood smiling over his bed for a minute, and then punched him in the stomach.”
The trouble is that these students will not do as they’re told. Dan sends another compelling instalment while robustly resisting Wendell’s response. He asks for close editing, which Wendell does not provide. Rio’s writing is good as long as she isn’t trying to produce an actual story. She free-associates scenes from her life, which Wendell wants to publish in his journal, Upward Spiral, as ”Five Story Ideas”. Rio, impressively, demurs.
Linda’s third assignment begins ”I break up with Wendell” and goes on to describe stalking him. From her we learn that he buys tinned stew and plastic plates, and drives a new Buick with the price sticker still in the window. He has told his neighbour he was in the Gulf war and the Olympic archery team. When Linda breaks into his house, we see his poster-size photo of himself and his milk-crate bedside table. She steals his journal: ”I wish I had the time and energy to learn French.”
As Wendell’s correspondence with his students exposes his own fictions, he struggles to retain control. This is a hugely enjoyable, horribly recognisable account of both the predictable nature of writers and the unpredictable nature of writing itself.
Lavinia Greenlaw is the author of ”An Irresponsible Age” (Harper Perennial).
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Comments