Good vs. Great Writing

My name is Steven and I’m a failed writer.

My last kid graduates from college next month and he will receive his degree without having read a single novel as a class assignment. I have five offspring — two suffering from DFAFW syndrome (DNA From A Failed Writer) and three stepchildren whose bloodlines are pure. My stepchildren have had me around since they were very small, which poses the whole Nature vs. Nurture conundrum. Personally, I don’t buy the Nature concept. Both my biologic and step-children think my jokes are lame and know one is coming long before it spills from my lips. Apparently, I have an expression they’ve deemed my “joke face,” that telegraphs an impending punchline. I don’t mind the description, although it resurrects some painful memories as the nickname “Jokeface” meant something entirely different when I was in the seventh grade.

So . . . when I went to college, all freshman were required to take a course called English 101. These classes were generally taught by graduate students who fell into three categories: 1) first year grad students who were earnest and a bit awkward, desperately seeking to connect with their students in a meaningful way, 2) second year grad students who hated their students, and 3) third year grad students who really, really hated their students.

We were assigned novels to read. In my English 101 class, we read Portnoy’s Complaint, Catch-22, The Ox-Bow Incident, and Roughing It among others. We would discuss the books in class, making an effort to decode them with the assumption that the authors had hidden themes within an overarching narrative. As I recall, all of the authors hid Messiah analogies in their books. At least that was the opinion of the girl who sat at the front and never shut up. I’m not sure Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and Mark Twain  knew this, but would undoubtedly have been grateful to the Girl Who Never Shut Up for divining their true intent.

The graduate student who taught the class was at the beginning of his second year, his hostility not yet in full bloom. He hung in there with us for about a month before giving in, one day shouting at the Girl Who Never Shut Up, “The Ox-Bow Incident is not about the Messiah, you moron. It’s about the Nazis. It was a warning that mob violence could happen anywhere.”

For those who haven’t read The Ox-Bow Incident, it tells the story of three innocent men who are accused of rustling. A lynch mob tries and then hangs the men, one of whom is a bounder, one who is helpless and confused, and a third who is so obviously chaste and pure of heart, one might compare him to . . . well, you get the picture. To be honest, at the time I agreed with the Girl Who Never Shut Up as her analogy made sense and I wanted to date her. However, our grad student instructor set us all straight, revealing that Van Tilburg Clark, fourteen years after his book’s original 1940 publication, wrote that The Ox-Bow Incident was an attempt to illustrate the madness infecting Nazi Germany and to show that it existed everywhere, a disease that could become an epidemic when men allowed prejudice and fear to supersede the rule of law.

What do today’s young people read? Harry Potter, Twilight and Hunger Games books, I guess. At least they’re reading. However, I learned a lot in English 101, especially after college when I re-read everything. The lessons learned were applied elsewhere. Unlike some others, I believe that one does use algebra and geometry past the tenth grade and that classic novels are teachers who do not hate us. I learned much about the conflict between academic and private practice medicine from Arrowsmith, about hubris and redemption from The Magnificent Ambersons, about the sexual double standard imposed on women from Tess of the D’Urbervilles. I think I also learned the difference between good writers and great ones. That can be a sobering lesson for a writer. We all want to be great, but must learn to accept that we may only be good. It’s no reason to give up any more than someone stops playing pickup basketball the day they realize that a career in the NBA is out of the question.

I wish my kids had been forced to read more novels in college. Even though the Girl Who Never Shut Up was wrong in her interpretations, the process of dissecting a work is an important part of becoming a writer. She became a writer, the Girl Who Never Shut Up. She’s good, but not great. Unfortunately, none of her books are read by today’s college freshman, because she spurns vampires and Amazonian archers. That’s a shame, because pretty much everything she writes is a Messiah analogy.