RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,119
(no give, strict rhythm)
Instructing others in anything was
always rather strange for me. In
the early 1980's, a few years,
through a poetry connection
having to do with my own work,
Transom (that small publication
I published), and a reading I gave,
and a friend, to another friend,
lateral message, I was offered an
opportunity for teaching at the
local County College. Then called
'Union County Community College.'
I got like $850, every three months,
for a couple of courses per week.
No parameters, I had free rein to
do what I wished. Mostly the class
was made up of 6 or 8 people from
Merck, a local company. They got
the classes for free, as part of their
package, and it had something to do
with accumulating credits, for whatever
a drug-scientist-pharmaceutical
person would use a knowledge of
'creative' writing and such, for.
They were a pretty dull bunch and
why they bothered, I actually never
knew. Mixing some form of the
mercantile, of employment, with a
quest for something else way outside
that zone, made little sense. The
rest of the 20 or so people were the
usual - a few attractive-enough
girls, with a real interest in the course,
a few older folk, running for the
limits I guess, labor-of-love stuff
and a few over-the-top hard-pushers
who really didn't add anything to
th course-time but problems. They
already knew everything they'd want
to know, and were up to challenging
anything I said, and critiquing anything
(or others) that was said. God forbid,
however, that anything they stated
was ever challenged. No different
from today, in that respect.
-
I was given the liberty to call the
course whatever I wished, and granted
a full paragraph to describe it in the
course-offerings booklet. I called
it 'The Writer's Eye.' Which then
immediately clicked; it seemed, I
was told, a great title for such a
course, combining as it did, somehow
the components of observation, camera
viewpoints, or camera-like anyway,
and the writerly compunction for
selecting and lining out 'situations.'
The guy in charge of all this, and
who had to interview me and delve
a little into what I was up to, was
a guy named Frank P. Dee. Kind of
a cool name, and he used the P. -
on everything. He was about, I
guess, 62-64 maybe, to my 33,
say. The way the course ended,
actually, was he retired, to Florida,
and as I was sort of his baby, and
his basket case, the next guy in line
who took his job cleared the deck
of my course, and some others. It's
like that in the academic pecking order
scheme of things; people always want
their own stamp put on their own
stuff; probably just as was gone by
Frank P. Dee with me.
-
He had a framed photos on his desk,
of his Florida place, and his yacht,
or very large boat, as it was docked
right at his waterfront 'other' home,
which is mostly where all of his
mind was by the time I got to know
him. He never checked up on me,
not even peeked in or oversaw,
as far as I knew. I was always
everyone was happy with my
work. Even the weird crowd of
Merck people, who said I'd opened
a whole 'nother world to them, of
seeing and thinking. That was
pretty cool, and I was real happy
that. Next thing I knew, they'd
developed Viagra! Just kidding,
but I did have a guy, named Glenn,
who told me that Rogaine (which he'd
developed) and Viagra, were one
tiny chemical bit apart from each
other, almost chemically same-stuff
buddies. I used to joke with him,
'So you're the guy who invented
hairy balls?' But he always also
made the odd point of telling me that,
by working at Merck, he'd signed
away all his rights to any profits from
whatever he developed. Which was a
bummer, because between Rogaine
and Viagra he figured he could have
been as rich as Howard Hughes (that
was an old, very rich guy, from the
1970's. I'd guess now you'd say Bill
Gates or someone like that). Too bad
for old Glenn Reynolds, I say.
-
One weird thing I did with them, which
now seems pretty ahead of its time (there
were no blacks in the course; no reason,
there just weren't, as it worked out), as
an exercise, and it always worked, for
pushing the writing envelope, was to
imagine yourself, as a white, on a large
house and acreage, and in bondage, to
a black family. Essentially, write for
me as a white slave on a black plantation.
Tell me what went on, what you noticed,
how horrid things got, and if so, use
something specific and develop it, to
show. Write about handling black babies
belonging to someone else; feeding and
serving a family of, say, 5 people. Tell
of ingratitude and cruelty, Write of the
discomfort and, perhaps, punishment
an cruelty you faced. Explain you
whiteness-in-bondage, in the face
of your owners discipline, cruelty,
and the abuses inflicted on you.
-
This was the early Reagan years, which
is pretty much how I'd gotten the idea,
when he opened his campaign in some
symbolic southern town that everyone
knew meant bias and segregation. It
was a big deal, back then, but he won.
Right now, I forget the name of the
town. But, it incensed me enough, at
that time, to have a go with it. Like
everything else, I was just winging
it, though brimming with cool ideas.
We open with a current fiction piece,
from The New Yorker magazine,
dissect it, look at point of view,
approach, activity or inactivity of
the writer's 'eye, for input and for
observation and development,. Those
stories were, for the most part, and
that's why I'd choose them, insufferable
smug, elitist and was too precious,
always. They aced as a vitamin pill
to springboard these people into
actions of their own - writing with
fire, some speed; the power of haste
isn't always a bad thing. Especially
when compared to the smoothed and
overly polished, upper middle-class
drivel the New Yorker would print.
Stories that went nowhere, got stuck
on stupid things (1980's style) and had
characters as supple as a conductor's
baton - meaning not at all. No give,
strict rhythm.
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