wednesday, january 17, 2007
What is up with all this blawgging?
Some history and philosophy of the College of Creative Studies, via the googled writings of former students:
Jervey Tervalon (‘78) talks about learning from the person who started this college:
[Marvin] Mudrick was fascinated by people, and he loved people in books, and he didn’t make a big distinction between the two, except for the fact that you’ll know people in books far better than you will know people in life. Here’s the advice he gave me: Read literature like we read the newspaper, skim the boring parts, read carefully what interests you — just keep reading. What Mudrick couldn’t stand were tastemongers, chasing some intellectual hobgoblin of the modern aesthetic; kitsch culture; the cult of family dysfunction; more about slavery; more about the Holocaust…Mudrick believed writing was a function of reading. If you read with passion and intelligence, you’d eventually come around to wanting to write.
Tervalon came to CCS to speak at the Literature Symposium last year (like he does every year), and I squirmed in my seat throughout his presentation. He read his writing about living in South-Central Los Angeles — which I know and care about — and it was badly prepared and full of self-hate. He even brought a bag of pan dulce for the audience, as if that would mitigate his terribleness (note: it was half-decent). I like this essay, though, because it is good to read about his experiences as I figure out how much Mudrick lurks within every aspect of my education. Also, it turns out that Tervalon can write better than I thought he could.
Karen Christensen (‘81) also talks about being a Literature major in the Mudrick era:
Mudrick would assign us a new novel every couple of days, and we were asked (though perhaps not expected) to get through piles of Shakespeare (whom he called a misogynist), Chaucer (“just pretend it’s horribly misspelled”), and Milton (again, no favorite of Mudrick’s).
He said, for example, that the measure of fiction was that it had a human story that would interest anyone, of any age, anywhere. Mudrick believed that students were able to write good stories — really good stories — because, as he said to one class, “you’re at the right age, you’re still about to get in touch with your own language…[but] you can’t write expository prose. You can’t write professional prose of any kind, you’re not skilled enough yet.”
That, for me, is Mudrick’s legacy, or at least something he helped to strengthen in me: fascination with the whole of life and a fearlessness about digging into a new bank of knowledge.
So Mudrick’s krazy ideas about fiction are valid for my beloved non-fiction too. I don’t believe he really meant that students aren’t skilled enough for expository prose; he just didn’t care as much about it.
Plus, from a review by the New York Times:
In several of these essays, Mr. Mudrick seems to believe that the only way to judge a literary work is by the lusty willingness of its heroine or the vigor and explicitness of its sex scenes.
That is an amusing thing to learn about this firey demigod figure.
comments (1)
Tervalon is teaching a Creative Writing course at USC this semester. I haven't heard anything about how students like the class. He applied for a tenure-track job, but didn't make the final cut. I've read his "Understand This," set in South Central L.A. and about a mix of high school students. It's pretty good, but it didn't intrigue me enough to want to teach it in my LA literature class. Keep your eye out for a new novel set in Boyle Heights by Chris Abani. I like the emphasis Mudrick gives to the significance of reading for becoming a writer. Now CCS should invite Steve Abee back up for a reading and conversation or Aimee Bender from USC. She's very cool, and I've heard her talk in compelling ways about writing. She's understated and humble.
– Dad on 1/18/2007 01:42:44
