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Pif Magazine
Pif Magazine |
Elizabeth Cox has published three novels: Familiar Ground (Avon,1984), The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love (North Point Press,1991) and Night Talk (Graywolf, 1997). A recipient of the O. Henry Award, Ms. Cox has taught at the University of California, Duke, the University of Michigan, Boston University, and Bennington. Presently living in Massachusetts, we spoke in the sun room of her rented house in Durham, NC. Whit Coppedge: Why do you teach writing instead of just writing full-time? Elizabeth Cox: I need some way to support myself, and my writing does not do it. But more than that, I love teaching, and I think I would really miss my classes if I didn't have any teaching in my life. I know that in the summertime, or when I have a period when I am not teaching, I am always glad to get back to it. WC: Do you think writing can be taught? What are your feelings on the feeding frenzy criticism of writing programs and do you think they turn out homogenized work? EC: I know they're criticized for turning out homogenized work. I don't really think they do — at least not that I've noticed. I think people tend to go to conferences and work with many different people, and if they work with a lot of different people it won't be so homogenized.. Do I think it can be taught? I had a teacher, Fred Chappell, who said he didn't think it could be taught but that it could be learned. I think there is a way — but I think [what] I teach is probably an opening. A kind of awakening. A way of looking at the world. A way of reading differently — the way a writer reads instead of the way a critic reads. And I hope that something will open in the person. Then they either write, or they don't write. You cannot predict it, and you cannot have rules — where you tell them what to do with a story and then the story's alright. They have to hook in with something [they care] about. As they write about that, they become more and more honest and dig deeper and deeper into the problems of the story and the characters in the story. I think I teach that. I urge them to listen to music, not while they're writing but to let music teach them about form and rhythm. And I urge them to read letters, for instance, of Van Gogh or other painters who have journals or write letters, so they can see how to look at the world like the great painters. WC: What does the exchange with your students do for you personally outside of your teaching? EC: Oh, I love it! I love their enthusiasm for writing and reading. I love it when they read a story that they haven't read (and I've taught so many times), and they see it with fresh eyes. They'll say something about the story or respond to something that I'd never considered, though I've read it so many times and taught it for sixteen years. I love it when that happens. I love the way they go after their own stories and the willingness to revise. I even love their unwillingness to revise and watching that reluctance turn into willingness as they begin to love the story more than they love themselves. And I like seeing their faces open when they get something that I've been saying all semester, but all of a sudden I'll say it to one person in a way that it finally hits home. WC: How do you like to run a typical workshop session? What's the purpose of each element? EC: I'll assign a story from a book or from a packet I've handed out.. I like to talk about that — something by William Carlos Williams or Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor. I like to pick a large range of stories. Sometimes I'll say it's difficult to create a story about an idea or stay with character, and then I give them a story where someone has focused on an idea. I like to break all my rules and show them how the great writers have broken the rules. I like to do that each class period with one or sometimes two stories. And then we come prepared to talk about their own work. They have read it once — usually twice I hope — outside of class. They make notes about what they admire and what they think the story needs — where they're confused, what isn't plausible, is it ok that it isn't plausible, etc. We try to honor the kind of story that each student is trying to write. Very often, in between the stories or while we're talking about them, I will have examples of the use of first person or third person or third person limited or omniscient or past or present tense, or perhaps I'll introduce examples from a book on the use of details or on the use of dialogue. I keep these things around me, and if I see it's the right moment to bring it in — they seem to understand it better if it's in the context of their own work — I will. WC: Do you see with some of your undergrads that you have to push them a little more to participate than you do with grad students at Bennington? EC: No. Each class has a personality. Sometimes there is so much talking and so much excitement that I have a hard time getting a word in. Sometimes they are shy or the personality of the class is quiet. Right now I have one that's quiet and a few speak all the time, and there are a few who never speak — I'm not sure why that happens. WC: Do you have any favorite exercises? EC: My main one, for beginning writers, is to write a scene. This helps them begin to think of a story in terms of a dramatic situation. With beginning writers, when they tell a story, very often their telling is flat, and if I move them in the scene immediately, when they begin to tell a story, they tell it differently — they don't tell it with some agenda that they have as a person or with some judgement. If they move into the characters immediately, they tell the story within the characters' framework. Then they are in a more imaginative place. WC: A more objective place? EC: Or subjective. Subjective not to themselves but to their character.. WC: What do you look for from your students at the beginning of a workshop? EC: Energy. An energy. A curiosity. A wild curiosity. A willingness to let go. If I see a student who's sort of rigid and uptight, even in the way they sit or speak, I suspect that they're going to have a hard time moving into an imaginative place. Sometimes I'm wrong about that, but more often I'm right. They come with a rigid idea of what they think writing is, rather than a curiosity. I try to move them into a sort of serious playfulness and urge them to be courageous enough to be honest about their characters, which means they're going to have to understand their characters. Very often undergraduates will write about people who are very materialistic. They come in with an agenda and a judgement about people who are materialistic rather than understanding why they are or imagining that they might be also materialistic. WC: Describe some of your approaches to more linear thinking cerebral students versus free-thinking, less analytical students. EC: The linear students may have some wonderful stories that are linear if they do not have to write every story that way. Sometimes the linear/analytical student will have the same kind of story, same kind of character and they may have a hint of a very different kind of story to be told, but they're trying to push it into a mold with which they are comfortable. I urge them to move out of that mold, that this story is asking for something else. WC: Max Steele has said that every student thrives on either praise or punishment, implying that students don't grow from a mixture of these two. He said that his former student Jill McCorkle thrives on punishment, so he never gives her a word of encouragement. What do you think of this in regards to your own students? EC: I don't think in terms of praise or punishment actually. I think about trying to respond honestly to the work that is given to me and to see how the student responds to what I'm saying. To say what's good about the work as well as what's off and to see how the student responds.. Sometimes the student will not realize what's good but what they say about that will guide me. I try to understand and accommodate the direction they're going. WC: How does feedback from other writers and readers affect your own writing? Who have been some of your more important influences? EC: A man named Richard Yates gave me feedback on my first novel, and he was just wonderful. He would say things that, when he was saying them, I was thinking, 'I can't possibly do that.' But I knew I had to — he would ask me to do such difficult things. Regular things but difficult. I love having feedback. I get it from my brother. I get it from other writers, and it's valuable to me. This is not feedback from my own work, but I do learn from writers such as Cormac McCarthy and Robert Penn Warren (number one probably). Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Faulkner, all the southern writers. Toni Morrison. Ernest Gaines, a wonderful writer. James Baldwin, too. As I read them, I learn something about a transition into a past experience or the way the rhythm of the language changes. Or the use of dialogue or the use of image and how to use it without exploding or overwhelming the story. WC: What is the best advice you have been given about writing or that you would give another writer? EC: A woman named Carolyn Forche told me one time, "Betsy, quit worrying about whether or not it's good and worry about whether or not it's true." And that was the best advice, I think. If you're worrying about whether or not it's good, that's ego, and if you're worrying about whether or not it's true, that'/~s the story. Did they really do this? Did he really say this at this moment? Is that true? To keep asking yourself that is more helpful than "Is this a good piece of writing?" Tell us what you think. Email talkback@pifmagazine.com Whit Coppedge lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. His story "Taqueria" appeared in Pif's October, 1999 issue. |
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