Not even 30 pages into this book, Useless Miracle by Barry Schechter, and already there’s a bit about a university professor who, as punishment for speaking against his department, has to teach “all comp for a year.”
I suspect this is not Schechter disparaging the instruction of composition so much as painting realistic characters, but I’m pissed off anyway. University professors, especially the ones at big schools like Northwestern (hi, Barry!), view teaching composition as a lowly practice unworthy of their PhD’d selves, they with so much more to offer young minds. As the famous anecdote goes, the newly hired English professor is likely to say: “I didn’t spend six years learning old English to teach comp!”
I teach composition. I also get to teach other courses from time to time, literature courses of my own design. But I’ll confess: I’m not a great literature instructor. There’s so much to say about the texts I choose to inflict on my students, yet I realized again last semester, somewhere around midterm, that explaining works of art— to quote Kurt Vonnegut— is criminal. I don’t explain them so much as offer context and try to create dialogue, even if it does often devolve into what each student thinks the books mean. Well, at least what each student willing to speak thinks the books mean.
There are better ways to teach literature, I know, and on my best days I do okay, but years of teaching composition have changed the way I think about teaching anything. Or ruined me for other courses? Maybe. Hard to say, and if I’m grappling with my thoughts here you’ll forgive me, but that is exactly what I try to get my ENG 101 students to do. Forget trying to have your ideas in mind before you put pen to paper (er, fingers to keyboard). The essay is a means of finding out what you think. Writing is discovery.
But who wants to read that?
That’s the thing: we’re used to reading finished thoughts, not ideas in the process of forming. And sure, editing and revision are essential to writing, as is solidifying ideas. But maybe there’s something behind the teaching of comp, or at least this aspect of it, that should be more permitted and practiced: the admission that our ideas are lumpy and in need of polishing. But they can’t be smoothed and polished until we articulate them. And often they will remain flawed, ideas we’re likely to refine (or jettison) with some maturity and experience. But I seem to exist in a world that insists one have their thoughts perfectly formed, and that these thoughts be defended forever and ever, amen. How does one evolve if they’re never wrong?
Anyone familiar with Montaigne knows that the essay as we too often understand it now is not exactly what good ol’ Michel was practicing in the 16th century. Students tend to think that their writing must always be “correct,” by which they mean grammatically flawless, but also, not far behind mechanical worries, they believe they must have a perfect argument. They see their task as just that: a task. They have heard me and others like me drone on about audience and purpose. Then we tell them to make a claim, support it. Then we challenge the claim because we want them to understand that counterarguments, properly addressed, will strengthen their theses. We use the word “thesis” interchangeably with “claim” and “argument” until they can’t decide if these words are synonymous. Probably not, but it’s too late in the semester to ask for clarification.
The idea of the essay as a mess does not register. And I can’t exactly tell my students that essays are, by their nature, messy. At least not good essays. Revealing that belief, and it is my belief, would be tantamount to permission to dash off some piece of crap and demand an A.
What I can do is tell them that essays, at least in their initial stages, can and should be messy, by which I mean that they should represent the messiness of human thought. Does anyone really know what they think about any given subject, news item, social trend, or work of art? Not without considerable thought, often the result of considerable reading. Assuming not everyone spends their quiet moments in deep contemplation, not with infinite podcasts and playlists vying for attention, the best way to begin to start to maybe know what one thinks is by writing those thoughts down. In comp we call this “journaling” because we can’t call it essay writing. And the journals usually become the more sophisticated essays, but, again, the lesson is that the essay must be a perfected thing with unassailable evidence backing every claim. And sure, I want to read essays like that, but I know they come after essays like this. And I know that essays like that are often the result of the digressions in essays like this, avenues of thought that only arrive in the moment and, when ignored, vanish.
For fuck’s sake, where’s the risk in a perfectly executed essay?
To be clearer (let’s hope): I prefer to think of essays as conversations, dialogues rather than monologues. The possibility exists that the essay I write today will be challenged by someone else’s ideas. The chance that I’ll then revise my ideas is more than likely. I change my ideas all the time. Why? Because I know that these are merely my ideas in the moment. But how would I (or anyone else) understand them were they not written down? And how would I write them if I was too afraid of being wrong?
Marc Maron has a bit in his standup special Thinky Pain where he discusses his habit of not preparing. He says that he doesn’t like preparers, that when one boasts of their preparation he thinks, “Well you’re a coward. Where’s your sense of adventure?” He then justifies his fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants style this way:
“In my mind, if I don’t prepare and I pull this off, I’m a fucking genius! And if I don’t pull it off. . . Eh, I didn’t prepare.”
This sums up my teaching style. I like to enter the classroom with an idea of what’s going to happen, but I prefer the moments of spontaneity, the organic moments of connection with students when they offer something to the mix that alters whatever plan I had. On good days, this reminds me that I love teaching comp, for composition works the same way: have an idea and be ready for it to take you someplace else. Go with the changes. See where they bring you. Back up and move away from the dead ends. Steer confidently into the whatever. Sounds like bullshit motivational poster slogans, but I believe digressions can lead to interesting places that allow students to have more of a sense of belonging in the classroom. I mean, sure, my job is also to keep things on track, and I don’t tolerate irrelevant tangents, but a little venturing outside the plan can be good. If I really want students to be the co-creators of the class, then I have to be open to some level of digression. Maybe that’s not the right word. . . Maybe I need one of those cute academic phrases, the kind that twist the English language and sound both important and ridiculous, something like Guided Departuring.
This is a long way back to where I started, where I wanted this to go, but so goes the digressive essay.
(Speaking of: go back and read Montaigne. The guy was certainly fond of digression. I wonder what a contemporary comp teacher, much less an editor, would’ve said about Of Cannibals.)
Is comp derided because it’s thought to be lesser than, say, Gender and Class Politics in Harry Potter? Are survey courses somehow a notch above comp, thought likely a notch below Eschatology in Contemporary American Novels Written by David Foster Wallace? Are we basement dwellers of the Ivory Tower deluding ourselves when we claim that composition offers more flexibility, malleability, and freedom than courses taught by the more accomplished faculty? We might venture such a claim, even have our colleagues nod in assent at the faculty parties, though they’d likely chuckle and look at each other knowingly once we’ve headed to the cheese plate. Oh, Vince. . . let him believe what he needs to believe. Poor bastard.
I was inspired to teach by teachers I liked. Some of them were comp teachers. The best of them, a guy named Southard who worked for the community college I, directionless, landed in, seemed to be having a good time. He saw me reading a Kurt Vonnegut book before class and then decided to use Vonnegut as the basis for the day’s discussion. Improv in the classroom. When I realized “These guys make this shit up!” I was indescribably happy. They’re winging it, just like me! That made me feel a part of the class more than any rote lecture.
Of course, Southard wasn’t completely improvising. But I liked the spontaneity he cultivated. Southard did stick to the important stuff. He talked about the ways we write, the reasons we write, the discovery possible when we write, and sure, occasionally, the ways we have to write. Sometimes we have to write because a teacher is making us write, and they will have expectations, they will ask that the way we write resemble the way they write and the way their teachers wrote, and don’t forget your MLA formatting. But I only remember the fun the guy was having. Can’t say all my teachers were that footloose and fancy free.
This essay is getting too loose.
Okay. Just walked my dog and now, coming back recharged, I’m ready to sort through the rest of my feelings on. . . What’s the topic again? Oh right, teaching comp.
Maybe the reason teaching comp is seen as a punishment or a lowly state within the academy has to do with the impossibility of the task. There’s no way to teach someone to write other than make them write and offer feedback on the writing, how I experience what they wrote—more importantly, how the students’ peers experience it—and what good habits I’ve cultivated over the many years of trying and failing to put words in a logical, pleasing order. But the end is almost always the same: the students pass my class and go on to bigger challenges that I can’t prepare them for. Not in 16 weeks. The best I can do is remind my students that writing is about practice. Unending practice. They’re writers for the rest of their lives. It gets easier, sorta. Their writing will get better the longer they keep writing. My class is a launching pad, a place to take time to make messy essays and then knock them into some kind of shape, and, equally important, to sort through their thoughts and draw on their perspectives. And sure, we go over the discipline of writing, the multi-draft process, the need for care, the attention to mechanics (eventually) and the consideration of the reader. But my class is a luxury. The time we spend on essays is not time they will have in other classes. We slow down, focus, evaluate, revise, reevaluate, re-revise, reflect. Other classes ask for finished products without the same slow, communal approach to composition. And then these instructors have the gall to ask me why their students can’t write.
The impossibility of the task, again, is baked into the comp class. But, more deterring to the careerist academic, comp requires grading freshman papers, which, most of the time, do not make for fun reading. The profs don’t want to waste their precious headspace on half-baked arguments and entry level scribblings. They want big, heady papers on the big, heady concepts they teach. The Semiotics of Oral Sex. Post-Humanism and the Novels of Don DeLillo. That sorta thing. Evaluating ENG 101 writing would be beneath even the fledgling English prof. And once they get tenure? Forget it.
The bigger schools force comp instruction on graduate students. Want that PhD? Get ready to commit yourself to some unpaid labor— the worst labor you’ll ever endure! In the process, the schools pass on the belief that teaching comp is shit work, something one does out of duress, nothing a serious academic would ever deign to do, not if they want to show their face at the next faculty function. The more beneficent faculty members tell me I’m “doing the lord’s work” and offer mock admiration. Okay, not all of them; superciliousness and tenure don’t always go hand-in-hand, and I know many of these comments are born of good intentions, but when I hear them (and I do) I can’t help but bristle.
The problem is simple: instructors, all of us, have the responsibility to teach students how to write. Step one being recognizing that the task is difficult, but so are most things worth fighting for. If they understand that my classes are introductions, that the students who leave ENG 102 are still developing writers— if they understood that WE’RE ALL STILL DEVELOPING WRITERS— then they’d: 1. stop complaining to me that their students can’t write (to which I always want to respond: Well, they’re your students) and 2. stop patronizingly thanking me for my service.
Admission (upon review of the previous paragraphs): I’m jealous of the English profs. They have higher degrees than I do. They have specialized understandings of topics in literature, whereas I’ve approached my studies like a salad bar— bites of phenomenology and reader-response criticism, a few scoops of formal poetry, big helpings of Silver Age Russian and 20th Century Latin American lit, way more Irish literature than I’ll ever fully digest, a bit of the Harlem Renaissance for dessert. They have tenure (some of them, the rest are fucked); I’m forever on the non-tenure track. And yeah, they have more respect in some circles, but the more I think about it (which I’m doing by writing about all this) the less envy I feel. I mean, it’s not like the English professors are especially valued by many of the administrators who’d place their courses first in line for budget cuts. Students will always need writing teachers. I get a mix of all majors in my often-packed classrooms. Can the instructors of Hermeneutic Analyses of Gertrude Stein and Lady Gaga say as much?
Sorry— this isn’t a competition. If I’m making it one, perhaps it has something to do with the way I’ve been made to feel by others in my professional orbit. And, again, I like teaching comp. It offers a lot of room to design courses around pet themes, provides an important micro-focus on writing, incorporates emerging scholarship, embraces contemporary topics, and is dependent on student interaction and activities that are more engaging than straight lecture. And if I love it this much, why did one throwaway line in Barry Schechter’s new book piss me off so much? Maybe because Schechter is satirizing true feelings of academics? I dunno. . . so far, the book seems less pointed in that direction. Maybe I recognize what I already know but don’t always consider: there’s a totem pole, but even so, being lower on it doesn’t have to be bad so long as you like where you are. And I do. I mean, a few extra bucks would be nice, and maybe some support from colleagues. But maybe, much like the poets I know who lament their insulated community while doing everything possible to alienate potential readers, we’re doing this to ourselves, relishing our underdog status, lashing out at nothing, penning digressive multi-paragraph essays in response to a small moment in a novel that is really not interested in trashing composition instruction.
Damn.
Well, if ever there was a representation of my exploratory approach to composition, and my tendency to make micro moments into macro concerns, it’s this essay. But I do feel better having gotten all this off my chest. Whew. Stretch. What’s for lunch?