The Elegant Variation: I CAME, I SAW, I TAUGHT

July 12, 2005

I CAME, I SAW, I TAUGHT

Some months ago, I mentioned here that I'd signed on to teach an eight-week writing course to a group of at-risk boys. The kids are juvenile offenders residing at a residential treatment facility, and the program is run by the great folks at Spoken Interludes. I accepted largely because I liked the idea of doing something that wasn't pure self-involvement - between the novel, the blog and cycling training, it's a slightly hermetic existence these days, and I welcomed the oppportunity to do something a bit more outwardly directed.

I also decided early on not to blog about the experience. Partly out of a desire to respect the boys' privacy and also partly out of a fear that I'd simply begin to treat it like material and then the initial selfless impulse would be lost.

Well, the program is over and I attended the "graduation" reading today where the boys from all the writing groups (there were four instructors) got together and shared their writing. I was absolutely blown away by the work presented. In the weeks past, I've watched my preconceptions fall quickly. I'd imagined, for example, there'd be a strong tilt toward adventure, fantasy - vehicles of escape. But these boys were much more interested in facing life head on - in my first class, when I asked them what sort of things they wanted to write about, more boys than not expressed their interest in examining relationships. And the stories tackled the realities of their lives - of violence, of drugs, of gangs but also of pain and loss and loneliness. As well as the sort of themes that attract any teenage boy - popularity, friendship and, of course, girls. Several of them have an ear for dialogue that any screenwriter would envy.

It's a harsh world these boys have come up through, and we lost a few along the way. Two of my students were removed from the program and sent away for "acting out" as it was called. (I never asked the boys about what they had done that got them there.) As for me, I fear I was probably only a mediocre teacher - it was, after all, my first time - and it wasn't until the last few classes that my little group really came to life, especially when we began to work on revisions, and they learned how stories can be improved with each pass. (Perhaps my biggest contribution was to have deviated from the required reading list to bring them an excerpt from The Count of Monte Cristo. When I came back the following week, two of the boys had it out from the library and had almost finished it.)

At any rate, it was a remarkable experience, one I'm pleased and honored to have taken part in. The best news is that this group of boys will get to do a public reading at Borders in Westwood on July 25. I'll be mentioning this more as it gets closer but nothing would be better for their self-images than to read to a full, appreciative house. Hope to see many you there.

Posted at 12:57 PM | Permalink

Comments

Now, that's a great story, and proof that teaching can often be the most rewarding job in the world.

Posted by: Michael | July 12, 2005 at 10:38 PM

I'm really bummed I missed this.

Posted by: Janet | July 25, 2005 at 08:56 PM

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HARRY, REVISED - Get all the details here.

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TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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*Now in Paperback*

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Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

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SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

July 12, 2005

I CAME, I SAW, I TAUGHT

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

July 12, 2005

I CAME, I SAW, I TAUGHT

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism