The Books: “The Writing Class” (Jincy Willett)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction:

The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett

Second novel by the absolutely delicious Jincy Willett (she has a collection of short stories out too) … I can’t get enough of this writer!! I love her sense of humor, her intelligence, and the sense that she really is writing exactly the way she wants to write. It’s a voice. There’s a confidence there, a surety – an unselfconsciousness … I don’t get the sense that any of it is a “put on”, or an act. I sensed it in Winner of the National Book Award (excerpt here) – and it’s in full form here. Her prose is an absolute joy to read. Laugh out loud funny at times, but then with lines of piercing insight and pain and recognition where you (or, I should say, I) feel recognized and named. She’s an intense writer. All heart. In all its mess and humor and pain. I’m with Carrie – who wrote in June – that Writing Class “finally, finally out and available”. It’s that repetition of “finally” that really captures my own excitement about Jincy Willett – that her new book is “finally, finally out”. Yes!!

The Writing Class tells the story of Amy, a one-time author – now a teacher of writing classes in extension courses at a college. Many of her students are serious writers – others not so much … The book gets into each of her students, their writing styles (Jincy Willett’s evocation of all of their different styles is nothing short of brilliant!) – their insecurities (one of her students continuously complains about the portrayal of women in whatever story they read each week), their pomposity, and their humanness. Amy is a sad loner, but she has come to terms with her sad loner status. She’s prickly and anti-social, but she’s also obviously a wonderful teacher. It is through that engagement with her students that she stays connected – to creativity, to herself. She was married twice – once to her gay best friend, who died of AIDS, and then to another guy, who was basically a rebound from her friend/husband dying – and she can’t really remember anything about her second husband, except that it was because of him that she moved from Maine to San Diego. She thought a change of scenery would be good for her. Now, though, she is fat, lives alone with her dog, drinks by herself – and yet she’s not a bleak character, somehow. Willett manages to suggest a truly eccentric character in Amy … that her life, in a weird way, suits her – as long as nobody gives her a hard time about it. She has trouble sleeping. She is very lonely, but she is more comfortable being lonely than being artificially attached to another person. Hmmm. Guess I relate to her. I love how Willett portrays Amy. You love her. You love her in the role of teacher – and you love her as the loner woman, haunted by her past. She had a novel published when she was 23 and it hit huge – she had a couple of follow-up books … but then everything slid to a standstill. All of her books are out of print now. So here she is, teaching adult students what she knows about writing … trying to run away from her own potential. Oh! And, at the suggestion of a friend, Amy sets up a blog. To at least get out some of her ideas. The description of blogging is so spot ON – the random douchebags who show up to critique you, out of nowhere … the random folks who fall in love with you without knowing you … the weirdos, the awesome people, the Google searches …. it’s all a new world to Amy, and it baffles her … she tries not to take it seriously, after all it’s not REAL writing … but it does somehow fascinate her. Who ARE these people?? She loves it.

The book is structured around the classes themselves – First Class, Second Class – and what Amy focuses on in each class. And very quickly, by the Third Class, Amy realizes that there is a malevolent force in her class, someone who is trying to sabotage the rest of the group. Evil-sounding parodies of people’s pieces are sent to them (really mean stuff) – and Amy begins to feel she is losing control of her class. Someone is wreaking havoc. The book becomes a sort of murder mystery as Amy (and a sympathetic – or so we hope – regular student) try to figure out which one of the students is pulling these pranks (which get more and more dangerous). Eventually, the class is canceled – due to the shenanigans of the prankster – and the students decided – Screw THIS, we want to continue – so they convince Amy to continue holding classes, this time rotating locations. Things get distinctly bizarre. Amy tries to rein in the class – one of whom is STILL being a douchebag – only we don’t know who!! Amy tries to keep the class focused on the WRITING … Meanwhile, she goes home at night and obsesses on who would do such a thing … She tries to piece together the identity of the “prankster” from the person’s writing style … she comes up with some conclusions, all of which end up being false.

People end up getting killed. What the hell is going on?? Which would-be writer wants the others dead? What issues of envy and rage are at work here? Will Amy ever discover the identity of the malevolent student? Or will she be caught in a trap of her own making??

A wonderful book about creativity, loneliness, and the writing impulse. Great stuff. I loved every word.

All of the “types” in the writing class are just awesome: the overly sensitive obese woman who only writes when taking a class, the guy taking the class to pick up women, the feminist, the really talented no-nonsense older woman who really understands literature, the sci-fi fan (who can’t write a word worth reading if he tried), the mysterious macho guy whose name is actually Charlton Heston (ha!!) – who is kind of a wild card and who ends up being tremendously good at writing – without any fanfare or pretentiousness – there’s the Book Club afficianado who ONLY has good things to say about EVERYTHING – she balks at criticism of any kind, and seems to look at every moment in life as a potential Oprah moment … makes it difficult to have a class discussion of what DOESN’T work … all of these people just come to life. I love it. Also, Amy – despite the fact that she is a “failure” as a writer – does not come off as bitter towards other writers. You really get that. She ends up LOVING this class – they’re a “good group”, she keeps saying – because they really want to dig in and critique and get to the bottom of things. This is not the story of a bitter has-been who has lost the joy of her craft. No. That’s one of the reasons I was so moved by The Writing Class: the flame of love can be kept alive, even without any validation from the outer world. It really can.

Oh – and another great thing about the book: You think you have some of these people pegged. The annoying PC-obsessed reader, the pompous doctor, whatever … but by the end, you realize that you have been wrong wrong wrong. It’s the best kind of character development and makes me realize how much we judge others – and “pigeonhole” someone as “that type” – when there is no such thing, not really. That’s part of Willett’s point – in this book of writing about writing. Be very very careful when you judge. First of all, you cut yourself off from being surprised – either pleasantly or unpleasantly – and when you are incapable of surprise you truly embody the term “Douchebag”. And second of all, you really may just be coming from your OWN bias and be totally misreading something because you are predisposed to see it a certain way … That happens in the book as well. It’s all great fun!

Here’s an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett

Dot Hieronymus led off discussion of Code Black with breathless compliments. Spurred by the doctor’s muscular prose (“Black struggled to maintain an impassive countenance, but not even he could quieten the vein that throbbed visibly in his left temple.”), she had already torn through half the novel and couldn’t wait for the rest of class to catch up. Dot belonged to three book clubs and had read “every medical thriller that ever came down the pike,” and Code Black ranked with the best of them. For all Amy knew this was true.

“Before we begin,” Amy said, “I want us to notice that this piece of fiction, as opposed to Marvy’s, is part of a larger whole. So it’s a fragment, and therefore more difficult to talk about than a short story. We can’t complain about loose ends, for instance. We can’t demand to understand everything that’s going on. At this stage, it would be disastrous if we did get the whole picture, wouldn’t it? It’s the writer’s job, in his opening chapters, to draw his readers in. If, by the end of an opening chapter or two, we don’t understand why a character is behaving the way he is, or what somebody meant when he said what he did, that’s probably good. We’ll keep reading to find out.”

“So what can we complain about?” asked Frank. His copy of Surtee’s manuscript had taken a beating and was covered with pen scribbles. Frank looked eager to complain about lots of things.

“Oh,” said Amy, “you can always complain about cliches. And not just language, either. A character can be trite, or a setting.”

“Well, here’s this black-belt babe-magnet neurosurgeon –”

“Hey,” said Ricky Buzza, “that’s not a cliche. I mean, I never read about a black-belt neurosurgeon –”

“Come on, he’s a type, a superhero type, and you just know there’s going to be a vast conspiracy –”

“Don’t spoil it!” said Dot.

“And a big shoot-out, or lobotomy tournament –”

“Don’t forget the Illuminati,” added Chuck.

Edna Wentworth and Ginger Nicklow smiled and stayed out of it. Tiffany jumped in with Frank and Chuck. Harold Blasbalg, who Amy recalled was supposed to be working on a horror novel, weighed in on Dot’s side, as did Syl Reyes, and the rest sat still and watched the show.

Because he was a big shot and because his storytelling, however absurd, was essentially competent and had a surface gloss, Amy had expected Surtees to get a free ride. So she was pleasantly surprised by the raucous upbraiding, but after fifteen minutes, during which the doctor took a real pummeling, she figured it was time to even the field. Extension instructors were paid, execrably, to avoid alienating their customers. “As I was saying,” she said, “before I was so rudely interrupted –”

“It’s not supposed to be Shakespeare,” Dot said. Her color was high, and she had managed to smudge printer ink on her ivory jacket. Sometimes people couldn’t take debate, rough-and-tumble or no; they either weren’t used to being disagreed with or never stuck their necks out in the first place. But Dot seemed invested in Surtees himself. While she lauded and then hotly defended his silly book, she glanced reflexively at the back of his head (Surtees remained composed throughout) as though hoping for a glance back. Sometimes people, usually women, took extension courses to meet singles. “You’re not being fair,” she said.

“As I was saying,” said Amy. The class reluctantly attended to her. “You can reasonably complain about cliche characters, settings, even cliche scenes. Tying somebody to the railroad tracks and all. But you can’t fairly complain about cliche plots.”

“Why not?” asked Ricky Buzza. Ricky was Amy’s enabler this quarter.

“Because all plots are cliche. There are no new plots.”

Ginger Nicklow spoke up. “I read somewhere, I’m sure it was in college, that there are two basic plots: Cinderella and Jack and the Beanstalk.”

“Sex and death,” said Chuck Heston.

Syl Reyes wondered what the heck that was supposed to mean.

“Search me,” said Amy. “I’ve heard of this one myself, and I’ve always wondered. I guess it means you have the quest story and the erotic unveiling story. Most adventure stories, including this one, are quest stories. Although you could obviously have an interior quest, a search for spiritual enlightenment, or a search for the identity of your father’s killer, or whatever.”

“So Jaws is what?” asked Pete Purvis.

“An aquatic unveiling,” said Frank, and even Tiffany P.C. Zuniga laughed.

“Getting back to my point,” said Amy, “I love it that you guys have gotten so passionate about this piece, but I need to make it clear that it is, as Dot says, not fair to slam Code Black for having a trite plot. Whether or not it’s unfair to compare it to Shakespeare I leave for another time.”

“Okay,” said Frank, “but can’t we call Black Jack a cliche character?”

“Not yet,” Amy said. “For all we know he may have quirks and depths we just haven’t learned about in the first two chapters.” Sure he does.

“What about an erotic quest?” asked Chuck.

“There you go,” said Frank.

“For this reason,” Amy continued, “critiques of fragments – novel chapters, unfinished stories – often center more on language than on structure. Language is the one thing we can safely criticize. A bad sentence can’t be redeemed in the last chapter.”

Amy led the class through Surtee’s manuscript page by page. She landed pretty hard on the dialogue, though without calling it “wooden,” and spent a great deal of time trying to convince them that fictional characters should almost always say or ask their lines, rather than hiss, shout, breathe, huff, or spit them. “There’s way too much snarling going on here,” she said, and when Pete and Dot defended the snarling as vivid she slapped them down smartly. “Even if you were right about this it wouldn’t help you,” she told them. “The dogs at the gates of publishing houses, called ‘readers’, have all been trained to toss unsolicited manuscripts at the earliest opportunity, and they all use the same checklist, fair or not fair. One of the surest ways to turn them off is to have your character purr ‘Good morning,’ snarl ‘Get lost’, or opine anything whatsoever.”

Surtees’s cheerleaders reacted sullenly to this speech, but Surtees did not. He was taking notes.

Amy disliked being generous to students like Surtees, who had so little need of her generosity. She had hoped, even expected, that the class would go easy on him, so she could be the one to jump up and down on Code Black, but instead she was forced to be the good cop, and actually heard herself praising, however faintly, his attention to physical detail, and the way his characters traveled sure-footed through time and space, and the fact that every scene ended pretty much when it should, and was bound to the scenes before and after it by a neat causal chain. Code Black had what creative writing teachers called narrative pull. That the tale itself wasn’t worth putting down on paper wasn’t something Amy was allowed to mention.

In the end all she could do was allow Tiffany Zuniga five full minutes to excoriate the doctor’s obligatory sex scene, in chapter two. Tiffany hated that the untamed woman had “voluptuous curves”, yowled like a jaguar “at her moment of ultimate release”, and “slipped smilingly out the door” when it was all over. “I mean,” said Tiffany, “how convenient is that.”

Dr. Surtees, seated in the front row directly ahead of Tiffany, actually smirked.

“Worst of all,” said Tiffany, “he uses bed as a verb. I hate hate hate hate that.”

“Good for you,” said Amy, and meant it.