How to Write: Lesson 23
Lesson 23: Writing
Lesson 23: Writing
In the Spring of 1963, I took a night school writing class from Gordon Lish at the College of San Mateo. That was momentous, life changing, a no shit introduction to the real world of good books and how to write them, pretty fucking cool, etc.
I’m going to talk about some of the things that aren’t in Chapter 8. I don’t know what they’re going to be yet. They may or may not have anything to do with writing, but that’s the name of this lesson so, you know.
Figuring out how to write doesn't happen overnight. Before I signed up for the class, I'd written a few things to impress girls and drown some low-grade sorrows, but that was it. I had (and have) no education and no particular skill and not much ambition, but I got a tiny sliver of training in what it takes to be a writer when I was twenty and twenty-one. From then on, I avoided people who wanted to talk about writing. I’d had my education. It was plenty. It was more than enough. I was done with what anyone else could teach me. I was on my own.
I learned a little about the mechanics of writing, etc. in the class ("don't try to sell a refrigerator with scratches on it" was one). But the main thing was that I got exposed to a guy who loved good writing. Loved it. Adored it. Reveled in it. Viscerally. Inherently. And he knew what good writing was. That was the thing. I had no clue. I was a kid. I got hypnotized. He was beautiful. And joyful. And mean. And admirable. And tough. And demanding. And smart. And funny. And serious. And liked what he was doing. Good writing, I learned, is all those things. And he knew what it was! And he was going to tell me! Yippee!
It was plain to see after about five minutes in the class that he had other things going on, a lit magazine, connections in New York, famous friends, etc., that he was just getting his feet wet, practicing up on a bunch of nobodies before he took his show on the road. I could tell right away that I needed to grab this shit before it was gone. I soaked it up like a sponge. He taught the class for two semesters, then had seminars for four of us at his house in Burlingame for another six months or so. I came away with all I could ever hope to learn about writing and books, most of which I’ve forgotten. But what remains is that the guy loved good writing and knew what it was. That was the only thing that really mattered. I just wanted to be around him. Everything he did mattered. He talked about writers and writing I already knew, mostly Salinger, and guys I barely knew, James Purdy and Flannery O’Connor and guys I didn’t know at all, Grace Paley and Tillie Olsen and a bunch I’ve forgotten.
One of the other nobodies in the class was an older woman named Opal Belknap. She had a brother in a nuthouse. She knew she needed to grab this shit before it was gone, too. We got to be buddies. What I learned from her was that I had my whole life ahead of me and that I had to start living it. I did. Pick the people you get to be buddies with very carefully. Then let them influence you. That was what happened with Lish and Belknap. I let them influence me. It was close to sixty years ago. I guess they left an impression. Looking back, I suspect that was what they wanted to do.
Live your life. Hm. I thought I’d already been doing that.
But no. I wasn’t. I was dicking around. Lish and Belknap happened after all that. Man, I had a busy couple of years. I didn’t know it, but I had a lot going on. A lot went on after them, too, but after them it was different. I was paying attention. Sixty some years is a long time to remember things. Paying attention helps. What else has stuck in my mind is two things:
1) I was at Lish's house the night Kesey came over and had just sold the rights to Cuckoo's Nest to Kirk Douglas for ten thousand bucks. He was stoked. But he'd just seen a motorcycle accident and was a pretty shaken up. We talked about it. We talked about a kibbutz in Israel, comic books, the sexual athleticism of the Negro male…and wrestling, which we all had in common. The thing that’s stuck in my mind about the night was that we were ordinary guys, just the three of us, shooting the shit. We were all interested in what the other had to say. There wasn't anything mystical about any of it or any of us. One of us had written a book that was going to get made into a movie by Kirk Douglas. Another of us had his own literary magazine and hung out with some new literary agent by the name of Lynn Nesbit. And I had a really cute girlfriend. It seemed to me that we would all prefer to be exactly who we were.
2) I met Belknap with her fiancé one night. He was jealous of me. He kept trying to prove how much better than me he was. I could have told him, “Hey, I’m young, you’re old,” but didn't. If he wanted to be better than me, fine. I wanted her to be happy. I liked her. I liked him because she did. I wrote a story about her long after I’d known her. It was called Leonor Fini. It’s in the section called Esmeralda and Other Stories. Go read it. I dare you. It more than likely sucks. I hadn’t figured out how to write yet.