essaying

I wonder how you teach writing.

A freshman comes in, without a clue what her first freshman-comp assignment is supposed to be. We look at the syllabus, and I talk through what the professor is asking for, how she might start off, what parts of the assignment to focus on at what phase.

Really, though, I am tempted to throw my hands up and despair at the whole enterprise. This professor has written a pretty good description of what a personal narrative essay ought to be; of course it's not quite clear, but how can it be?

Here, freshman, it says: get meta. Start thinking about your story. Now start thinking about what big story your little story is a chapter, a page, a paragraph of. Now start thinking about what big story your little story tells in miniature. Start thinking about your thinking, thinking about why you think the way you do about your thinking. Who are you? Now tell me how your story helped to make you into a person who thinks this way about your thinking; then stop telling me and illustrate it with your words. What does your past taste like to you now?

Can you teach someone who was brought up on figuring out the Right Answer to write down for her teachers for twelve years how to imagine herself, how to imagine the world she lives in, how to live the contemplative life on a set of deadlines?

Maybe you can, but I suspect you have to teach her to read these things, to become the sort of person who would read such an essay voluntarily because she wants to know how another person imagines himself and the world he lives in, to taste the fruit of the life contemplative. Can you do that in a semester? Possibly. Can you grade appreciation? Possibly. It all just seems so unlikely. Writing is art and art is less than Real to us Americans, us modern Westerners.

How do you make artists? Love art corporately, I suppose. I wonder how we become a society that does that, that thinks it is worthwhile to love art and want to do it ourselves.