The New Yorker Model: Writing to Please Harvard

T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, John Dos Passos, Wallace Stevens, Robert Lowell. All these literary luminaries went to Harvard but none majored in Option III, the creative writing program within the English concentration. Of course, they were all here well before the advent of the option a short five years ago, but even if they had had the opportunity to apply for admission to the highly selective program, one might wonder if any of the above writers would have been accepted.

Only five students from each class are admitted to the option from approximately 30 who apply each year, and the competition for the opportunity to work on a one-to-one basis with the accomplished, professional authors and poets who comprise the writing faculty often becomes keen and heartbreaking.

Oppressed and J. Pressed

Megd Mahoney '78 said last week she was "really upset and depressed" last spring when her application to the option was rejected. She added that she "got over the disappointment" but believes the entire process of competing for five slots was "kind of strained to say the least."

Charles A. Glazier '77-3, another applicant, last week described the selection process as "intensely competitive" and said he was "bummed out" when he was not accepted.

The difficulty in gaining admittance to Harvard's creative writing major underscores a sentiment among many undergraduates interested in the literary arts that the University fails to meet their educational needs in this area of instruction. All writing courses are highly selective and limited in size, and demand frequently exceeds the limitations. Competition on a selective basis begins early for potential writers here, with a limitation on the number of students permitted to take the College's introductory course on narrative fiction, Expository Writing 13.

Unlike all other expository writing courses, the fiction offering requires students to submit samples of their writing to gain admission, Donald Byker, assistant director of expository writing, said last week. He added that the standing faculty committee which oversees the expos program has limited to eight the number of fiction sections that may be taught each year. No such ceiling is placed on non-fiction courses. Byker added that some faculty members feel the study of creative writing does not satisfy the expectations of the expository writing requirement, hence the limit on the number of classes offered.

He added that this year only seven sections of creative writing are offered. "Somewhere between 50 and 100 students were turned away" from the fiction course, he said, but he added that no one considered qualified to take the course was rejected.

Those students who are not admitted to the fiction course in their freshman year are not handicapped "because the English Department does not look on our fiction course as preparatory for English C," Byker said.

However, Robert S. Fitzgerald '33, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory and the teacher of English C, "English composition", may have implied differently when he said last week that all freshmen have the "experience of expos" and that no student can "take second-year Latin unless he's acquired a reading knowledge" of the language.

Fitzgerald describes English C as "an intermediate course that is mainly for sophomores," and official English concentration requirements specify a two-semester sequence of the course as a sophomore year prerequisite for admission to Option III. English C is limited to approximately 72 students, Fitzgerald said, and this fall "at least 140 people" attended the course's first meeting to seek admission.

Fitzgerald adds that every year "the number of people interested in the course has grown." He believes, however, that many students come to the initial meeting out of curiosity rather than a serious interest in writing. If one disregards those students and the serious writers who gain entrance to other writing classes instead of English C, Fitzgerald feels that the number of students denied the opportunity to take a writing course is actually quite small, and everyone who "should be in such a course" is.

"No doubt some students feel they have missed out when they shouldn't have," Fitzgerald admits. But he adds that "one ordinarily assumes that students who propose to do work in the arts have some qualification for it, and the instructor's judgment has always been what one has to rely on for that qualification."

Although some students fail to gain entrance to English C or one of the two other courses offered for writers in the fall, the most intense competition comes when the student applies to Option III.

Monroe Engel '42, senior lecturer on English, said last week he has not felt "so far" that there are "more students who should be in the option" than the five accepted each year.

"I'm sure a lot of students feel disappointed," Engel said, but the English Department "offers quite a number of courses now, and, by and large, students who can demonstrate qualification are getting into those courses."

Byker, Fitzgerald and Engel refer to the "qualifications" of students admitted to writing courses, but the standards of quality held by instructors has piqued several students.

The writing teachers here "definitely have a very defined opinion of what is good writing, and it is not experimental," Glazier said.

He compared the literature they hold in high esteem with "the stuff you read in The New Yorker." He said the prevailing literary opinion is "tradition bound," concerned more with content and theme than style, technique, and innovative ways of telling the story.

"I felt that I was writing in the wrong direction for them (the writing faculty) and so I didn't exist for them," Glazier adds.

Both students and teachers involved in Option III take issue with Glazier's criticism. Marc Granetz '78 said last week that most instructors are "extremely open to experimental writing, but most of what they've seen hasn't been that good."

Jane H. Shore, Briggs-Copeland Lecturer on English, said last week that the New Yorker characterization is "absolutely not true." She added that several faculty members are doing "very experimental work" and no "really good teacher" would "steer a student in one particular way of writing."

However, Glazier does not stand alone in his impressions. Mahoney said that in some classes "teachers pressure you to write in a certain way." Particularly in English C she said that she felt "a lot of pressure" and didn't feel that she was "being encouraged to write the way I wanted to write."

Writing courses at Harvard "encourage a great deal of freedom for students," Fitzgerald said, adding that he "would be surprised if instructors were ungenerous toward free experiment in writing." However, he also maintains that what one "ultimately wants is writing that gives satisfaction to both the writer and the reader. To obtain that, some standard has to be kept."

"There are standards by which writing can be judged," Shore said. Those standards are "very high" for Option III, she added, "but when you read a good manuscript you know it's really good, and you know why."

At all levels on which writing is pursued here, a combination of quantitative and qualitative limitations apparently discourages some students, especially those who insist they have little pretention to ever becoming great writers, but who would still like to take some writing courses.

Jon E. Polonsky '78 took a creative writing course two years ago to fulfill his expository writing requirement. He said last week that he "wouldn't have minded continuing," but he "wasn't up to the level of English C."

Students have "no way to do writing here without getting into a rough, intense course," Polonsky said, adding that students "go into it seriously or not at all." He said "informal workshops for people who just like to write but don't intend to publish for The New Yorker" are needed because at present those people do not have "much opportunity to get feedback" on their creative work.

John A. Spritz, an English major who said last week he was "scared off" by Option III because he had heard it was "rather confining," agrees with Polonsky that very little feedback or encouragement comes to writers at Harvard. "Most of the writing here is going on quietly in the middle of the night. People put stuff in drawers and you never hear about it," Spritz said.

Many of the students selected for Option III also believe writing courses should be more widely available. Judy Baumel '77, an Option III major, said last week "everyone should be allowed the exposure, though I suspect you wouldn't produce too many good writers."

Why aren't there more opportunities to pursue writing on a variety of competency levels? The immediate answer appears to be monetary. However, while most sources agree with Shore that "the English Department has no money to hire people to teach additional classes," some feel the budgetary hurdle could be overcome and that subtler reasons exist for limiting the size of the writing program.

Steven C. Fenichell '77, an English major in Option III, said last week that financial reasons are cited for limiting English C and Option III, but he thinks the department is "interested in making the process selective for its own sake."

Shore did not agree with Fenichell's view, but she said that part of the reason for such selectivity "might be to discourage people who want to take writing courses as a gut."

Another reason for limiting the size of writing classes was suggested last week by David Perkins, chairman of the English Department.

"The prospect of teaching a lot of students with very little talent is a dreadful one," he said, and most teachers would "quickly leave" if faced with such a situation, Perkins said.

Perkins said that "historically speaking" the creative writing program is "at a higher level of funding and staffing now than in the past." He added, however, that the department has a tight budget and could not allocate more funds to creative writing without detracting from some other area. "I hesitate to say we should do more, because then what should we do less of," Perkins said.

Granetz took a different view about the allocation of departmental resources.

"A definite division exists in the English Department between composition and criticism, and composition has not been given the money it needs" as a result, he said.

The question of a trade-off between writing and the department's other instructional responsibilities highlights a problem common to all the creative and performing arts at Harvard.

"Harvard is a first-rate research institution, a place for scholars," Byker said, describing the problem, "and creative functions are not particularly at home." He added that Harvard is not a "congenial place" for the arts because "the scholar's goal is to hold things static and study them, while the creator's goal is to confound the scholar."

However, some of the students most actively engaged in writing clearly perceive the existence of a definite bias against them among both faculty members and students. Sarah C. Binder '77, an Option III major, said last week "the rest of the department looks down on you as though you're not academic enough, and people say that what you write is not really a thesis."

Baumel also feels "looked down upon" by other English professors. She said that the people in Option III are "just as good, and I think better, academics than others in the English Department." She related a story about a fellow English major who, upon meeting her and learning she was in Option III, immediately launched into a "tirade about how we shouldn't graduate because we don't do anything."

Do the people in Option III "do anything?" Francis M. Pipkin, associate dean of the Faculty and chairman of the standing committee on expository writing, said last week that the Faculty is "really afraid of dilettantism" in the creative arts and shies away from teaching them because it is "harder to judge a substantial effort" in the arts than with scholarly work.

The writing concentrators clearly reject insinuations about the inappropriateness of their work. Binder said that producing a book of poetry for a thesis is a "Herculean task." She adds that others are "fooling themselves" if they think the students in the writing major are "given a break."

But she also feels that the option "doesn't do that much for you," that it only "legitimizes things I would do otherwise."

That may be the major advantage of Option III, legitimizing and providing time for writers. Those who were spurned by the selection process have not stopped writing. Harris Collingwood '78, who was denied admission to Option III, said last week that being in the major would be "convenient as hell, but not all that necessary."

Still, for many students at Harvard, unable or unwilling to compete for the attention of Harvard's handful of writing professors, unable to develop at the same rate or display the same talents as their contemporaries, the University atmosphere becomes stifling, discouraging rather than encouraging.

And Harvard's attitude is probably best summed up by Engel: "I don't think it's one of the prime objectives of the University to promote the growth of writers. If that happens, so much the better. There may even be some potential writers who get finished off by the atmosphere. In that way, the large University, for better or worse, is more like the world, which doesn't encourage people to engage in creative activities either."T.S. ELIOT '10. Would he have gotten into Option III?