Edward Porter, on the 23 Misfits of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program
We’ll be posting statements from Stanford Creative Writing Jones Lecturers who were ‘future fired’ on August 21. Today’s is from Edward Porter.
“I would like for all new Jones Lecturers to be welcomed into a community that has sense of continuity, one that preserves its wisdom, supports new initiates, and encourages their best impulses. I’d prefer they not arrive at a smoking ruin to say, “‘Now what?’”
The success of the Jones Lecturers — as measured by evaluations, enrollment, and the full-throated accolades offered by our deans and director even in the act of firing us — is based not on individual talent but on an ethos.
Whether she influenced us directly or indirectly, we’re carrying out Eavan Boland’s demand for the best undergraduate program in the country. I was terrified of disappointing her. Four years after her passing, I still am. What’s at stake in the Creative Writing Program’s restructuring isn’t the continuation of any one of us, but the preservation of a noble culture.
I’d taught college for six years before I came here, but Stanford students present unique challenges. Not only are they dauntingly bright, but they live under phenomenal pressure, and for many of them, creative writing is a safety valve.
Fortunately for me, I was selflessly mentored by a dozen or so of my Jones colleagues, teachers who worked longer and harder than my colleagues at other institutions. They were better read in pedagogy. They were more self-critical. They passed around texts, exercises, and assignments and debated their value. They surrendered time to thinking about their students’ needs and welfare beyond grading papers. I wanted to be one of them, and I sweated until I was.
But devotion is not the default setting for creative writing instruction generally. The field often implicitly and even explicitly encourages us to fake teaching so that we’ll have more time for writing. It’s easy to find quotes from famous writers boasting about how little they worked when they taught, and Wallace Stegner himself complained about the time he’d wasted teaching.
Perhaps Wallace Stegner was right about his own time, but teaching isn’t a waste of my mine. Outside of my marriage, teaching CW to Stanford students is the most fulfilling thing I’ve known, and the only time I’ve felt that I’d come round right, as far as work goes.
I would like for all new Jones Lecturers to be welcomed into a community that has sense of continuity, one that preserves its wisdom, supports new initiates, and encourages their best impulses. I’d prefer they not arrive at a smoking ruin to say, “Now what?”
Perhaps everything will be fine after the exit of the twenty-three misfits who lifted their bowls last year and said, “Please sir, I want some more.” But it’s also possible that the Jones Lecturers will lose the shared values that have brought the program success.
I’m tempted by metaphors about the ship of Theseus, or neutron bombs, but I will say this. If you inherit a bakery with a line around the corner, don’t fire all the bakers at once. People aren’t coming for the sign on the window.
Edward Porter
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Edward Porter’s writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Gettysburg Review, The Hudson Review, Colorado Review, Catamaran, Barrelhouse, Best New American Voices, and elsewhere. A native of New York City, he earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD from the University of Houston. His work has been supported by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Breadloaf, and others. He is a former Stegner Fellow and current Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he has created a new course in humor writing.
