The first creative writing class I took in college was a lower division fiction writing class. I learned a lot about the craft, but I sucked big time. I was an avid reader, and I had lots of hopes and dreams, mostly of turning my family’s oral tradition into something that read like a novel (a la what used to be called “new journalism” if I’d known what that was), but I had no experience in putting a story together, and I didn’t really understand that my assumptions about the world were not shared by the “dominant culture.”
My next try at creative writing was years later (my bachelor’s degree having involved more than twice the usual number of years). That time, it was nonfiction prose. I’d done some American literature, anthropology, and linguistics by then, so I had a much clearer sense of how to make my oral tradition work for me. The problem was that one instructor (my course of study having been lengthened by a propensity toward retaking classes, changing my major, lacking motivation, indulging an overwhelming laziness, and sundry other follies that go well beyond the scope of this entry) thought I should write about a topic of interest to himself and the other instructor, who was the only one to teach the course for several years (i.e., repeats), felt the genre should focus on the self, not the “little folktales” I kept handing in.
While I thought of the fiction class as a positive learning experience, my efforts at nonfiction were really frustrating. Part of the problem was that I didn’t feel free to write what I had in mind, but beyond that was the impression that I wasn’t given the means for making my idea work or an explanation of why I shouldn’t pursue it. The frustration turned into a low grade form of anger when I discovered people like Studs Terkel and the whole genre of travel writing, especially the subgenre that has an anthropological feel.
Fortunately, my graduate school experiences were far more positive. I tried a couple of courses in nonfiction prose, discovering that one of the mistakes I’d made earlier was that I use too many of the devices of fiction and not enough of the research I needed. At the time, I wasn’t committed enough to digging up information and I wasn’t very good at it, and frankly, by then, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to continue with my old idea of retelling my family’s stories.
I bring all of this up now because I’m reading Fieldwork, a book about a freelance writer who stumbles onto the story of an American anthropologist imprisoned for killing a missionary in Thailand. The writer does a little research, hoping to produce a short piece for a local English language newspaper, but as he learns more about the case, his work gets longer. It’s very much the sort of book I imagined writing back when I took those undergraduate classes. Reading it is a strange experience, both nostalgic (in that I wish I could have fought harder to do the kind of writing I had hoped to do) and affirming (in that I know I was onto something then and can try it again in future). Life has a funny way of turning back on itself.
Puntitas reads _Fieldwork_ by M. Berlinski.
