[UA] The Iowa Writer's Workshop

[Greg Stolze]

>It's crazy. Reminds me of my Creative Writing w401
>teacher...he has won alll sorts of awards that no one
>had ever heard of, published collections of stories at
>you know the Dustbowl Press in Bumbfuck Arkansas, and
>was part of that whole, as Bukowski put, "pat each
>other on the back club."

Almost every creative writing teacher in large American colleges is a
product of the Iowa Writer's Workshop.  They're kind of the lit-crit Mafia,
and they have a very firm idea of How Writing Should Be.  Kurt Vonnegut
doesn't fit.  Stephen King doesn't fit.  Jackie Collins DEFINATELY doesn't
fit.

This is not to completely condemn the IWW, because some great writers have
attended -- W.P. Kinsella (off the top of my head), though he made it sound
like he was kind of a black sheep until "Field of Dreams" became so popular.

However, the stereotypical IWW story is derided as "Kitchen Sink Realism"
and is something about a middle-aged college professor who teaches creative
writing, and the Volvo needs a new transmission, and he's not as attracted
to his wife now that she's had a couple kids and can't seem to lose the
weight, and there's this vivacious and lovely girl in his 306 Lit Crit
class that he feels a real connection with, but he's worried that he's just
being a typical white male colonizer, and then he's doing dishes or weeding
the tomatoes and has some kind of revelation about himself, and then the
story ends.

So... in UA, what is the IWW up to?  We've got a group, exclusive, maybe
secretive, with a definate agenda about what Fiction Should Be, meaning an
agenda about how stories should be told.  And we all know the importance of
stories and symbols to avatars and the IC...

-G.

...and we also know how soft Greg is for any idea that makes Iowa important...