From the Editors
“Creative is merely a plus name for a regular activity [. . .] and any activity becomes creative when the doer cares about doing it right, or better.” Larry Watson, our interviewee for this issue, has had this quote from John Updike hanging on his bulletin board for years. It is an apt quote to start off this issue in that it describes not only how Watson defines what it means to be a “creative” writer, but also how he and our first article’s author approach teaching writing, whether teaching fiction writing or first-year composition classes.
Larry Watson is, indeed, what most of us would think of as a truly creative writer. Author of the novels Montana 1948 (1993), White Crosses (1997), Justice (1996), Laura (1999), and the forthcoming Orchard (August 2003), Watson is a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point. In our discussion with him, Watson discusses his writing process, his style, and the elusive idea of voice in writing, which he describes as “some amalgamation of subject, of style, of attitude.” Not surprisingly, Watson cites Hemingway and Salinger as important writers in developing his own voice as a writer, one that has often been described as “spare.” Watson also addresses the issues of writing “for the eye” and writing “for the ear,” since his books have been published in both print and audio formats. Finally, Watson discusses the commonalities and differences between teaching creative writing and teaching Freshman English, courses that are frequently seen as requiring very different strategies in order to teach very different types of writing.
In our first article “Whole-Class Workshops,” Ian Barnard also bridges this perceived divide between “creative” writing and academic writing by arguing that whole-class writing workshops—a staple of creative writing course instruction—can be effectively transferred into the composition classroom. Barnard links the scholarship on small-group peer critique in first-year college writing classes to the benefits of expanding writing workshops to include all of the students in a classroom. The benefits he notes include the amount of feedback each student receives, the larger picture each student sees of his/her writing in relationship to other class members’ writing, and that student writing becomes a text for the course. Following concrete specifics about how he prepares and implements the workshops in his writing classes, Barnard describes an additional key pedagogical benefit for both the students and the teacher: “reconceptualizing conventional understandings of teacher-student relations and the role of students in the classroom.”
In Other Voices, we move to the strategies of college classrooms outside the United States. “An Informal Survey of College Writing in the Philippines” explores the methods of teaching English in a country which calls itself the third-largest English-speaking country in the world, but faces the challenge of a split between the language of instruction and a diversity of other languages in use in the country, including the national language of Tagalong. James Wilson’s article offers historical background for his discussion of classroom methodology in the Philippines and provides thought-provoking suggestions for how and why we might wish to make comparisons between teaching English in the Philippines and teaching English in the United States.
Our Reviews section in this issue covers a range of diverse texts. Muriel Zimmerman reviews the second edition of Jay Bolter’s Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext and Remediation of Print, which examines the refashioning of print genres by new electronic mediums and how electronic writing stimulates different relationships between author and reader. Richard Haswell’s book Beyond Outcomes: Assessments and Instruction Within a University Writing Program, reviewed by Stephen Bernhardt, offers practical advice and innovative solutions for integrating assessment and writing instruction through an account of the development of Washington State University’s nationally recognized writing program. Peter Vandenberg’s review of Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum, edited by Linda Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, Sandra Jamieson, and Robert Schwegler, stresses how this book addresses a growing concern about the lack of sustained undergraduate instruction in writing in universities across the country. According to Vandenberg, the volume as a whole offers a guiding theory for curricular development to broaden the definition of the term “writer” and better prepare students for writing in public and professional contexts; it also includes course descriptions and materials for upper-division writing courses on a companion CD.
Elizabethada Wright’s review of Susan Kates’ Activist Rhetorics and American Higher Education turns toward literacy’s power as exemplified by five little-known but inspirational teachers whose pedagogy centered on language’s ability to empower students. The next review, Carmen Christopher’s assessment of Writing Workshop: The Essential Guide, by Ralph Fletcher and JoAnn Portalupi, discusses a book that might be a helpful supplement to Barnard’s article in this issue since it offers a wealth of practical material from the authors’ professional experience on successfully organizing writing workshops.
Finally, Personal Effects: The Social Character of Scholarly Writing, edited by Deborah Holdstein and David Bleich and reviewed by Robert Samuels, challenges oppositions between the personal and the professional in scholarly writing in the humanities, a change in definition prompted in part by postmodern fragmentation of what constitutes the professional and private self. Philippe-Joseph Salazar’s An African Athens, reviewed by René Augustín De los Santos, examines the rhetoric of nation-building in another postmodern institution, the emerging democracy in South Africa.—RLS