"It's time to take us back," says Writing Seminars chair Dave Smith in an authoritative tone, ever so pleasantly masked by his friendly Southern drawl, "to a point when students see who we are, what we represent and what we stand for." The presentation of one's own work is problematic in a field where the curriculum is particularly malleable and subjective. There are no classic textbooks for writing courses, and anthologies are constantly evolving. So who do you teach, how do you editorialize and when do you present your own work?
Smith admits it is a dicey issue. "We don't want to defer the classics," he says, "but we are conscious of the fact that we're participating in that same creative environment." Hopkins used to have a platform for faculty readings all the time, and somewhere down the line it disappeared. Smith's vision is to bring about some kind of median position. The worry is: what a writer thinks is important might not come through as such if one's own work is not addressed. The best analogy is to Peabody professors, who teach Bach and Mozart in class, but also have recitals of their own work.
Publish or perish -- such is the callous mantra of academia. From biology to history, and even writing, professors are expected to show constant progress through research and published works. One might expect, therefore, a healthy amount of disgruntled angst on the part of the faculty, especially in a creative field, but Smith had nothing but good things to say about the competitive atmosphere.
What of the pressure to publish just for the sake of an impressive resume? Smith rejected this outright as a factor. "This is not to pressure the professors, it's to create an opportunity for them. Being at Hopkins, we are competitors on an international level. Most of our professors have books coming out this year -- that is an extraordinary production level."
Compared to other schools, the Writing Seminars faculty has a truly impressive track record. Long lists of novels, poetry and criticism published with the major players, numerous awards and distinctions of honor. Professors are expected to be on the "cutting edge" as Smith says (subsequently lamenting the use of cliché), and in this sense, one gets the feeling that the department is not too different from those engaged in research.
Finally we get to the question that has been looming over the air of optimism. Is quality ever sacrificed in the stampede toward quantity? Smith takes a moment, then cracks a smile. "Well," he says, "Ralph Ellison wrote only one novel, but we're not all Ralph Ellison."
Last week was the first faculty reading of the semester, featuring senior faculty members John T. Irwin and Alice McDermott. McDermott read a chapter from her upcoming sixth novel After This about a girl going with her friend to get an abortion. The piece was so compelling and self-contained, it read like a short story. Irwin read first from his narrative poem As Long As It's Big, and then from his upcoming verse drama, Pure Products of America Inc. Both works were thoroughly engaging and funny, read by Irwin with great wit and levity.
