Writing class from hell

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 01:00:00 +0000

"Seminar," a play starring Alan Rickman as a preening, acid-tongued teacher running roughshod over a group of tender aspiring writers, opened a few weeks ago on Broadway. Reviews have prompted all the usual observations about the difficulty of dramatizing both writing and reading, activities so internally momentous yet so physically inert. Why, then, do people keep doing it? And do the depictions of writing classes in stage, film and television -- from "Wonder Boys" to "Bored to Death" -- bear any relationship to real life?

To hash this out, I invited Ben Marcus -- a novelist and an associate professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts, where he teaches fiction writing -- to see "Seminar" with me and talk afterward about the ways writing workshops are depicted in the performing arts. His first novel was acquired by the writer, editor and teacher Gordon Lish, considered to be the inspiration for the character played by Rickman, and Marcus also attended one of Lish's legendary seminars, conducted in private homes, like the class in the play. (Marcus' fourth book, the novel "The Flame Alphabet," will be published in January.)

Salon.com > Ben Marcus

Writing class from hell