prodom, too, has its kerfuffles

[truepenny]

Here is the artifact of the latest one. It's getting discussed on matociquala's journal if you're interested.

I don't know the other side of the story. I don't know what the classroom atmosphere was like or what provocation these students may have endured (or felt themselves to have endured). So I'm not going to spring to a huge public defense of Gene Wolfe--simply because I don't know. (Friends-locked jeremiads--and I did make one yesterday right after I read the letter--are for the purpose of expressing venom before my blood-pressure takes the top of my head off, not for thoughtful, reasoned, and fair responses.)

I personally would not go to Clarion, Viable Paradise, or Odyssey, precisely because I know that boot-camp atmosphere would destroy me. Also, because having seen the classroom dynamic from both sides, I know how fucked up it can get, and how frustrating that can be for everyone concerned. The single-mind/mass-mind interface can go squirrelly in a heartbeat, and if the mass-mind decides it doesn't like what's happening, all the individual good will in the world can't really help.

So I don't know what happened. I don't know where the "blame" lies, or if it's even a matter where blame can be apportioned. But I think the students handled it badly, and my objection to this is not so much on behalf of Gene Wolfe as on behalf of the sf/f community, and especially on behalf of the writers--both the established writers who teach at workshops like this one, and the up-and-coming writers who attend them.

In academia, where student-teacher conflicts like this are sadly not uncommon, there are procedures. There's a definite chain of command, and a series of escalating arbitrations designed to resolve the issue fairly and without excessive exchange of personalities. Doesn't always work, but it's there. And the students in this case seem to have ignored the chain of command and gone straight for the big, dramatic gesture.

Which got them what they wanted--Gene Wolfe left--but also has gotten them a great deal of unsympathetic attention and makes Odyssey look unprofessional, simply because they HAVE a director and she was apparently not in the loop for any of this.

As I said, I don't know. Maybe this was the only thing they could do to make their grievances heard. In which case, my complaint is not with them, but with Odyssey. Because things like this make us all look stupid and immature, like toddlers flinging mud at each other.

And that's not the image I want my community and my genre to present to the world.

Comments

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. I didn't even know they had a boot camp atmosphere, so unable am I to see past these damned stars in my eyes. I've always wanted to go to one of these, because every other attempt I've made at writing workshops has foundered on either lack of sufficient critique (it's perfect? really? I wrote it on the bus coming here) or else a failure to understand/appreciate genre goals. Going to one where everyone already agreed that genre was worth doing sounded like, well, paradise. I haven't applied only because I felt I wasn't up to their standard. Plus money and time off from work. But a friend of mine is going to Viable Paradise this year and I was looking forward to a full report.

Mer

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Now, please, remember that that descriptor, "boot camp," is coming from me--and I am self-avowedly NOT the sort of person these things are designed for. Everyone I know who's done Clarion considers it one of the best experiences of their writing life. But workshops like that are very intense and and the joy or lack thereof in that kind of experience (not just workshops, but other kinds of very short, very intense educational programs) does depend to a great extent on community formation. And I don't do community formation very well, especially not, as it were, by force. So there's nothing here to say that those workshops AREN'T great (this one firework in Odyssey not withstanding), just that they would be terrible for me.

Be thou not downheartened. And take everything I say with a grain of salt.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Cutest porcupine in the world. Just saying.

And yes, I can see that. Some of the best and some of the worst moments of my childhood were at Nerd Camp for just that reason. Oddly, several of the same people were involved, which clicks with what you say about the mass mind.

Mer

[malkingrey.livejournal.com]

The last I heard, VP at least tries to avoid the boot-camp version of the workshop ethos. Whether it succeeds or not . . . well, I've never been a student there, so I couldn't say.

[marinarusalka.livejournal.com]

For what I understand (having had a report from one of the Odyssey students), the entire kerfuffle was started by a single student, who acted without consulting anyone, and claimed to have support from others when in fact he hadn't. By the time the other students knew what was going on, it was too late to patch up the mess.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. That's even less attractive. I mean, yes, better that it be one person behaving badly than ten or twenty or however many students at Odyssey--but that one person should be able to so completely fuck up everyone else's experience is really sad, and makes me feel even worse on behalf of everyone else who got caught in the cross-fire.

[marinarusalka.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I've been in a few situations in my life where a single asshole messed things up for the whole group, and it's always infuriating.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

Personally, I don't hanker after writing workshops, boot-camp atmosphere or not. Every bit of time I have to write, I want to WRITE. I am far too good at self-editing. What I usually need is more time grinding the stuff out. I can whip it into shape once I have the words. Not that criticism isn't sometimes useful, but I have met too many people who spend too much time learning to write, and attending groups and workshops, and never get around to writing. On the other paw, I also know people who said they wouldn't be where they are today without Clarion. YMMV.

And on the other paw, (good thing I have 4) I write mostly non-fiction, which is different from fiction in crucial ways.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

It does seem like Gene Wolfe took it as read awfully fast that he should go. (Even if it was 9:35 and there were only half a dozen students there: me, I would have taken the decision to work with the six students who showed up, sent a message to the director explaining what had happened, and asked to speak with all the students involved at lunchtime, to have clear why they wanted me to go.) Maybe he was having a terrible time and was dying for an excuse to leave?

OTOH, speaking as a student, the only time I've ever taken part in a mass walkout was when I and a lot of other students were genuinely dissatisfied with a certain lecturer at uni: and we'd tried to take our concerns first to him - and got no joy - and then to the head of the computing department and the head of the year we were in. Their reactions were (before the walkout) "He's very well qualified, he has two degrees, we've never had any complaints about him before." End of story.

Once we'd walked out, they had to pay attention to us or fail 80% of the class in the lecturer's subject (we walked out of a test that would have contributed to 20% of our final marks, which would, for about 90% of those who took part, have been the difference between a pass and a fail). And I believe that we had just reason to complain.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Well, that's what I'd do if presented with a letter like that. Not because it's the "right" thing to do (whatever the "right" thing would be), but because I would find the mere existence of the letter so devastating that I would be unable to teach.

Now, presumably, Gene Wolfe's ego is a little better armored than mine, but I also do wonder how one could possibly recuperate a workshop after something like that. Even given marinarusalka's report that it was one fuckhead, rather than a group effort, if a workshop's going to work, the people involved have to trust each other, and I can imagine it seemed very clear to him that these students no longer trusted him in the slightest.

Which is me making up stories. I don't know what his motivations were, and maybe he should have stayed and faced the firing squad. But I, personally, can't fault him for leaving, simply because my over-active imagination gets hung up on what it would be like to read a letter like that. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that this is one point in the chain of catastrophe where my impartiality fails me.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

No, no, I didn't mean that I would do (described above) because it would be the "right" thing to do: I mean that I would do that because it would make me feel better than anything else I could do faced with a letter such as the one Gene Wolfe describes.