I recently became aware that there
are students on my own campus
who think that I should lose my job.
I mean I guess I sort of knew this.
But the startling thing in this case was
that it was somebody I know who teaches
creative writing.
Who told me that she had taught in
one of her classes essay that I
wrote about sexual paranoia
in academia as an example.
She taught this essay as an example of
writers taking on controversial topics.
And one of the students in the class
said that she thought I should have
been fired over the essay.
And I guess other students were
nodding their heads yes, yes.
So the thing that was startling
about this to me was these were
creative writing students,
this was a creative writing class.
And I couldn't quite get my mind
around this, what did these students
imagine was gonna happen to their own work
when they start publishing, if they do.
What central committee would they
choose to judge whether their
work passed muster or
was acceptable or not?
I do think that If you're
a creative writer,
it's in your own interest to
promote freedom of expression.
And to be in favor of
whatever imaginative license anybody
else wants to take in their work.
Here's the thing, an awful lot of the work
we now think of as part of the canon
was in its day incredibly controversial.
Particularly writers who take
on prohibited sorts of subject
matter like having to do with sex or
politics.
We have to be aware that the standards
of this moment are not timeless,
that our sensitivities are not timeless.
And that the history of writing,
of literature
is a history of contestation, of writers
pushing back against current morays.
And seizing the license to do that,
oftentimes against would be censors,
whether it's the church,
the state, the communist party.
Whatever central committees are formed to
try to tamp down on creative expression.
I guess as a writer my goal has
been to tell the truth as I see it.
Sometimes my work has been
controversial for that reason.
I'm not saying I've always been
right in my opinions or views, but
I don't think you always know.
You don't know in advance what
the right opinion or view point is.
And it's one of the problems I have
with students setting themselves
up as a kind of central committee.
And judging work and trying to
some degrees censor that work
that they disagree with.
Is that you don't know how things
are gonna look five or ten years from now.
You don't know that you are right.
And it would take a lot
of hubris really to
think that from your own limited position.
You can decide what the correct
view line on a subject is,
particularly subjects are kind
of unfolding at the moment.
I think it's writers and
thinkers coming to provisional
sorts of conclusions and
doing the best that we can with that.
