Famous Writers School: A Novel [Hardcover]

Review first published in The Small Press Review. A free copy was sent to me (the editor) for review. I have had no personal contact with the author or publisher.

It is a truth universally acknowledged among teachers of creative writing that stories about writers do not get accepted for publication. To mention that your protagonist is a writer will bring frowns of disapproval; the rationale being that any writer that produces such a story is simply writing about themselves. Examining this prejudice more closely, with reference to another suggestion from the tutor - write about what you know - and you can see why beginner writers become confused. Look further, at how many books have writers (or thinly disguised ones) as a central character, and you begin to regard the majority of writing advice with a good deal of suspicion. Why shouldn't you write about a writer? What should matter is not what you choose to write about, but how well you write it. But agents, publishers and critics are obsessed with the idea that an author must have some kind of sanction to choose a subject. If they have worked in a health related field, then they can write about a surgeon. If they have travelled in Columbia, then they can tell the story of a street child. If they are gay, then they can create a character who explores the gay underworld of some American city. If, however, your choice of subject is made for no better reason than that it interested you, you're in trouble. How will we market her? What's his unique selling point? Steven Carter gets around this problem by being a teacher of creative writing who has written a novel about creative writing. If you're now confused, then join the club.

And so to The Famous Writers School. A man who may or may not be a successful writer advertises for students for a distance-learning course:

Through a series of carefully structured lessons you'll receive instruction in all aspects of storytelling, and you'll receive thoughtful feedback on your work...

Three would-be students reply (we're told later that there are seventeen, but the novel centres on this trio and their postal tutor, Wendell Newton) and give the written equivalent of that cringing moment when you have to stand up in front of a new class and `say something about yourself'. Dan is a new but competent, commonsense writer who knows what he wants. Rio is the writing tutor's nightmare; the student who has `so many ideas she doesn't know which one to choose', all of them clearly autobiographical. Does this woman want to create fiction or simply tell her own story repeatedly to a captive audience? Linda has one story, probably also autobiographical, but tells it with verve and a degree of humour.

Via a series of letters and work assignments the students orbit their teacher, who, through his method of teaching them with examples from his own life, begins to exhibit worrying behaviour:

She was silent. Seconds ticked like hammers to the forehead. I was making a fist with my free hand. I couldn't think of anything to say. Finally I said, `I noticed your car has out-of-state plates. I thought maybe--'
`How do you know that?' she said.
`I just happened to see it at the grocery,' I said.
`Oh. Well, all right. But how did you get my name?'
I hadn't considered the possibility of that coming up. I couldn't tell her the truth, though, which was that I followed her home from work one rainy day, watched her check her mail and go into her apartment, and then got soaked as I ran to the mail box, got her name and ran back to the car.

Much of this story is very entertaining. The crime novel which Dan sends piecemeal to the tutor is clearly better than anything Wendell could write.

However, the two female students and the fictional women in Dan's novel are ciphers whose main role seems to be to have, to have had, or at some point in the future to be willing to have sex with one of the men. In Dan's story in particular they offer themselves up with such alacrity and so little motivation, that Wendell's suggestion that he include more sex adds a layer of irony that feels unintentional. The book as a whole is also unbalanced by the large sections of Dan's `work', which overwhelms that of the other characters. It leaves the reader feeling that this started life as an unsaleable crime novel, which was then reused in a new form. A slower revealing of the characters of the four writers, some attempt to subvert the expectations of the reader and greater development of the wider story are needed to turn a good idea into a great book.

Wendell Newton is the tutor on his own creative writing correspondence course and the novel is made up of the assignments he sets his newest set of students and the exercises they return to him as part of the course. Through their brief correspondence and the questionable critiques Wendell sends back we get to know both him and his students.

In this way, we learn that while Wendell is content to pick apart his students' work, he has no qualms about lifting a stand-out phrase from it and re-using as his own. It seems to be the perfect con trick until we begin to suspect that one student might know more about the real Wendell than he realises...

People are rarely who they seem to be in this novel and there is often a gap between the image the characters hope to portray of themselves and the one their words/actions convey. Carver manages to build up a convincing image of each of the characters and their individual voices come across clearly. The student responses allow the author to explore different genres with the most talented of the students providing one of the threads running through the novel with the opening chapters of his tense, double-crossing thriller. This novel within a novel works well here as it provides a clear narrative for the reader to follow. In some ways it reminded me of Calvino's 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller.'

Ultimately though, I felt disappointed when I reached the end of the novel. For me, the final resolution of Wendell's interwoven personal and professional life wasn't particularly satisfying and I would have liked this fleshed out in more detail. After all this storyline had been building up throughout the novel and so when it ends as it does it all just felt a little flat.