Alice Munro-Flannery O'Connor: Responding to Stories with Stories
Thursday 8 PM, April 18, 25, May 9, 16
4 Weeks/750 RMB
One of the last classes I took in college was oil painting. I did it because I was bad at painting, almost scared of it. I made my way to Atelier Marchutz, and in the first class, we were told to go to the chest of drawers that contained reproductions and find a painting we liked. I picked a painting that looked divided into five thin rectangles with four blue lines because I liked the colors in the background, the light yellows and oranges, the pale purples and blues. Then came something I did not expect. We were told to copy the paintings we chose. Dutifully, quietly, I set out copying. A complete novice, I didn’t even understand the reason behind the assignment. I recreated the general shape and did my best to imitate the colors. The bigger lesson came at the end of the semester when John and Alan said, re-copy the first painting you picked a few months back. By then, I knew my painting was Monet’s “Four Trees.” I knew the blue lines were poplar trees by the river. I knew that Monet was painting the trees, their reflection, and the movement of light on the trees and the water. I even knew a few things about brushstroke (in French, la touche, literally, the touch), and I could recognize Monet’s touch. I had learned in art history class that painters learned by copying the masters. The second time around, I copied the painting, intent on learning everything about painting, color, and light from Monet.
Not only did I learn so much about art, but I also learned about so much writing in the art studio, especially at Atelier Marchutz, that when I started teaching, I applied the techniques of studying painting to studying writing. The endless educational potential of copying the masters was clear to me. In 2019, I taught two classes, unimaginatively titled “Imitative Writing,” in which we tried to imitate the writing styles of Margaret Atwood, Mavis Gallant, Lore Segal, and John Cheever, among others. A little bit of research quickly showed me that my idea was far from original. The writers were already copying their masters. In 2020, I taught another couple of classes, where we studied how Borges imitated, or rather rewrote, three of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories to celebrate their one-hundredth anniversary of publication. With Borges’s touch, Poe’s detective stories turned into labyrinths, and although Borges kept the elements of mystery and macabre, he also revealed how a story could be challenged and evolved in a rewrite. Last year in April, in another copying-the-masters class, with its new name, Responding to Stories with Stories, we read originals by Hemingway, Joyce, and Chekhov and responses by David Foster Wallace, John Updike, and Ehud Havazelet. The contemporary writers copied the plots of the stories and moved them to their own cities, to their own times. It is finally time to do the female-authors part of the Responding to Stories with Stories! We’ll begin on Thursday, April 18, accompanied by Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, Doris Lessing, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Munro was fascinated with the American South, and she rewrote a story by O’Connor. Lessing responded to Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which fictionalized the cure women received for mental diseases, which consisted of forced bed rest and drinking milk for weeks—something Virginia Woolf was also subject to.
Over the years, we learned that we could copy a writer’s style, such as their use of certain parts of speech or their chosen length of sentences and paragraphs. We learned that we could copy them by recreating a reproduction of their work in our own style. We learned that we could copy their characters, plot, or conflicts to settings we are more familiar with. We also learned how writers are inspired by other writers and how they converse with the masters through their stories. Now, we can bring all that to the table as we set out to respond to a writer we admire. The Alice Munro-Flannery O’Connor class has a specific writing assignment: You must respond to a story with a story. If this assignment feels difficult, it’s only because you haven’t found your story yet. I’ve been working on making the workshops better and more efficient, and if you choose to submit a story to this class, you’ll get a chance to experience the Workshop Masterclass for free! Classes begin on Thursday, April 18. Tuesday and US-timed sections may be opened on demand for a minimum of 4 participants. I can’t wait to get started! You can't wait either? Contact me to sign up!Mark your calendars: The next Writing Talks meeting will take place on Wednesday, April 10th, at 8 PM (Beijing time). Writing Talks are free and open to all!Follow The Ways of Black InkFor free writing resources, information and announcements about reading and writing classes, and that random poem.https://waysofblackink.wordpress.com/