Rajorshi Chakraborti teaches
Literature and Creative
Writing at the University of
Edinburgh. His first novel,
Or the Day Seizes You, was
short-listed for the Hutch
Crossword Book Award, 2006,
the best-known prize for
English-language writing
in India. His second novel,
Derangements was published
in August 2008.
I have often thought of teaching literature and Creative Writing as being comparable to distinct parts of a relay. In a literature class we take for granted the book as a finished article; we begin with it in our hands, and attempt to draw out its themes, take apart its structure. On a Creative Writing course, however, that finished book (or story) is our distant end-point, the destination we hope to arrive at one day with a lot of effort and some luck. It is the getting-there from the sketchiest beginnings – and the bumps, lures and false starts which are perhaps inevitable parts of the journey – that forms the focus of our discussions.
As a teacher of both subjects, I feel fortunate to be able to participate in both legs of that relay. There are (numerous) times on a literature course when I try to draw the attention of my students to the workings of the words in a particular paragraph, and how they weave and combine to achieve the specific effect we are discussing. Likewise, the big thematic ambitions of our writing students can only be successfully realised through narrative that is vivid, precise and engaging word-by-word and as a whole.
In my own case, this dual-sided interest in works of fiction dates back to before I even began writing. As an undergraduate, and then a student undertaking a PhD in English Literature, I read novels very much with a consciously-held hope of being a writer (although I hadn’t yet found any worthwhile stories to tell). So, while I remained alert to the treatment of the themes and issues I was reading for as a critic, I was also attempting to stay attuned to the prose on another level, that of an apprentice writer. It was during this period that I grew to believe in what still forms the bridge for me in my twin roles as a teacher: that the novel isn’t just another genre within literature, but that it can be an uniquely rich and inclusive form of written discourse, and that the apparently simple act of telling a story about a few specific selves in a specific part of the world can examine life within that world in particularly fluid, intricate and complex ways. Through my readings of several novels, I ended up trying to demonstrate in my PhD thesis that fiction can illuminate connections between various levels and aspects of inhabiting a world, between the inner, the inter-personal and the social, and can thereby add up to an especially comprehensive, detailed and dynamic exploration of lives within that world. And, I argued, by always foregrounding its partiality and its made-up status, fiction can achieve such evocations of fullness without ever pretending to or claiming finality. Since any narrative perspective is inevitably particular and limited, these very limits are what allow (and demand) the emergence of new stories, alternative trajectories and points-of-view. If we can all tell only partial stories, we can each disagree with and revise other stories.
I suppose it is this constant awareness of the potential openness and plasticity offered by the form that has been the underlying connection between the courses I teach as a writer and those as a literary critic. In my writing classes, I try to urge my students to maximise their use of this potential so that their stories can be even more fluid, penetrating and inclusive. Which alternative directions could a story develop in, without losing momentum or focus, that would add not just range to the cast and the themes, but also bring unpredictability and surprise to the act of turning the pages; which moments and scenes, contrasting voices and world-views, could be brought out further to add depth, mystery and richness to the conflicts?
And it is the degree of successful attainment of such complexity and ‘polyphony’ (to borrow a Bakhtinian term) that determines the quality of our reading experiences as critics, on the other hand. The more multilayered and intertwined the dimensions and strands of a story are, the more points of entry and interrogation, as well as scope for alternative interpretations, the text will offer, and, therefore, the more rewarding our debates about its themes, portrayals and aesthetic methods will be.
At Edinburgh, I’m fortunate in that the way the Creative Writing Masters programme has been conceived and is practised ideally suits my own teaching philosophy. Our writing students are expected to take two literature courses as an integral part of their taught curriculum, and one of my roles has been to run a couple of the options that are specifically designed to suit (and extend) the interests and preoccupations of prose writers. Through these courses, we attempt to introduce our students to a wide range of texts, styles and critical/theoretical ideas, while keeping in sight one of our stated objectives, which is ‘to push ourselves as writers reading writers, as writers encountering and discussing a broad range of formal possibilities and styles available within the genre to explore their chosen themes‘. Incidentally, I’m pleased to see that the spirit in which these particular courses are offered appears to reflect quite a few of the specific aims outlined in the recent Creative Writing Benchmark Statement framed by the National Association of Writers in Education (NAWE).
Although mostly positive, our students react in a range of ways to these courses. For instance, in one of the literature-based classes I offer, entitled ‘Explorations in Postmodernism‘, a few of them, each year, do resist engaging with some of the theoretical texts that I circulate. Part of the reason for this may be that they do not immediately see the relevance of these academic-seeming discussions to their own interest in developing their writing skills. Another commonly stated factor is the density and apparent obliqueness of much of this critical prose. In such cases, I often feel the burden of proving relevance rests on me: how are these ideas actually performed in the novels we are discussing, and how might a general awareness of such questions visibly influence the themes and styles of their own work? Yet, in a way, I enjoy being in such a situation, attempting to articulate how a consideration of such apparently abstract issues might somehow feed beneficially into their own development as writers. Sometimes, I’m happy to report, later on during the year, this tussle with the new ideas and approaches they encounter, does make its presence felt in interesting ways in the work of some students. Others, however, consolidate even more firmly their previously-held beliefs about what storytelling is and how they wish to practise it, but at least (I like to think) the process of substantiating their disagreements (sometimes vehemently) in class has proved to them to be a rewarding one.
Yet, trying to think along creative and critical lines simultaneously has been of great benefit to me, not just as a teacher, but also as a writer. The critical training I was fortunate to receive as a student still helps me consciously reflect over how best my interests and thematic preoccupations can be explored in a work of fiction. However, at the same time, another part of me, that is semi-conscious at best, and even passive or dreaming much of the time, is always looking and listening out for those details – images, occurrences, snatches of conversation, encounters and places – which I will gratefully seize on because they are too perfect for me to make up, and they make my stories more vivid and surprising than I could ever have achieved with conscious effort. They can come from any direction, at any time, from spending a day outside or from a dream, yet the moment they arrive, as free gifts and fully formed, my conscious half gets to work thinking of how I might weave them into my stories to bring out my themes in the most evocative and interesting ways possible.
I feel this co-operation between my conscious and not-quite conscious parts, between the active and the passive-attentive, has been sharpened within me by my years as a student and a critical reader of literature, and it is this extremely real, although irregular (and often-dormant-or-invisible), aspect of the planning process I talk about quite a bit with our creative writers, and something I urge upon them to notice, cultivate and trust.
