A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers' Workshop

by David O. Dowling

Overview

A vibrant history of the renowned and often controversial Iowa Writers’ Workshop and its celebrated alumni and faculty

As the world’s preeminent creative writing program, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop has produced an astonishing number of distinguished writers and poets since its establishment in 1936. Its alumni and faculty include twenty-eight Pulitzer Prize winners, six U.S. poet laureates, and numerous National Book Award winners. This volume follows the program from its rise to prominence in the early 1940s under director Paul Engle, who promoted the “workshop” method of classroom peer criticism.
 
Meant to simulate the rigors of editorial and critical scrutiny in the publishing industry, this educational style created an environment of both competition and community, cooperation and rivalry. Focusing on some of the exceptional authors who have participated in the program—such as Flannery O’Connor, Dylan Thomas, Kurt Vonnegut, Jane Smiley, Sandra Cisneros, T. C. Boyle, and Marilynne Robinson—David Dowling examines how the Iowa Writers’ Workshop has shaped professional authorship, publishing industries, and the course of American literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300215847
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

David O. Dowling is associate professor at the University of Iowa’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. His previous books include Literary Partnerships and the Marketplace and Emerson’s Protégés. He lives in Iowa City, IA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Timeline xi

Introduction 1

Part I Cold Warriors: Writing in the Engle Era (1941-1966)

Students

1 The Brilliant Misfit Flannery O'Connor 29

2 The Star W. D. Snodgrass 50

3 The Suicide Robert Shelley 67

Faculty and Visitors

4 The Professional R. V. Cassill 89

5 The Guru Marguerite Young 106

6 The Turncoat Robert Lowell 123

7 Mad Poets Dylan Thomas John Berryman 144

Part 2 The Workshop in the Age of Aquarius (1960s-1970s)

8 Celebrity Faculty Kurt Vonnegut John Irving 165

9 Infidels Sandra Cisneros Joy Harjo 188

10 The Crossover Rita Dove 208

11 The Genius Jane Smiley 228

12 Red High-Tops for Life T. C. Boyle 249

Part 3 The Frank Conroy Era and Beyond (1980s - Present)

13 The Mystic Marilynne Robinson 271

14 The Warrior Anthony Swofford 290

15 The Voice Ayana Mathis Mass Culture 306

Epilogue. No Monument: Engle's Legacy and the Workshop's Future 329

Notes 349

Index 403

A photograph gallery appears at the end of Part 1

Editorial Reviews

01/28/2019

Journalism professor Dowling (Surviving the Afterlife) charts the 83-year life of one of the nation’s leading writing programs, zooming in on specific writers with a granularity that hampers his ambitiously scaled narrative. Starting with the program’s 1940s rise to prominence, Dowling moves chronologically, focusing on the tricky balancing act of turning out writers equipped for both commercial and literary success. However, Dowling too often detours into anecdotes unrelated to this central theme. For instance, he recounts a bar fight between then-workshop student John Irving and another student who had called Irving’s favorite professor, Kurt Vonnegut, a “science fiction hack.” More pertinently, Dowling discusses how Marilynne Robinson’s rise to fame outside the workshop “has relied on the power of commercial media—despite her principled renunciation of it.” He observes that Robinson strongly opposes the current University of Iowa president for being a corporate veteran with no academic experience, an apt illustration of the conflict between academe and commerce at the book’s heart. Dowling is at his best when showing how this quandary relates to the outside world, demonstrating why the story of the workshop matters to more than just those who’ve passed through its hallowed classrooms. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

[A] history of America’s most famous creative-writing program . . . [that] opens with the boozing, brawling John Berryman—he of the “blow-torch approach” to teaching—receiving a punch from a student.”—Hermione Hoby, New Yorker

“[An] ambitiously scaled narrative . . . focusing on the tricky balancing act of turning out writers equipped for both commercial and literary success.”—Publishers Weekly

“I read this in two or three days because I just couldn’t stop. It’s densely packed with information and well-researched . . . disturbing and compelling . . . If you’ve ever been interested in MFA programs or even just Iowa’s infamous workshop, this is a must-read.”—Jaime Herndon, Book Riot

“This is a delightful and accessible overview of the workshop, its history, and its impact on American letters.”—C. E. O'Neill, Choice

“Memorable . . . delightful and accessible.”—C. E. O'Neill, Choice

“[Dowling] conveys both the brilliance of the writers and faculty as well as the often contentious workshop methods . . . His insights are unsparing and honest, his criticisms are founded on documented events, and his praise is appropriate and measured.”—Dennis Healy, Telegraph Herald

“This book provides readers with a rich history of how the nation’s most important writing program has had an outsized impact on American literary and commercial culture."—David Haven Blake, College of New Jersey

“David Dowling’s A Delicate Aggression is irresistible reading. It is fascinating window into the intimate workings of evolving talent and cross-hatching of competition and support in literary communities.”—Shirley Goek-Lin Lim, University of California, Santa Barbara

“A fascinating look at the way writers are taught how to teach themselves how to write. I spent six years in a similar workshop and can still hear their voices in my head.”—Steve Berry, The Malta Exchange

“Here lie the Workshop’s secrets, its lore, its pride and exclusions, its intimacies and competitions, its ‘innovations of the business of letters,’ its unapologetic and promising talents.”—Annie Liontas, Author of Let Me Explain You

"David Dowling’s A Delicate Aggression isn’t just a meticulously researched and elegantly wrought history of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. It is also an essential and acute portrait of American Literature since World War I. And beyond that it is a compelling portrait gallery of some of this country’s most interesting literary personalities, an insider’s travel guide to Iowa City, and a compelling and propulsive read."—Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs

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