the fourth state of matter (2)

So now i've read the whole thing a second time (and a bit more, if you count all the individual paragraphs i've looked over on top of the full re-read), and this essay is breaking my heart. i take back what i said yesterday about how it's the content, not the way it's written, that makes it devastating. No. It's both -- form and content. Working in tandem. The casual-yet-deliberate blandness of the prose, the way she weaves the four sub-narratives into one, the way she places clues at strategic points in the narrative that you go back to again afterwards, thinking, Ah, so that was what she was doing.
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Those heartbreaking last paragraphs.
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i've also looked at some of the commentaries online, many of them written by teachers of creative writing in the US. My mind clears and comes alive after an entire day clouded in the usual marking-and-teaching-XYZ fog, and i'm thinking, i can SEE myself doing this. Both teaching writing in that way, and also, being taught writing in that way. i can see myself as a grad student, attending classes where such things are taught, and then going away from class with my heart burning and mind on fire, back to my room (or cafe, or library, or wherever it is where i do my best writing) and working these ideas and methods into my own work. i can see myself teaching undergrads how to dissect a piece of writing, how to catch the tricks that writers play on their readers, how to figure out how a writer manages to coax certain responses from his readers -- and then getting them to look at their own writing and see what they can do to make it stronger.
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i can no longer see myself doing what i'm currently doing for the rest of my working life.
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Which is a bit of a bother because, as everyone knows, there are no jobs in the creative writing tertiary education market unless you happen to be, like, Mark Doty or something.
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Damn you, Jo Ann Beard. Now look what you've done.
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