A Writer's World

Christopher Woods has been teaching his popular creative writing class at the Women's Institute for years. The class is designed for those who wish to express themselves in writing and participants are encouraged to write poetry, fiction, or non-fiction.  They are also encouraged to experiment in new forms in order to build a stronger writing foundation. We recently got a chance to visit with Chris. 

WIH Reporter: Of all the topics you could have chosen, was makes this one especially important to you?  

Woods: Conducting a writing workshop is the most natural thing I can do. I have been writing in one form or another since I was seventeen. I enjoy becoming familiar with the work of others, and encouraging them to find their voice. An added treat is to watch them find their way in the world and to begin to publish their work, which is a very gratifying thing.

WIH Reporter: What books would we find on your night table this month?
Woods:  You would find literary journals and photography books.

WIH Reporter: What were the strongest influences in your life?
Woods:  My parents. They provided such a normal childhood that I am surprised I became a writer. Later, a special creative writing teacher encouraged me, and in a way, he gave me permission to explore my own creativity. 

WIH Reporter: What is the one thing people should know about you (but do not)?
Woods: I once played guitar in a jug band on a ship crossing the Atlantic. Fortunately the ship was far away from the U.S., so no one here had to listen to my music. I don't know that anyone needs to know about this, but it is something different. Other than that, as a writer I struggle as much as anyone else to find the right words. It's an endless battle. 

WIH Reporter: What advice do you have for other writers?


Woods: Every writer should keep a journal, and make entries as often as possible. Most of the information in the journal will be perceptions, descriptions, and general thoughts about day to day life. From those journal entries, ideas for longer pieces can come about. A description of a person might lead to the creation of a fictional character, for example. Keep in mind that our lives are often frenetic, so any specific details that we record can be extremely helpful later when we attempt creative writing, in any form.

When an idea for a poem or story comes to me, I try to sit down and write immediately if at all possible. Otherwise, the inspiration passes. If I wait until later the moment could be lost.

WIH Reporter: What about writer's block?


Woods: Personally, I do not believe in such a thing as writer's block. But, we are very good at making excuses. If we want to be writers, our job is to write. Life throws roadblocks, crises, all kinds of things to take us away from our writing. There are even writing workshops for victims of trauma. I think we should try to make use of our life experiences, all kinds, and in the end we can become better writers because of it.

Foreign (and other) Affairs

Sidney Buchannan's class has arrived at an opportune time, as representatives from the nation's political  parties are debating the size and power of the federal government

Buchannan's class delves into the important subject of constitutionality, exploring each branch of the federal government and the powers it can exercise.  In particular, he will examine the constitutionality of forced detention of aliens (and US citizens) without trial, the use of military power without formal declarations of war, recognition of foreign governments, and more - all of which are have occurred in recent years. We asked Professor Buchannan to tell us the particulars about his class, and his propensity to burst into song at unexpected moments.

WIH Reporter: Why have you chosen this particular subject for your class?

Buchannan: I have chosen The Constitution and Foreign Affairs as my topic for the current fall season because if fits neatly with the present foreign affairs issues that confront our nation. This course also gives me a chance to show how difficult it often is to even get the Supreme Court to review a case.

WIH Reporter:  We understand that you often sing in your classes, placing your own lyrics into well-known songs to get the point across. Can you tell us more about this?  

Buchannan: From childhood forward, I have thrived on putting my own lyrics to familiar tunes. As I surged through boarding school, college, and law school, I did this frequently, and it became a regular habit as I entered my adult years, a habit from which people could not escape even if they wanted to.  And so, at family birthday occasions, in the law school classroom, and in various church activities I belt out songs with lyrics appropriate to the situation at hand.   It is advantageous to me in that, because of the settings in which these songs occur, no one expects me to sing in operatic tones.  It is like the dog that can stand on three legs: it is not that I do it well, but that I do it at all.  In any event, it has brought me great joy to sing my lyrics to the various audiences that have been subjected to them over the past decades!  

WIH Reporter:  Can you tell us what books are on your night table?

Buchannan: I am currently reading "How Would a Patriot Act" by Glenn Greenwald and "The Land of Painted Caves" by Jean M. Auel, the last in her excellent series on Earth's Children.  The strongest influences on my life are too numerous to list but certainly include my family, my church, my close friends, and my teaching career at the University of Houston Law Center.  I think most people who know me well would describe me as a joyous person, and I plead guilty to that charge!  Finally, as a child, I was a fervent fan of the Oz books authored by L. Frank Baum and later by Ruth Plumly Thompson.  I am "joyously" happy to share that fact with the world at large.

Are You Well Read? - October

Venice is one of the most magical cities in Europe, and authors over the centuries have made ample use of its enchanting ambiance in their work. Here are just a few of the well-known books set in Venice:

Death in Venice, Thomas Mann

The Aspern Papers, Henry James

Death at La Fenice, Donna Leon

A Venetian Affair, Andrea di Robilant

Venice Observed, Mary McCarthy

The World of Venice, Jan Morris

The Comfort of Strangers, Ian McEwan

Don’t Look Now, Daphne du Maurier

For a more comprehensive list, along with a description of some of the books, see the following web page: Fictional Cities.

Are You Well Read?

Question: How many 19th century novels (short stories or novellas) can you name that prominently feature a character who descends into madness?

Hint: One famous novel features a madwoman in the attic.

Answer: Nineteenth-century literature reflects changing Victorian attitudes to mental illness. In the early decades, madness was often described in terms conveying horror and disgust. Only in later novels do we find a more compassionate portrait of mental illness. Indeed, this adjustment in attitude was evidenced in two separate works by author Charlotte Bronte. Her earlier novel, "Jane Eyre", offered a characteristically Gothic interpretation, introducing the repulsive, feral madwoman in the attic. Some years later, Bronte painted a more enlightened picture of mental illness in her semi-autobiographical novel, "Villette".

Here is a list: 

Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens (1837)

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte (1847)
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (1847)

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens (1850)

Vilette, Charlotte Bronte (1853)

Little Dorritt, Charles Dickens (1857)

Cassandra Florence Nightengale (1860)

Lady Audley’s Secret, Mary Braddon (1862)

He Knew He Was Right, Anthony Trollope (1869)

The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)

Follow-up Reading:

Books and articles on this subject can be found as follows:

The Presentation of Madness in the Victorian Novel   

Allan Beveridge and Edward Renvoiz

McCandless, P. (1981) Liberty and lunacy: The Victorians and wrongful confinement. In Madhouses, Mad doctors, and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era.

Lisa Appignanesi, Mad, Bad and Sad: A history of the mind doctors from 1800 to the present (Virago 2008)
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The woman writer and the nineteenth-century literary imagination (Yale University Press, 1979)
Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, madness and English culture 1830-1980 (Virago, 1985).

New Perspectives on 9/11

September 11, 2011 marks the 10-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Professor Terry Doody is teaching "Politics and Other Fictions",  a literature class that centers around this event. Recently, we visited with Professor Doody to find out more.

  

WIH Reporter: Three of the novels featured in your class focus on the actual event, but the rest do not. What informed your choice of novels for this class?

Doody: The anniversary of 9/11 is exactly the reason I want to teach the books--not only the three of them immediately focused on the event itself, but the other novels that give us a sense of Islam, in some of its very many forms.

WIH Reporter:  How can reading fiction enlarge our perspectives in approaching this event? 

Doody: Shelley says in "The Defense of Poetry" that we must be able to imagine what we know. What we merely know are facts.  Imagination, at least for the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century, is the greater power necessary to comprehend our whole reality with the fullness of our consciousness.  And fiction is not merely useful but always essential to our comprehension precisely because it takes us beyond ourselves and our familiar reality into the minds of others.

WIH Reporter: What is an example of the importance of imagination in relation to merely knowing facts?

Doody: One of the reasons we lost the war in Viet Nam is that we could not imagine losing it. We could not imagine the culture, the need, the endurance of the Vietnamese.  We thought they would react just as we would react, and they didn’t. 

As the old saying goes, the generals are always fighting the last war, which was in the jungle not in the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, which itself is not a modern nation-state. They are not us, and we are having trouble imagining them, despite all the information technology at our disposal.-

Politics and Other Fictions begins on September 8th, 2011, and features the following novels: Malgudi Days (Narayan),  The Satanic Verses (Rushdie);  Palace Walk (Mahfouz);  Let the Great World Spin (McCann);  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Foer);  The Good Life (McInerney);  Say You’re One of Them (Akpan);  Unaccustomed Earth (Lahiri); and  The Thing Around Your Neck. (Adichie).

Of Biblical Proportions: Power, Revenge, and Salvation in The Book of Samuel

For two thousand years, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have been reading the Bible, and it has never lost its fascination. This fall at the Women's Institute of Houston, Professor Seymour Rossel's is offering a dynamic class about the Book of Samuel, titled "Prophets, Priests, and Kings". We asked Professor Rossel to tell us about the particulars about his class, and more. 

WIH Reporter: Why have you chosen this particular book of the Bible for your class?

Rossel: It is one of my personal favorites among the books of the Bible. I like it for the same reason that I admire the three films of “The Godfather.” It is filled with towering moments of drama, with characters struggling for power and repute, with stories of Judges, priests, prophets, and kings and how they interact, with stories of soothsayers and witches, with the desires of real people to make a better nation for themselves, with tales of marriage and divorce, rape and murder, crime and punishment, and wars with enemies and wars within families. 

The Book of Samuel (found in modern translations in two parts, as First Samuel and Second Samuel, but still one book) has everything that made the “Godfather” so compelling (aside, perhaps from a horsehead in the bed).

WIH Reporter: What other parallels to our time can we find in The Book of Samuel?

Rossel: In a time when we ponder with issues of how much power should be vested in our national, state, and local government, Samuel takes on the same issue and provides some surprising insights. In a time when we wonder why so many of those who rise to high office manage to fall through their own human weakness, the Book of Samuel proves that this is an age-old dilemma. At a time when splinter groups seem to wield so much political power and divisiveness seems to dominate our national politics, the Book of Samuel gives us glimpses into the processes that drive people apart and the best in us which can sometimes reunite and heal our national will. No wonder, then, that the ancient sages recommended that we “Turn it, turn it, and turn it again, for everything is in it.”

WIH Reporter: What were the strongest influences in your life and work?

Rossel: The strongest influences in my life have always been teachers who became friends and friends who became teachers. I have been remarkably blessed in this sense. You might not recognize many of the teachers I have had the honor of knowing, but you would certainly recognize one or more. As a youth, I had a brief interview with Martin Buber that proved influential. Ever since, when I read his books and essays, I hear his voice and recall his presence, so he has remained my teacher. 

I was fortunate enough to study writing with Marshall Terry, a fine Texas author, and Ken Shields, a brilliant critic and interpreter, both of SMU and both of whom became lifelong friends. In New York, I studied at NYU with Cyrus Gordon and Manuel Gold, both of whom became close friends; and I was fortunate to study with Joseph Campbell at his workshop The Open Eye and to become his friend, as well. As a teacher, I continue to try to emulate these folk and others who brought wisdom and learning into my life and what I love most about the Women’s Institute is the closeness that allows those of us who teach to be friends with those of us who are taught. We have so much to learn from one another.

Professor Rossel's class meets on Tuesday afternoons, from 1:00 - 3:00, and starts September 6, 2011.

John K. Graham

Irene Guenther

Fall Classes Address the "Hard" Questions in Life

Three classes will be offered this fall to examine the hard questions in life.  John K. Graham will visit "The Moral, Ethical and Religious Response to 21st Century Biotechnology".  His questions are not futuristic, but need answers that we must be prepared to grapple with today!  Irene Guenther will present "Genocide:  A Crime Without A Name".  Genocide remains one of the preeminent problems facing the human community in the 21st century.  Understandably, emotionally and intellectually demanding, it is of great importance.  And Dr. Jill Carroll will be teaching "Topics in Applied Ethics" which challenges the way we live our lives.  Join The Women's Institute for one or all of these thought provoking classes.  These are classes that make a difference!