interviews with authors who've taught my writing



Dorothy Wang is an assistant professor at Williams College in Massachusetts.
*
Did anyone mention "Lorrie Moore" in class when you taught stories from Bed?
NO.
I know your class, or one of your classes, is also a class about New York City; did you or your students visit places you read about in my books?
ST. MARK'S BOOKSTORE and CHINATOWN.
Have you ever had a student who you honestly felt had "hatred" towards another student?
NOT REALLY.
When I visited your class 2-3 of your students "defeated me" intellectually, I think at first I tried defending what I was talking about about identity and being "Asian" but at one point I said, "I don't know," or something a lot, I was defeated, do your students ever defeat you?
Sometimes though not too often because being a professor is a lot like being a performer. One tries to turn their questions around to ask them what they're thinking, etc. But sometimes I'm somewhat defeated. I had two "mean girls" in that class you met and they tried to get the upper hand and actually made that class rather unpleasant. They were bullies and I suddenly had flashbacks of an earlier time. I suppose that's some sort of defeat.
What kind of beverages do your students bring into class?
Not much--sometimes water or coffee.

2 Comments:

Blogger Zignoto said...

i think that when defeat is about to happen, you gotta get super-obscure, but not impressively obscure, but nonsensically obscure.
you have to get stupid.
like if you are about to get suplexed, you gotta jump down into the mat, destroy the ground with your breaking bones so that no one has anything to stand on or suplex anyone into and then you have defeated defeat.
you have to smash all the bones in your brain into any premise, devastatingly.

January 17, 2013 at 8:06 PM  
Blogger stephen michael mcdowell said...

tao, what was the name and/or topic of this course?

did dorothy reply to the first three questions with mostly capitals or did you edited it that way?

felt very surprised/entertained by this

@}-`,—

January 18, 2013 at 5:47 AM  

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