My Secret Diary -- Part 3 (1985-86)
October 1, 1985
I go for my first lesson with Mrs. Tanizaki. She lives and teaches in a small bungalow in Ross, an affluent, leafy town in Marin County. It is one of the few places where oaks and maples grow in profusion, so that the autumn actually looks like autumn.
As I walked up the sidewalk to her front door, I noticed the path had been swept that morning. There were a few leaves fallen on the path, as if they had been scattered by a human hand.
I rang the doorbell and waited. Across the street, humble Mexican gardeners raked the leaves that drifted down.
When the door opened, I saw a small, neat woman in late middle age. Her salt-and-pepper hair was arranged in a no-nonsense style, and she wore simple black glasses. "Yes?" she said, not smiling.
"I'm Mrs. Freed," I said. "I've come for my piano lesson."
Mrs. Tanizaki looked me up and down with what I came to fear as her most calculating gaze. She did not move to let me in, but only looked at me, as if evaluating me before I had even touched the keyboard.
"I hope I haven't come on the wrong day," I said.
She did not answer. The thought occurred to me that I might be speaking with the piano teacher's mother or housekeeper. "Are you Mrs. Tanizaki, the piano teacher?"
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "Of course." She still did not let me in.
I started to feel uncomfortable. "We did say eleven o'clock, didn't we?"
"How many leaves are on the sidewalk?" she shouted. "Don't turn around! How many leaves?!"
"I-- I don't know," I gasped.
She slammed the door in my face.
October 23, 1985
After enduring numerous trials more suitable for entry into a zen temple, I finally had my first piano lesson today -- in a way.
When I sat down at the keyboard I asked, "Would you like to hear the piece you asked me to prepare?" I readied my hands over the keys.
Her eyes flashed with anger. "Never touch the keyboard until I give you permission," she shouted. "Now stand up!"
The next forty minutes were devoted to the proper techniques of approaching a piano and sitting at it. When I had finally managed to do it satisfactorily, I sat with my hands in my lap, waiting for her next word.
"Good," she said in a low voice. "You are learning."
"May I play my piece?" I asked. My own voice sounded high-pitched, like a child's.
"Time is up for today," she replied.
November 14, 1985
Money problems at home are forcing me to take a teaching position for the spring at a girls' college in Wisconsin. At least I will be able to finish the editing process for my novel. The publisher can send the galleys to me at the college.
My piano lessons are proceeding at a glacial pace. I have not yet played the piece Mrs. Tanizaki asked me to prepare in order to show her my level of skill. But I continue to practice it every day, and by sheer dint of practice the piece itself is getting better day by day. Meanwhile the lessons are concerned with issues of posture, focus and attitude. I have gotten so far as to play a C chord. After eight lessons, I guess it's the best C chord I've ever played.
December 23, 1985
I had to waste time this week preparing syllabi for the classes at the girl's college. My own high standards war with my revulsion at grading papers, so while I want the girls to read Henry James and Herman Melville, I can't bear to see these great works dissected by a bunch of pouting, preening, post-pubescent pipsqueaks. So I fell back on Hawthorne and Twain. But I'll be damned if I let them read Huckleberry Finn. It'll be "Innocents Abroad" for the little cows.
Putting these together was like building a cage for myself, bar by bar. In bad dreams I see their dull faces, and I scream, but no sound comes out.
January 5, 1986
To Fiji and Tahiti, briefly; I should be able to get at least three travel pieces out of the trip, at three thousand per. That'll help tide us over the summer.
On the beach in Tahiti I considered taking a stroll and never returning. For a moment I indulged a fantasy of natives finding my tanned, trim body covered with forest ants, and the broken-hearted obituary in the New York Review. Then I went back and took a shower and packed for the trip back to the States, and then Wisconsin.
February 3, 1986
I have been in this Midwestern capital twenty-one days, of which it has snowed seventeen. The walls of snow on either side of the paths across the prison camp, I mean college, grow higher and higher. When I have to venture out, I must take precautions for both frostbite and (on the clear days) snow blindness.
My cellmate is a longtime inmate here at stalag 12, and is regarded as a trusty. He even has a key to the copy machine. But when I asked to use the copier, he laughed and spewed a stream of gulag-inflected abuse, of which I could only understand the words "tenure" and "vice-chairman."
February 24, 1986
When I entered the classroom today, burdened with my usual sheaf of substandard student papers covered with red marks, I heard one corn-fed girl whining to another, "It's soooo boooooor - ing." She had her finger in "Fanshawe," one of the Hawthorne books I, in my munificence, let the girls read instead of "Omoo" or "Moby Dick."
I froze the class with a glance. "Speaking of boring," I hissed, "let me read you a thing or two," and then I read at random from the papers I had just slogged my way through. A paragraph from this one, a paragraph from that one. After a few paragraphs one of the more spirited girls spoke up.
"But Mrs. Freed," she said in an American drawl, "We want to get better, we really do. Teach us about theme, teach us about point of view."
"Such things are child's play," I replied. "You should have learnt them in junior high. We're here for higher things. What is Hawthorne's perspective on class in America at the time he was writing? How does his use of characterization in the portrayal of Fanshawe and Ellen illuminate the position of women in early American society? What does his title character's formal approach to scholarship suggest about Hawthorne's own education? Well?"
In the silence that followed, I thought of Mrs. Tanizaki, and of spending a whole 90-minute class teaching these slovenly Americans how to sit at their desks. They'd complain, and perhaps a third of the class might drop out, which from my immediate perspective would be a good thing. But I want a good reference from this job, so that my next teaching position, if I must, might be someplace where the largest road in town is not referred to as "the bypass."
Later I related the incident to another visiting instructor. He gave me a sympathetic look and said, "Try teaching 'Don Quixote' sometime. They don't even know what Spain is. They think it's part of Mexico."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
May 2, 1986
The last week of classes. Just in time: the snow melted last week, and this week a girl said I should "watch out for muskeedas." Little blood-suckers. I know just how they feel.
May 18, 1986
On my right: a pile of final exams ready for grading. On my left: a bottle of Valium. I must do all of one, or all of the other.
I choose the exams. If I commit suicide now, I'd never get to play my piece for Mrs. Tanizaki. The black lacquered furniture; the imposing instrument; the severity of her discipline. How I long to be back under her commanding gaze.
June 29, 1986
Since being released from stalag 12 a few weeks ago, I've been tempted by the devil. Every day I get another idea... for a movie. Of course, there have been many great American writers who sacrificed their Talent on the altar of Hollywood; I could become the first South African writer to do so. The infamy appeals, but not the mental picture I have of Southern California. I did a workshop there once, and they served wine in a box. At least at Napa they have wine in actual bottles.
I once stole an empty wine bottle from a faculty reception and spirited it away to my cell for possible use in an escape attempt. But when they cleaned my office, they threw it out. A few days later the department chairman had a little talk with me in which he discretely mentioned that all faculty, even visiting faculty like me, had medical benefits that entitled them to all sorts of treatment, including, ahem, a substance abuse clinic. "I don't abuse any substances," I told him in a cold voice, "unless you count white-out."
Here are my movie ideas.
July 26, 1986
Writing workshop in Washington state. Though almost all the students show no talent and little skill, I do my best. I treat their work respectfully and try to help them see the good and bad points and how the latter might be improved. "Improved" being only a relative concept.
The only exception is a man who is a sixth grade teacher in Fresno. He has written a rather polished novel about John Tyler, the tenth president of the U.S. He's worked on it for eleven years, and it shows. Unfortunately, he doesn't want to talk about craft. He wants to talk about publishing; he wants to get an agent.
Can't stand ambition.
August 1, 1986
Napa Valley workshop again. Many stories written in second person, imitating Jay McInerney, complete with drug use, lost jobs, casual sex. But because this is California, jobs were lost from non-profit groups, not Wall Street firms. Loses something in the translation.
August 9, 1986
Squaw Valley workshop again. Many stories written in arch, knowing voice, imitating Don DeLillo, complete with satire of large institutions (one is set in the FBI), orthogonal conversations, casual sex. What is convincing in DeLillo's books is utterly unconvincing in the hands of these amateurs. Difference: they have no Talent.
August 27, 1986
Piano lessons with Mrs. Tanizaki resume. As soon as I stepped into her cool hardwood living room, I relaxed. Odd, since she spends at least half the lesson scolding me. I realized afterward that the relaxed feeling lasts all through, and is even enhanced by, the scolding. It's simply that with Mrs. Tanizaki, I know my place.
My daughter is five years old. I would give anything for her to look up to me the way I look up to my piano teacher.
October 19, 1986
Learned I received a Guggenheim for next year, so I won't have to teach, except for a few summer workshops.
In retrospect, I actually enjoy some things about summer workshops: talking to other Writers (that is, the other faculty), and drinking the good wine of the sponsors at the VIP party. Drink, smile, nod; don't be drawn into a conversation, because one often finds out things about the other person one doesn't really want to know. Such as the time at one workshop when I found out the wealthy benefactor, who had not twenty minutes before given a speech extolling art and the brotherhood of man, was a rabid homophobe who thinks gay men's tongues and lips should be severed so they would never be able to kiss each other again. I was much happier before he offered that opinion, though it has, at least, a frisson of brutality.
I drank more after that, and that night I dreamt that the wealthy benefactor had made a bowel movement in my hotel room's toilet.
I go for my first lesson with Mrs. Tanizaki. She lives and teaches in a small bungalow in Ross, an affluent, leafy town in Marin County. It is one of the few places where oaks and maples grow in profusion, so that the autumn actually looks like autumn.
As I walked up the sidewalk to her front door, I noticed the path had been swept that morning. There were a few leaves fallen on the path, as if they had been scattered by a human hand.
I rang the doorbell and waited. Across the street, humble Mexican gardeners raked the leaves that drifted down.
When the door opened, I saw a small, neat woman in late middle age. Her salt-and-pepper hair was arranged in a no-nonsense style, and she wore simple black glasses. "Yes?" she said, not smiling.
"I'm Mrs. Freed," I said. "I've come for my piano lesson."
Mrs. Tanizaki looked me up and down with what I came to fear as her most calculating gaze. She did not move to let me in, but only looked at me, as if evaluating me before I had even touched the keyboard.
"I hope I haven't come on the wrong day," I said.
She did not answer. The thought occurred to me that I might be speaking with the piano teacher's mother or housekeeper. "Are you Mrs. Tanizaki, the piano teacher?"
Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "Of course." She still did not let me in.
I started to feel uncomfortable. "We did say eleven o'clock, didn't we?"
"How many leaves are on the sidewalk?" she shouted. "Don't turn around! How many leaves?!"
"I-- I don't know," I gasped.
She slammed the door in my face.
October 23, 1985
After enduring numerous trials more suitable for entry into a zen temple, I finally had my first piano lesson today -- in a way.
When I sat down at the keyboard I asked, "Would you like to hear the piece you asked me to prepare?" I readied my hands over the keys.
Her eyes flashed with anger. "Never touch the keyboard until I give you permission," she shouted. "Now stand up!"
The next forty minutes were devoted to the proper techniques of approaching a piano and sitting at it. When I had finally managed to do it satisfactorily, I sat with my hands in my lap, waiting for her next word.
"Good," she said in a low voice. "You are learning."
"May I play my piece?" I asked. My own voice sounded high-pitched, like a child's.
"Time is up for today," she replied.
November 14, 1985
Money problems at home are forcing me to take a teaching position for the spring at a girls' college in Wisconsin. At least I will be able to finish the editing process for my novel. The publisher can send the galleys to me at the college.
My piano lessons are proceeding at a glacial pace. I have not yet played the piece Mrs. Tanizaki asked me to prepare in order to show her my level of skill. But I continue to practice it every day, and by sheer dint of practice the piece itself is getting better day by day. Meanwhile the lessons are concerned with issues of posture, focus and attitude. I have gotten so far as to play a C chord. After eight lessons, I guess it's the best C chord I've ever played.
December 23, 1985
I had to waste time this week preparing syllabi for the classes at the girl's college. My own high standards war with my revulsion at grading papers, so while I want the girls to read Henry James and Herman Melville, I can't bear to see these great works dissected by a bunch of pouting, preening, post-pubescent pipsqueaks. So I fell back on Hawthorne and Twain. But I'll be damned if I let them read Huckleberry Finn. It'll be "Innocents Abroad" for the little cows.
Putting these together was like building a cage for myself, bar by bar. In bad dreams I see their dull faces, and I scream, but no sound comes out.
January 5, 1986
To Fiji and Tahiti, briefly; I should be able to get at least three travel pieces out of the trip, at three thousand per. That'll help tide us over the summer.
On the beach in Tahiti I considered taking a stroll and never returning. For a moment I indulged a fantasy of natives finding my tanned, trim body covered with forest ants, and the broken-hearted obituary in the New York Review. Then I went back and took a shower and packed for the trip back to the States, and then Wisconsin.
February 3, 1986
I have been in this Midwestern capital twenty-one days, of which it has snowed seventeen. The walls of snow on either side of the paths across the prison camp, I mean college, grow higher and higher. When I have to venture out, I must take precautions for both frostbite and (on the clear days) snow blindness.
My cellmate is a longtime inmate here at stalag 12, and is regarded as a trusty. He even has a key to the copy machine. But when I asked to use the copier, he laughed and spewed a stream of gulag-inflected abuse, of which I could only understand the words "tenure" and "vice-chairman."
February 24, 1986
When I entered the classroom today, burdened with my usual sheaf of substandard student papers covered with red marks, I heard one corn-fed girl whining to another, "It's soooo boooooor - ing." She had her finger in "Fanshawe," one of the Hawthorne books I, in my munificence, let the girls read instead of "Omoo" or "Moby Dick."
I froze the class with a glance. "Speaking of boring," I hissed, "let me read you a thing or two," and then I read at random from the papers I had just slogged my way through. A paragraph from this one, a paragraph from that one. After a few paragraphs one of the more spirited girls spoke up.
"But Mrs. Freed," she said in an American drawl, "We want to get better, we really do. Teach us about theme, teach us about point of view."
"Such things are child's play," I replied. "You should have learnt them in junior high. We're here for higher things. What is Hawthorne's perspective on class in America at the time he was writing? How does his use of characterization in the portrayal of Fanshawe and Ellen illuminate the position of women in early American society? What does his title character's formal approach to scholarship suggest about Hawthorne's own education? Well?"
In the silence that followed, I thought of Mrs. Tanizaki, and of spending a whole 90-minute class teaching these slovenly Americans how to sit at their desks. They'd complain, and perhaps a third of the class might drop out, which from my immediate perspective would be a good thing. But I want a good reference from this job, so that my next teaching position, if I must, might be someplace where the largest road in town is not referred to as "the bypass."
Later I related the incident to another visiting instructor. He gave me a sympathetic look and said, "Try teaching 'Don Quixote' sometime. They don't even know what Spain is. They think it's part of Mexico."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
May 2, 1986
The last week of classes. Just in time: the snow melted last week, and this week a girl said I should "watch out for muskeedas." Little blood-suckers. I know just how they feel.
May 18, 1986
On my right: a pile of final exams ready for grading. On my left: a bottle of Valium. I must do all of one, or all of the other.
I choose the exams. If I commit suicide now, I'd never get to play my piece for Mrs. Tanizaki. The black lacquered furniture; the imposing instrument; the severity of her discipline. How I long to be back under her commanding gaze.
June 29, 1986
Since being released from stalag 12 a few weeks ago, I've been tempted by the devil. Every day I get another idea... for a movie. Of course, there have been many great American writers who sacrificed their Talent on the altar of Hollywood; I could become the first South African writer to do so. The infamy appeals, but not the mental picture I have of Southern California. I did a workshop there once, and they served wine in a box. At least at Napa they have wine in actual bottles.
I once stole an empty wine bottle from a faculty reception and spirited it away to my cell for possible use in an escape attempt. But when they cleaned my office, they threw it out. A few days later the department chairman had a little talk with me in which he discretely mentioned that all faculty, even visiting faculty like me, had medical benefits that entitled them to all sorts of treatment, including, ahem, a substance abuse clinic. "I don't abuse any substances," I told him in a cold voice, "unless you count white-out."
Here are my movie ideas.
In the Holes of Academe -- A talented novelist is forced to teach second-rate books to third-rate students. When she uncovers a long-lost portal to another world, she realizes the inert students are actually aliens bent on conquering Earth. Now she must choose between her sinecure and the fate of humanity.
Learning to Play -- An icy, withdrawn piano teacher with high standards and uncompromising musicianship comes down off her pedestal when a shy and tender-hearted adult student needs more than music lessons.
Hold Your Head High -- Depressed at her students' failure to grasp the fundamentals of writing and appreciating literature, a Creative Writing professor bravely quits the business, moves to Tahiti, and nurtures young, appreciative native poets.
Ten Little Freshmen -- A maniacal professor eliminates the members of her seminar one by one. Gene Tierney stars.
July 26, 1986
Writing workshop in Washington state. Though almost all the students show no talent and little skill, I do my best. I treat their work respectfully and try to help them see the good and bad points and how the latter might be improved. "Improved" being only a relative concept.
The only exception is a man who is a sixth grade teacher in Fresno. He has written a rather polished novel about John Tyler, the tenth president of the U.S. He's worked on it for eleven years, and it shows. Unfortunately, he doesn't want to talk about craft. He wants to talk about publishing; he wants to get an agent.
Can't stand ambition.
August 1, 1986
Napa Valley workshop again. Many stories written in second person, imitating Jay McInerney, complete with drug use, lost jobs, casual sex. But because this is California, jobs were lost from non-profit groups, not Wall Street firms. Loses something in the translation.
August 9, 1986
Squaw Valley workshop again. Many stories written in arch, knowing voice, imitating Don DeLillo, complete with satire of large institutions (one is set in the FBI), orthogonal conversations, casual sex. What is convincing in DeLillo's books is utterly unconvincing in the hands of these amateurs. Difference: they have no Talent.
August 27, 1986
Piano lessons with Mrs. Tanizaki resume. As soon as I stepped into her cool hardwood living room, I relaxed. Odd, since she spends at least half the lesson scolding me. I realized afterward that the relaxed feeling lasts all through, and is even enhanced by, the scolding. It's simply that with Mrs. Tanizaki, I know my place.
My daughter is five years old. I would give anything for her to look up to me the way I look up to my piano teacher.
October 19, 1986
Learned I received a Guggenheim for next year, so I won't have to teach, except for a few summer workshops.
In retrospect, I actually enjoy some things about summer workshops: talking to other Writers (that is, the other faculty), and drinking the good wine of the sponsors at the VIP party. Drink, smile, nod; don't be drawn into a conversation, because one often finds out things about the other person one doesn't really want to know. Such as the time at one workshop when I found out the wealthy benefactor, who had not twenty minutes before given a speech extolling art and the brotherhood of man, was a rabid homophobe who thinks gay men's tongues and lips should be severed so they would never be able to kiss each other again. I was much happier before he offered that opinion, though it has, at least, a frisson of brutality.
I drank more after that, and that night I dreamt that the wealthy benefactor had made a bowel movement in my hotel room's toilet.
