Still in Love: a novel
Michael Downing (Counterpoint, 2019)
Mark Sternum has it made, teaching creative writing at Hellman College. He has tenure, and teaches only two classes per semester. He's conscientious, though, going so far as to complete the assignment for each class, submitting it to be marked up by the Professor, his teaching partner. The Professor is a hard case, and a bit of a pedant. "When would the Professor want to discuss ideas for stories? Never. When would it be useful to disclose the autobiographical basis of a story? Never. How much time will we spend brainstorming and writing in class? None. 'I will never be interested in anything except every word you write.'"
Mark, on the other hand, is there to mother the students. It's his mailbox that is full of submitted work on Monday mornings, and whose office hours are a parade of students who need to discuss syntactical confusion, ideas for stories, and the feedback they've received from the Professor. He devises the assignments, does all the copying, and keeps track of the lucky twelve who are admitted to the class. On the whole, this arrangement satisfies Mark. He knows it isn't fashionable to admit how much he loves teaching, but he's exceedingly lucky to be at Hellman, where he can still enjoy it wholeheartedly.
Mark's romantic partner, Paul, is away in Italy for the spring semester of 2017. We met Paul previously in the delightful Perfect Agreement; they are still in the same awkward–or perfect–arrangement by which Mark keeps a too-small house in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and Paul keeps a too-small apartment overlooking the Cambridge Common. Hellman lies conveniently between the two, so Mark can retreat back and forth; his Saab mechanic is in Ipswich, but the Chinese food is better in Cambridge.
Still in Love hits the notes of traditional academic comedy, such as the tension between the tenured faculty, who get offices, and the contingent, who barely get desks. Will they vote to form a union? There's department politics: "[The department chair] had a damnably good memory and a thick file on everyone in the department to back her up when necessary. She had reluctantly agreed to be chair when she was first asked to take the five-year appointment. That was ten years ago." The other English faculty appear in quick sketches: "He was built like a broomstick, and he had long cultivated an image in the department as a misanthrope, which was his attempt to take credit for being disliked." Or sometimes little mysteries: "It's always hard to tell if he's sneaky or senile. Take your pick."
What I liked best about the book, though, is the course itself. We are in the position of the auditing students, who seat themselves on the deep window ledges around the classroom, while the enrolled students sit around the table. Some of the students need to go back to first principles, like what conjunctions are, and how to tell phrases from clauses. As for how to combine them, regard this little beauty: "When the dependent clause comes first, you need a comma. You need no comma when the independent clause comes first."
I know my way around prose, but writing fiction is an art so far beyond my knowledge as to appear magical. Downing is simultaneously describing effects and practicing them, especially in the assignments Mark completes. Seemingly impossible technical requirements - words of one syllable, a 125-word sentence - make the writers think hard about every word, and what it contributes to the reader's understanding. They may even, like Mark, come to love limitations, which give form and structure to the work. The Professor's dogmatism is as lovable as it is prickly: "Don't withhold facts to create mystery. That's manipulation, and readers will sense it. The real mysteries of life are not withheld facts. The real mysteries are simple and persistent questions. Why doesn't she love me? How could he say that?"
Just so, Downing has strewn the novel with mysteries to leave us with. Do Mark and Paul ever get to live together, and should they? Whither Hellman, the adjuncts' union, writing, teaching itself? Why read fiction? I'm a little closer to grasping that one.
Any Good Books,
February, 2021
Emailed 2/1/21
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