A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop

"I'll Make Your Career"

VANCE BOURJAILY Dear Hualing If I may, I'd like to put my words about Paul and the workshop in the form of this letter to you. This will let me ramble, freeassociate , and generally commit disorganization. If I were to try to put my recollections of twenty-two years at Iowa in any more formal way, it would be a major and lengthy effort, which is neither what you want nor what I could supply accurately. The beginning of my association is clear, though. Paul asked me to come out from New York (to the place at Stone City) to interview for a visiting lectureship and, probably, make some sort of appearance before the students in Iowa City. It's the Stone City visit that I remember - the ease with which Paul put me at ease, the warmth of his and Mary's hospitality, and, oddly enough, the striking affection and concern he had for his two daughters. That third element so strongly set the tone of my visit that I went off feeling that not only had I met an important, innovative educator and leader, but also that I'd met an extraordinary family man. The affection and concern must carryover to his students , I supposed, and I supposed right, embattled though he was with some of his faculty colleagues. But nobody who could raise money for Iowa as Paul could would lose that kind of battle. My having been asked out to Iowa was due to the working of an old-boy network of former contributors to Discovery, a magazine I edited. Herb Gold had preceded me in 1955-56 by two years, Harvey Swados by one on Herb's recommendation , and then me on Harvey's (we were, in turn, replacing Marguerite Young). Paul knew my stuff; he'd reviewed me in the New Republic. When it came my turn to recommend, the network became coeducational (coeducationalist?) since my pick was Hortense Calisher . And, of course, I stayed on myself that second year (195859 ). As for Hortense, she met and married Curt Harnack-to mention something you already know, but other readers may notwho was then, if I'm not mistaken, still a graduate student. Mistaken is something I'm quite likely to be, here and there, like all gossips. One thing I'm sure I'm not mistaken about is that I appropriated the honor of designating the Iowa-old-school tie, a navy blue number from Brooks Brothers, embroidered with small, gold pigs. Mark Strand had one, and I recall trading one with John Cheever, much later on, for a similar tie with something else embroidered on it, though I can't recall what. Bulls? Trout? Part of my eagerness to spend a second year in Iowa City had to do with the close friends I made there. The students, particularly those who were war veterans, were close to my own age and we had experiences in common. The first who comes to mind is the late Tom Williams, 1970S National Book Award winner. Because of Tom's strength of character, engaging personality, and the fact that he'd already published a novel before arriving at Iowa, he was pretty much the student leader. Sometimes I think of one of the first things Tom told me about part of Paul's legend, something the students enjoyed discussing: "Did you know that Paul Engle is the only man who ever appeared on the Arthur Godfrey show and took Godfrey?" That is, dominated the other man's show by presence, charm, and quickness of wit. Tom wasn't the only person Paul had recruited, when I started out, who had reached publication status. (I'm limiting myself to writers of fiction, students and faculty, since there are poets who can tell that part of the story - or spread that part of the gossip better than I.) There was also Richard Kim, though I'm ashamed to say I don't remember whether he was Korean or Japanese, whose first novel was published as, I think, The Martyred. He was a quiet, V A N C E B 0 U R J A I L Y 53 attractive, diffident fellow, who seldom spoke up in class. Class was held in the temporary, wartime-built steel sheds north of the union, and that first year we all met together once a week, poets, fiction writers, and...