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

Paul at Stone City

After a couple of Paul's arid Martinis, I relaxed and began to enjoy his sly style of quizzing his guests, his wry sense of humor, his shrewdness, his midwestern charm (never mind Oxford and Columbia , his travels, the breadth of his reading, the ever extending reach of his connections, he was unequivocally Iowan). He wanted me to teach modern literary criticism (the New Criticism) and courses in the European novel and poetry in translation. He thought that creative writers should be exposed not only to British and American writers but to Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Mann, Rilke, Gide, Baudelaire, Mallarme, and Lorca. The prospect of teaching courses in the broad areas of my own field instead of being centered in Spanish and of being connected to the Writers' Workshop was even more intoxicating than an Engle Martini. I was happy to accept the conspiracies of Guerard and Engle (with the collaboration of Maxwell) that put me somewhere I now wanted very much to be. My first actual workshop session was an eye-opener. I read carefully the stories the students had submitted and which were to be discussed in class. The faculty - Paul, Verlin Cassill, Hansford Martin, and I - met half an hour or so in advance of the class meeting. Paul asked for our opinions ofthe stories. Tyro that I was, and eager to demonstrate my critical acumen, I offered an extensive critique of the stories. Verlin and Hansford made a few cogent comments. We entered the classroom in a barracks by the river and sat in the front, facing the students. Paul opened the session. His comments consisted substantially of his version of the critique I had offered in the preclass meeting! I now understood why Cassill and Martin had said so little. They had a good deal to say to the class while I was left to scrounge for ideas. While I was pleased that Paul liked my criticism, I took care on future occasions to keep some of my gems for myself. Sometime in the fall of 1950, the English department decided that assistant professors could teach only one advanced or graduate course, and that the remainder of the course load should be at the freshman or sophomore level. At that time my schedule was precisely the reverse. I was teaching only one lower level course, The Greeks and the Bible; the rest of my teaching was at the upper or WAR R ENe A R R I E R 19 graduate level. These were the courses in modern literary criticism and European literature Paul wanted for his creative writers, and which he had specifically recruited me to teach. I was aware that there were conflicts between the "scholarly" members of the department ("the hill") and the writing program, but other than being ignored by "the hill" members, I had suffered no offense. The new rule was another matter. Paul saw the rule as an attack on his program, and on one of his faculty members, and mounted a blistering response. He made the case for his courses and pointed out that I was the only member of the department who was qualified to teach European literature. He then went on to note that I had just published a book of translations, had a novel accepted for publication, and was reading a paper at the December meeting of the MLA. Which other department members could claim an equal record of a year's productivity? I wanted to crawl into the book rack below my seat. The department was ultimately persuaded to make an exception for workshop faculty. It had become clear to me that Paul would defend his programs with whatever weapons might be required. Faculty generally were aware that President Hancher supported Paul and his workshop. It was, after all, putting Iowa on at least one kind of national map. And so the courses survived; and I, of necessity, with them. Paul had ambitions for a literary review to be attached to the workshop. These were heydays of the Kenyon Review, the Southern Review, the Hudson Review, the Sewanee Review, edited often by the then ascendant Southern Agrarians, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, etc., and full of New Critical articles, poems, and stories by those same writers and their disciples. Moving in that direction, Paul recruited Ray B. West, Jr., and, of course, his major asset, the Western Review. Paul promised support for the magazine, which, while hardly of the same caliber, might provide at least...