FOER’S MENTOR, JOYCE CAROL OATES, IS AN INSPIRATION IN HIS TEACHING. IN P R creative writing P H Wunderkind in O T O © A D A I M B E R R the Classroom Y N NOVELIST JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER DISCUSSES FICTION—AND HOW TO TEACH IT by Catherine Fata / CAS ’09 onathan Safran Foer With a second novel under his who is now 32 and, dressed in went from recep - belt ( Extremely Loud and Incredibly jeans and sporting a close-cropped T tionist to best-sell - Close , Mariner Books) and a work haircut, can easily pass for one of J ing and critically of nonfiction due out next year, his students. acclaimed author Foer has joined the faculty at NYU with the 2002 publication of his as a professor in the Graduate Cre - AS A TEACHER YOU MUST BE debut novel, Everything Is Illumi - ative Writing Program. And it REMINDED OF HOW MUCH nated (Harper Perennial), when he turns out that his pedagogical phi - EFFECT ONE OF YOUR was just 25 years old. Praised by losophy is as unorthodox as his TEACHERS—JOYCE CAROL the likes of Francine Prose and literary style. David Grumblatt, an OATES, WHOSE CLASS YOU John Updike and winner of the MFA candidate, recalls assign - TOOK AS AN UNDERGRAD AT Guardian First Book Award, the ments as varied as oral storytelling, PRINCETON—HAD ON YOU. National Jewish Book Award, and euology writing, and singing I would not have become a writer the New York Public karaoke. “[Foer’s class] was much if I hadn’t met her. She encour - Library Young Lions more focused on the process of aged me when there was very Fiction Award, the nov - writing, rather than the creation little to encourage. Really. I el announced the arrival of a finished piece,” Grumblatt didn’t know I wanted to be a of a brazen new talent says. “We were encouraged to ex - writer. I didn’t think that I was to be reckoned with. periment, to be playful, and to particularly talented. I wasn’t pro - The responses from crit - question how we approached our ducing work that was great. But ics were polarizing— own writing.” she felt like she saw something everything from hailing During his first semester on that was worth, you know, foster - him as a genius to call - campus last fall, NYU Alumni ing. And one lesson she helped ing his work gimmicky. Magazine caught up with Foer, me learn is that at that age, most people are very impressionable. back. And sometimes things have biblio file A few kind words or a few unkind to fall apart in order to come back words can really send somebody together in a way that’s good. But PET FOOD POLITICS: THE In her latest book, nutritionist Mar - into a different orbit. And she did it’s hard. And not only does each CHIHUAHUA IN THE COAL MINE ion Nestle chronicles how what that for me. writer face these problems differ - (UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA started with a few telephone calls ently, but each project presents PRESS) about sick cats snowballed into the HO W CAN WRITIN G BE TAUGHT? different problems. MARION NESTLE largest food recall in American his - What people are born with, more PAULETTE GODDARD tory. Using official U.S. govern - than any talent, is stories: where DOES WHAT YOU READ INFLU - PROFESSOR OF NUTRITION, ment documents, interviews with their families come from, how ENCE WHAT YOU WRITE? FOOD STUDIES, AND doctors and researchers, and In - they talked around the dinner Everything influences what PUBLIC HEALTH ternet blog chatter, the best-sell - table, or didn’t talk, the conflict of one writes—everything interest - STEINHARDT ing author tracks contaminated their childhoods, things like that. ing does. I’m rereading a book, ingredients from China to Cana - In terms of my approach, it’s not which is maybe my favorite da’s Menu Foods company pet to perfect pieces of writing but of all books. It’s called Life? or food—and eventually into barnyard rather to encourage students to Theater? by a woman named feed and the human food chain. think about writing in ways they Charlotte Salomon. I only know Though investigations by the FDA might not have before.… There’s about it because I happened to and USDA eventually uncovered a plenty of time to perfect your walk into a museum in Amster - lapse in oversight, the episode is a craft, whereas when you’re a stu - dam where I saw it. It’s halfway cautionary tale about the food- dent, it’s a good time to have your between paintings and a book— safety hazards of globalization. As basic notions of writing changed. just a total work of art. Every Nestle notes, “Even our most skep - So a lot of my assignments test the time I open it, it inspires me tical colleagues could see that pet boundaries of fiction. but also totally debilitates me be - foods were the proverbial canary— cause it’s so good. in this instance, the Chihuahua—in WHAT’S YOUR WRITING the coal mine.” REGIMEN? BOTH OF YOUR NOVELS ARE —Kevin Fallon That’s like saying, “What’s your STORIES FROM DIFFERENT regimen for getting out of a burn - TIME PERIODS INTERTWINED ing building?” I mean, stop, drop, INTO ONE. IS THERE A and roll is generally a good idea. REASON YOU CHOSE TO D O OUT OF THE BLUE: A HISTORY Steve Marshburn Sr. sat at his Be close to the floor is generally a THEM THIS WAY? OF LIGHTNING: SCIENCE, bank-teller window clutching a good idea. Don’t breathe smoke. Sometimes there’s no reason for SUPERSTITION, AND AMAZING metal date stamp when a lightning Don’t catch fire. things in writing. That’s what’s STORIES OF SURVIVAL bolt suddenly zapped the bank’s Writing is a kind of emergency, nice about writing, nice about art. (DELACORTE PRESS) drive-up window microphone, it’s kind of a horrible thing to It’s not responsible to reason in JOHN S. FRIEDMAN which, by chance, was pointed at have to write. But I think ulti - the same way that everything else GSAS ’74 his spine. “It felt as if someone had mately each person finds his own in life is. hit me with a baseball bat,” Marsh - way or her own way out of it. My burn tells John S. Friedman in Out regimen has changed a lot since I YOUR BOOKS HAVE BEEN of the Blue . Tracing the history of started. And I don’t really even HIGHLY PRAISED, BUT ALSO lightning through Greek mytholo - have one now. I like trying to HARSHLY CRITICIZED. WHAT IS gy, scientific study, and even the start in the morning, and I like THAT LIKE? Harry Potter series, Friedman, a trying to spend three or four hours It was just, like, a matter of fact. contributor to The Nation and an a day doing it, but it doesn’t al - It didn’t hurt my feelings or any - Oscar-winning documentary film - ways happen like that. thing like that. I’d rather people maker, unearths some of the mys - like what I do than dislike what tery surrounding this natural AND WHEN IT’S A STRUGGLE? I do. But as long as people are phenomenon. Most gripping are It’s really always a struggle. And I having very strong reactions, the stories of survivors, such as don’t say that flippantly. It really then I’m happy. Because what I Marshburn and a mountaineer is always a struggle. And how do don’t want someone to say is, group struck while climbing the I work through it? Sometimes I “It was a nice book.” I want some - Tetons in 2003, which underline just work through it. Sometimes I one to say that I really connected the fragility of human life and how— just put it down and go away and with it or I really hated it. And I out of the blue—it can be ripped come back. Sometimes I have to would prefer the former, but I from our grasp. put it down for a really long time, would take the latter over a luke - —Jackie Risser like weeks or months, and come warm response. NYU / SPRING 2009 / 29 fiction WHA T CAME BEFORE FOLLOWING AN ACCLAIMED MEMOIR AND FILM ADAPTATION, JAMES MCBRIDE PENS A HARRIET TUBMAN – INSPIRED SLAVE NARRATIVE by Adelle Waldman or James McBride, his childhood in Brooklyn as an old-fashioned one of 12 black siblings raised aesthetic is no mere by his white, widowed, Jewish F decoration. The mother. He followed that up vintage typewriter with the 2001 novel Miracle that sits on his desk could well at St. Anna (Riverhead), made into be the one on which Ralph Elli - last fall’s film by Spike Lee (TSOA son toiled away in a Harlem base - ’82, HON ’98). The story, which ment in the early 1950s, but it’s the author himself adapted as a where McBride works, often after screenplay, follows a small group penning a first draft in longhand. of soldiers from the U.S. Army’s The typewriter—like the man all-black division during World himself, who is often dressed in War II who are stranded behind suit, tie, and fedora—may seem enemy lines in a remote Italian vil - anachronistic in the sleek, new of - lage and become objects of fasci - “The minute you start to judge people as a creative writer, you are dead creatively.” fice at 20 Cooper Square, where nation to the townspeople.