THOMAS M. KENEALLY Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing INTERVIEWER: Samuel C
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INTERVIEWEE: THOMAS M. KENEALLY Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing INTERVIEWER: Samuel c. McCulloch Emeritus Professor of History UCI Historian DATE: April 8, 1994 SM: This is an interview with Professor Tom Keneally, a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, on Friday, April 8, [1994], in HOB-360. The oral history program that I say there that I'll tell you about is very simple. They gave me enough money to interview finally 107-you're the 108th person-and this is for the oral history of UCI, and it involves the chancellors, the president of the university, President Kerr and, oh, let me think, professors, students, the Irvine Company president, the head of the local paper here, and so on. So we got a lot of coverage for my history of UCI. And we' re very happy, Tom, that you' re on our faculty and doing so well. The first question is: Did the fall quarter of '85, when I met you first, you were, I know, quite impressed, you told me at the dinner, our dinner party, that you liked the students. Now, did that sort of persuade you to come back here? TK: Yes, I'll tell you, I can say exactly what I liked about UCI. Oakley Hall and Donald Heiney, the novelist Macdonald Harris, established a very professional attitude amongst the MFA students, which led to a lot of them being published. And I knew that if ever I was to work in a writing program, I would KENEALLY 2 be happiest in one which laid a considerable stress upon excellence and publication. Or at least there's the freedom to fail, to try hard and to fail. This is something that John Calvin Batchelor, a novelist from New York who's just recently been in the program, said to his writing students in the Graduate Writing Program: "This is your chance to fail." SM: (chuckling) Also the chance to succeed. TK: And the chance, a priori the chance to succeed. And so that atmosphere in the UCI Writing Program made you feel that you were doing good work. And the publishing record continues, because only two days ago the first of the 1992 graduates indicated to me that his novel had been accepted by a small press. Now, a small press is fine. It's the future a lot of novelists may have to take, given that it's so hard to convince the mainstream publishers to accept first novels; albeit many of them are accepting UCI first novels now. SM: You might be interested about what happens to this tape. The oral history law is that you and I own this tape. But I sign it over, and you sign it over-there's a legal form-and it goes over to our archives. And assuming that you don 't say anything here that's blasphemous or libelous • . Although blasphemous is all right, but libelous, why then you hold it back. And only one professor in all my 107 people have held his back. He said he libeled his dean. I said, "Really, you didn't. Please, what you said is important to me, and I want it." (chuckling) KENEALLY 3 TK: Yes, for the history. SM: Yes. Well, but I wondered, you must have had a very good impression, though, in the fall quarter of 1985 when you were here. TK: Yes. SM: And you went on to New York University, and I don't know how you compared these. I've asked that in question three. TK: Yes. Well, New York University has a very fine Creative Writing Department. It was until recently administered by Sharon Olds, who's an internationally-known poet, who recently appeared, apparently, at the Adelaide Festival in Australia and charmed everyone both with her personality and with her poetry. But also at NYU was the great E.L. Doctorow, author of Ragtime and Billy Bathgate and the Book of Daniel . SM: You know he taught with us a year, 1969. TK: Oh, good. SM: We used to have one-year appointments, and X.J. Kennedy was the first, and a fellow by the name of Galway Kinnell, who's. a poet. TK: I know Galway, yes. Well, again, he's at NYU. Galway teaches at NYU. SM: Oh, he's good. He's a good teacher. TK: So NYU has an incomparable faculty. Now, the problem is that it can't really provide the level of support that this university does to graduate writers through the TA-ships. And, of course, it has many more classes. I taught a class of KENEALLY 4 seventeen, eighteen graduate writers, and there were two or three other classes of, say, fifteen or twelve running at the same time just in fiction. So it has probably four or five times the number of fiction writers as we do at UCI. But the secret here is that there is some support for them through TA ships, so it is possible for them to become full-time writers. The students at NYU were good, but you had a sense that it was unrealistic that any of them would be able to give full-time attention to their writing. Some of them were able to; others had full-time jobs. Some were lawyers, others were paralegals, others were legal secretaries, others were working counselors, some were journalists. In other words, the NYU system was more like an extension writing class. From it came a number of published writers, and it was at NYU I went there as a Visiting Professor, so-called, in 1988 for the Australian bicentennial. And we got on so well that I stayed on for two and a bit years, commuting between there and Australia, you know, always going back to Australia in the New York summer, which is a good time to get out of New York. SM: Yes, you bet. TK: But then after a couple of years, I simply stayed on in New York without being associated with NYU. NYU and UCI both offered me jobs, which was very flattering; but they didn't have the resources that UCI has, which is interesting given that UCI and the whole University of California system are presently under great straightening. But I feel that, to an KENEALLY 5 extent, the students are in uproar about the raising of fees, tuition, and SM: Yes, tuition fees. TK: But I think still, on the research level, the university is putting a lot of priority into research and having people here who produce new, novel-if you'll excuse the pun-documents. And so altogether I like New York University, both for its faculty, which is quite stellar in many cases, and for the fact that you teach near Washington Square, and there's probably a deli or a bar or a calzone shop on the lower floor, which is not quite what you have at UCI. But I have to say that, in terms of performance, the UCI students are better because they're given a bit of space in which they can perform. The great problem with writers of talent is commitment. The great problem with athletes is commitment, too. I mean, we all know that the people who run in the Olympics are not necessarily better than thousands of other people, but they are committed. And that's true with published writers. I've always found that the writers who've been published, both at NYU and here at UCI, are not necessarily the best in the class. They are often, however, the most motivated and the bravest because they're willing to embark on long journeys and not simply putter around in the small garden of the short story. Now, the short story is a great place to be if you're Grace Paley, if you're Raymond Carver, if you're Alice Monroe, KENEALLY 6 Katherine Mansfield, but for some people it's an excuse for dilettantism. It's amazing to me that the ultimate factor in the success of these young writers is temperament. For example, we have just had recently published here in California a work by a graduate of the UCI Program called Jervey Tervalon. Now, Jervey, you can tell, always wanted to be a professional writer. He's now got a second book contract, he's got a film option, he's done screenplays for Disney, and he graduated from this program only 1992. And so he's a mover. But he wasn't necessarily the best writer in the class. He may have been . I mean, performance is what counts. But there were brilliant writers in that class, of whom I fear nothing may be heard, because they're frightened to undertake the journey. It's a very scary journey, particularly before you take it. To start a novel is a bit like applying yourself to dying, you know: You can't imagine yourself making the journey, and the only way to make it is to do it. SM: Well, that's very interesting, and I'm glad to hear what you say about our students. TK: May I say that at the moment Judith Grossman, who is the present director, a very nice Englishwoman This is an historic . She's an American citizen. She's married to a great poet and academic [named] Alan Grossman, who is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. But it's very interesting that the Writing Program at the moment is, at . KENEALLY 7 least at the fiction end, in the hands of a woman who grew up in south London and an Australian.