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Summary
Summary
Paul West, prolific novelist and writer of renown, is also a beloved and famous writing teacher. In Master Class , West re-creates his last writing seminar, filled with wonderful conversation, deep insight into the creative spirit, and terrific tips for good writing.
Fifteen students-eager, talented, some new, and some old friends- come together twice a week to talk about great works, to discuss each others' writing, and to open their minds and hearts to the joy, peril, and discipline of striving to write good literature.
West, who is dedicated to both great writing and to his students, has class members sleep with a page of Proust under their pillows. Then they begin-writing, talking, analyzing, and critiquing. Each class and each chapter of Master Class offers a heady mix of detailed advice and creative philosophy.
Only a few fortunate students were accepted into this seminar. Now readers and writers all over the world can sit with master teacher Paul West, learning not only what makes a great opening sentence, but also how to expand their minds and imaginations.
Author Notes
Paul West was born in Eckington, Derbyshire, England on February 23, 1930. He received a degree in English with first-class honors at the University of Birmingham and a master's degree from Columbia University. He did his compulsory military service with the Royal Air Force and then took a teaching post in English literature at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada. He began teaching at Pennsylvania State University in 1963 and retired from there in 1995.
He wrote numerous novels including Alley Jaggers, Bela Lugosi's White Christmas, Tenement of Clay, The Rat Man of Paris, Terrestrials, Lord Byron's Doctor, Sporting with Amaryllis, The Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Ripper, Love's Mansion, Red in Tooth and Claw, The Ice Lens, and The Invisible Riviera. He also wrote several memoirs including Words for a Deaf Daughter, Out of My Depths: A Swimmer in the Universe, A Stroke of Genius: Illness and Self-Discovery, My Mother's Music, My Father's War, The Shadow Factory, and Oxford Days. He died from pneumonia on October 18, 2015 at the age of 85.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"I am a species of Nero, good at his trade, but fiddling while Literature burns and the amount of it undertaken by successive generations becomes smaller and smaller." So says renowned novelist (The Dry Danube, etc.) and revered fiction teacher West as he reflects upon his efforts to inspire 15 students selected for a graduate seminar in fiction writing at an undisclosed university. Master Class is a combination of West's descriptions and transcriptions of their class meetings. Two tendencies play off of each other here: while many of the students are already established writers, West speaks as if they might be approaching English for the first time ("English... is full of invisible words such as he and it and and and is the American vice, poor substitute for lyrical deployment over a full skein of grammar"); on the other hand, West also assumes an immense knowledge of world literature, philosophy and music. In each chapter, West considers a student's original work, often riffing brilliantly upon his/her literary influences, pop culture in America (such as Blue Velvet and Alien) and the very nature of writing itself. Though he speaks idealistically about the writing process, West nonetheless shrewdly assesses each student's publishing potential, though usually only to himself (e.g., "This verbal fecundity... promises Dimitri a difficult publishing career"). One's head may be reeling by the end of this work from the sheer force of West's brain power, the range and rapidity of his literary references, and the cleverness of his spontaneous pedagogical metaphors. But reading this work is almost like participating in the seminar, without actually having to share one's own writing with the class and without the vulnerability that that necessarily entails. (Aug.) Forecast: This is a natural anywhere there is a university writing program. But all aspiring writers will want to read it, if the book gets the review attention it deserves. Harcourt's Harvest imprint will promoting the reprint of West's acclaimed Secret Lives of Words along with Master Class. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In this account of what he says will be his last semester teaching, prolific novelist West (The Dry Danube, 2000, etc.) cajoles and exhorts 15 graduate writing students, with equal parts wisdom and pretension. Although he claims to have barked at a former student, I would rather lie naked in a plowed field, under an incontinent horse, than read this piece again, West assumes in this semester the guise of an avuncular, if occasionally cranky, mentor. Outside the classroom walls, in the world of publishing, danger lurks, he warns: editors with MBAs but scant appreciation for literature, an inattentive mass readership, and other writers tempted to play it safe with style. Yet they must stay true to their gifts: You were not brought into this spotty world to pass muster; you were created so as to stand out in your creative difference. He constantly invokes exemplars, notably Joyce, Beckett, and Proust (even urging that students sleep with a page of this Lavender Everest under their pillows). Before and during critiques, he dispenses pithy advice on style, recommending experimentation in every sentence and truncated exchanges between characters, so that the reader feels a certain amount of unexpended attentive energy that must be transferred to the next dialogue. Fascinated by voice in writing, West unfortunately gives the impression of being most enthralled by his own. His classroom monologues, a Niagara of recondite vocabulary like mystagogical and adumbration and noetic shrug, seem more designed to awe than to communicate, and sometimes succeed in doing neither. In addition, self-congratulation seeps freely into his private reflections, such as I am glorifying a gaggle of talents into a fairy circle of geniuses or I have bled a little potassium permanganate into the clear water of their souls. A sometimes inspiriting, often infuriating glimpse into how a veteran novelist molds a younger generation of fiction writers.
Booklist Review
West's erudite yet Rabelaisian pleasure in language and literature is sumptuously apparent in his splendid novels and works of nonfiction. Proof that he is as enthusiastic, brilliant, generous, and daring a teacher as he is a reader and a writer is found in this sparkling account of the last of his famous fiction seminars. Here is West, attired in soccer shorts and a button-down shirt, by turns jocular, exacting, and mystical, leading intense conversations with 15 sophisticated and talented students. The discussions range from the work of Proust, Beckett, Hemingway, and Robbe-Grillet to that of the students, who become vivid characters as they respond to West's incisive technical suggestions and philosophical observations. West also offers arrestingly sardonic commentary on what it takes to sustain the literary life (stamina, fortitude, guts), the state of publishing (grim), and the reading public's interest in art as opposed to entertainment (microscopic). But his overarching message is celebration of the imagination and the magic writers experience, a radiance West bestows upon his dazzled and inspired students and readers. Donna Seaman
Library Journal Review
The author of acclaimed literary novels like Life with Swan is also a committed writing teacher. Here he shares notes from a writing workshop that started with students putting a page of Proust under their pillows. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Remembrance of Things Proust | p. 1 |
| Bayeux, So Lofty | p. 1 |
| Page 422 | p. 5 |
| Robinson Caruso | p. 11 |
| Last Lisa's Letter | p. 16 |
| Brilliance Injured | p. 16 |
| Flare Path | p. 20 |
| Tsunami | p. 25 |
| Mark's Nursery | p. 30 |
| A Vapid Biker | p. 30 |
| The Bloody Horse | p. 35 |
| Bull | p. 40 |
| First Lisa's First Book | p. 44 |
| Dyes | p. 44 |
| Symbols | p. 50 |
| Aside | p. 54 |
| A Prosaics for Prose | p. 61 |
| The Page | p. 61 |
| Heroes | p. 66 |
| Rosebud | p. 70 |
| Every Sentence an Experiment | p. 74 |
| In Camera | p. 74 |
| Experiri | p. 78 |
| Talked Out | p. 84 |
| To Read | p. 87 |
| Anne of Cleves Leering | p. 93 |
| Sally's Run | p. 93 |
| p. 98 | |
| Futurity | p. 101 |
| Coney Island Whitefish | p. 103 |
| Adrift | p. 103 |
| Rapture | p. 107 |
| Julia | p. 113 |
| Mine Own Executioner | p. 118 |
| A Suit of Sables | p. 118 |
| Point of View | p. 124 |
| Sez Who? | p. 133 |
| The Uses of Words | p. 138 |
| Heraldry | p. 138 |
| Action | p. 143 |
| Djinns | p. 147 |
| Tom Browne's School Days | p. 152 |
| Bronzed | p. 152 |
| Pound Foolish | p. 157 |
| Parangs | p. 162 |
| Stephan's Quintet | p. 167 |
| Data | p. 167 |
| Bells | p. 171 |
| Details | p. 175 |
| Surds | p. 180 |
| Punk Ev | p. 186 |
| Trampling Out the Vintage | p. 190 |
| The High | p. 190 |
| Terrible Swift Sword | p. 194 |
| Paper Fugue | p. 198 |
| Christina's Goth | p. 207 |
| Vic Tin | p. 207 |
| Joe's Indent | p. 216 |
| His Nibbs | p. 216 |
| A Black Maria | p. 223 |
| Thou Swell | p. 223 |
| The Planck | p. 230 |
| Completeness of Hinterlands | p. 237 |
| Sistines | p. 237 |
| Epitomes | p. 243 |
| Chatter | p. 248 |
| Dramatis Personae | p. 255 |
