IOWAN WRITING STUDENTS LOVE AND RESPECT MR. FRANK CONROY

Eyeshot.net has published some letters to the late Iowa Writers Workshop Director Frank Conroy from his students. Here is one.

When my first story was up for workshop, Frank told me, in his sort of rascally, indignant way, that I was drunk on the English language. “Pour yourself another glass of champagne!” he crowed, tossing my story down on the table with a dramatic flourish. I don’t think I remember much else from that afternoon, just the unutterable humiliation of hearing my worst, most indulgent and convoluted sentences read aloud. Over the course of the hour, I sank lower and lower in my seat, shuddering as Frank lilted his way through a bevy of saccharine, overwrought phrases (crammed with words I once considered superlative—vespertine! crenellation!—words which now sounded unbelievably sloppy and inelegant). I was dismayed, inconsolable. Not because he was so cutting, but because he was so right. How could I have been so transparent? So publicly intoxicated? Here I was, at the most sophisticated school of writing in America, and I’d been exposed as nothing more than a blithering literary lush! I lay prostrate in bed for about a week afterwards, refusing to stir for even a round of beers at the Foxhead. Then, one morning, I snapped out of it. I threw off the covers, sat down at my desk, and started writing. The well of melancholia and self-pity had dried up, and in its place was nothing more than a fervent, consuming desire to work. I never wanted so much to be a better writer.

More enthusastic appreciations from young Iowans here.