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WALTER CUMMINS, LITERARY EXPLORER: A GREAT WAY TO SPEND A LIFE
AN INTERVIEW BY THOMAS E. KENNEDY
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Walter Cummins has been
active on the American and international literary scene for more than 40
years. Since completing his MFA and PhD at Iowa—where he studied with Philip
Roth, inter alia, he has published well over 100 stories in various American
literary journals in addition to three story collections, two novels, and
having co-authored a book about the politics of television, a book of travel
essays and co-editing a book of essays by writers about how they finance their
lives while writing. Since 1983, he has also edited the equivalent of four
books a year as Editor-in-Chief and Editor-Emeritus of the esteemed university
journal, The Literary Review. Recently he was also one of the prime
movers in founding two on-line journals—Exploring Globalization and a
journal of international student writing published by Fairleigh Dickinson University, Sphere. He is very active on the enormous WebDelSol literary
website, co-editing two columns, but also with responsibility for The
Literary Review site content as well as for TLR's chapbook series.
An avid traveler, he is
profoundly involved with literature beyond the boundaries of the U.S., having commissioned many non-US issues of The Literary Review, showcasing contemporary
writing from France, Iran, Hong Kong, Scotland, Ireland, and many other lands.
He also edited a special issue of the journal which focused on Venice—presenting stories, essays and poems about that intriguing city. In this respect,
the column he co-authors on WebDelSol seems a good description of himself—a Literary
Explorer, the title of the collection of his travel essays, published in
2005 by Del Sol Press. In 2006, he published a study of television's effect on
our lives (Programming Our Lives) and in 2007, his third collection of
stories, Local Music (Hopewell Publications). In 2008, another essay
collection, co-edited by Cummins, will appear from Hopewell, Writers on the
Job.
Kennedy:
When and where did you publish your
first short story? And exactly how many—if you have not lost count—have
you published since then?
Cummins:
After a few years as a college
journalist, I tried fiction and published a few stories in the campus literary
magazine. Then I had a long dry spell, never submitting stories but continuing
to try to write them. By sheer luck, I got into the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
After several
ill-advised years of trying to be a novelist, I pulled out a story I wrote
during my first semester at Iowa, the only story of that semester Philip Roth
actually liked, and published it in a newsprint tabloid called Writer's
World in 1967. My next acceptance wasn't till 1971 after trying novels
again. Then when the number began to grow, I set myself a goal of publishing
enough stories to match the years of my age, which meant quite a bit of catch
up. Soon after reaching that target, I stopped counting.
Kennedy:
Do you remember how old you were
when you reached that target?
Cummins:
No. But probably in my late
fifties. The target was really a game that evaporated once I reached it.
Getting the first couple of stories published was much more important because
in my mind it verified that I was actually a story writer.
Kennedy:
You attended the MFA program at the
prestigious Iowa Writers School, graduating more than 40 years ago with an MFA
and PhD, and have since taught undergraduate and graduate creative writing at
Fairleigh Dickinson University, later to be one of the founders of the FDU
low-residency MFA Program, where you currently teach. If I may ask a rather
broad question, how have you seen writing programs and the teaching of writing
develop and evolve over those years?
Cummins:
When I took my first undergraduate
creative writing course as a junior at Rutgers in 1956, it was a primitive age
of manual typewriters; I don't recall if copy machines existed. We read our
work aloud and then had it discussed. I think that was the common method in
those days. Of course, hearing was rather a poor substitute for reading and
left only a broad impression. I do recall reading what I had meant to be a
horror story about a maniacal slasher department-store Santa and having the
class laughing more and more at every sentence they heard until I got past my
embarrassment and just laughed with them.
At Iowa we had to type
our work on ditto masters to be run off and left in a box for others in the
class to pick up before each weekly meeting. That allowed close reading and
attention to details. Now with email and websites, we can share without
getting up from our computers.
I think the technology
has also affected the way creative writing is taught. My instructors at Iowa used two basic methods. They scrawled comments in the margins of a typescript, and
they met with us to discuss each work we submitted. For years, I kept
manuscripts with Roth's comments, mainly little bursts of annoyance—"Oh no!"
"Too much!" "Really!!" But packing for one of my house moves, I tossed them
with stacks of other papers and I wonder how much they might be worth today,
especially if he wins a Nobel Prize. Roth also said to me after I bombarded
him with several very long, turgid stories, "Cummins, have you ever heard of
the vignette."
The discussions were
more general. For example, the story really begins on page 3, or fix the
ending. I do recall that Roth gave me a good detail for the story he liked—have my title character bring his hands together against his lips, thumbs hooked
under his chin, and nod sagaciously. He demonstrated. I used that. Another
conference I remember with a different instructor had to do with a deficient
ending. I was advised to go off into a dark corner and think about it long and
hard.
The technology of
recent years has, for me, transformed the way I can react to student writing
and overcome the limitations of marginal space and illegible handwriting. We
use Word's comment function that allows lengthy reactions to be inserted at
specific spots in a work, whether it is a suggestion for revising a paragraph
or thoughts about the strategy of a crucial passage. We can be much more
thorough and much more to the point.
From a very different
perspective, the teaching of writing has become very flexible because the
possibilities have expanded so much since the standard of the well-made story
in my student days. There's nothing wrong with that model, but it doesn't
accommodate all writers and is limiting for the talents and imaginations of
many.
When I was in graduate
school, it was the time of the war between the academic and the beats. The
academics were putting down Allen Ginsberg and his model for long open lines,
Whitman. Kerouac was considered undisciplined. Don't write like that, we were
told, either directly or by implication.
One reason for the
change is cultural. We live in a postmodern age and much, if not anything,
goes. But another reason is that writers and writing programs are now
established in the academy. The new war, if it exists, is between the writers
and the scholars, and probably no more than minor skirmishes.
But when I was at Iowa, it was a one-sided conflict at almost all universities. Few graduate writing
programs existed. Most English departments disdained the concept, resolved to
keep themselves unsullied from the presence of disheveled, ill-read
practitioners fresh out of some Greenwich Village fleabag. Then came the
dearth of college teaching jobs for new Ph.D.s. Those departments had to
resort to MFA programs to supply grad students to populate their lit courses.
It was that or freshman comp. Today it's hard to find a university without a
creative writing program. Writers and poets have become entrenched, many
lifers with tenure, some even department chairs and administrators. As
faculty, writers are now respectable. Fortunately, what they write often
isn't, not in the sense of propriety of form or content. And their students
have equal license, the only requirement that whatever they choose to write
they write effectively.
Kennedy:
Are there too many writing
programs? Do we have use for that many writers? Are there enough readers
interested in reading all the stories and poems and essays and books they will
produce? And is this leading to a change in the relationship between reader
and writer? Are we becoming a society in which everyone is a writer and we
read one another?
Cummins:
We may already have become a mini
society of writers reading each other, especially poets and story writers.
It's not everyone, though, unless you add bloggers. The number of literary
writers is just in the thousands, and the society is becoming more and more
self-contained. Fragmented too. No one can read all that's out there, so we
pick and choose a small percentage from the wealth of possibilities.
The answer to the
question of too many writing programs and too many writers depends on the
premises of the question. Can the society support them all? Of course not.
Do readers need so many choices? Of course not too? But if one assumes that
writing and learning to write well is an end in itself in terms of human
accomplishment and personal satisfaction, there should be no end of writers. A
parallel would be to ask if there are too many musicians. To survive as a paid
professional, sure. But to enjoy playing and to entertain small audiences,
even in one's living room, no. In fact, the audience for some good writing may
be just as small, barely filling a room. That doesn't mean it shouldn't
happen.
Kennedy:
That is a truly excellent analogy.
And brings to mind a rejection letter I received from a prominent literary
magazine a few years back that said something like, This is a pretty good
story; the trouble is there are too many damn pretty good stories and pretty
good poems because of all the damn writing programs out there. Which
seemed a sad way for an editor (since retired) to be thinking. I usually don't
respond to rejections, but I wrote back to him that I thought there were too
many damn crummy made-for-TV movies and too many damn crummy hamburger joints
and KFCs and 7Elevens, but that there would never be too many good stories or
poems.
How do you respond to
the often heard complaint—often I suspect from people without MFA experience—that MFA programs force students to write the same way? The complaint that
"you can't teach inspiration"?
Cummins:
You can teach people to make the
most of their inspiration and their creativity. Writers must develop craft and
technique to shape their work. Some may be able to do that through trial and
error over many years. An MFA program can speed that process. Also, while the
immediate act of writing is solitary, writers need a community to give
reactions and advice. They did it at Wordsworth's Dove Cottage or in the 18th-century
London coffee houses. MFA programs offer communities and contacts that can
go on long after people finish their formal association.
Kennedy:
What advice would you give to a
young person today who wants to be a writer?
Cummins:
Read a lot. Write a lot. Find a
community to belong to—in school or community programs or local writing
groups. And there are many online opportunities. Don't get discouraged by
work you can't seem to get right or by submissions that are rejected. Or, as
in my Santa case, mockery. Writing is hard and the great majority of us have a
lot to learn.
Kennedy:
Many older people, midway or
farther along in their lives, turn to writing now. What advice do you have for
them?
Cummins:
Beyond what I would suggest for
young writers, they should take advantage of the much greater variety of their
lives' experiences. Not only what happened to them but also what they've
observed around them. Perhaps it might help to write it straight as memoir to
discover the fictional possibilities. Or memoir might be enough.
Kennedy:
Going back to your own experience
as a student, you studied with Philip Roth. Who else did you study with at Iowa and elsewhere? Wasn't Andre Dubus there when you were? And Verlin Cassill? Richard
Yates and the fellow who wrote "Among the Dangs"—a story that always
fascinated me. Others? Are there specific things that you remember learning
as a writing student—moments of enlightenment?
Cummins:
George P. Elliott wrote "Among the
Dangs." A fine man who died many years before he should have. I studied with
him and Vance Bourjaily too. By the time Yates, Algren, John Clellon Holmes,
and Vonnegut came I had finished the MFA and was grinding away at Ph.D.
courses. Dubus and Raymond Carver were around then, pointed out to me, already
identified as exceptional. When I was in the workshop, the fiction stars were
John Yount, Clark Blaise, Bharati Mukherjee, and Richard Kim. The poets
included Mark Strand, Charles Wright, and Marvin Bell.
Speaking of the
criticism of MFA and writers in the academy, I remember George telling some of
us: "Other than driving a cab in Oakland, teaching at universities is the
scariest thing I've ever done."
More than specific
moments of enlightenment—other than Roth's hands on lips gesture—I learned
that it was all right to devote so many hours to writing, that others cared
just as much and even more, and that I could turn out work that was promising.
Of course, others were already producing accomplished work and getting it
published. The lesson of that, I suppose, was that I still had a long way to
go.
Kennedy:
Have you ever tried your hand at
poetry? Published any? Published any literary criticism?
Cummins:
I couldn't write a poem if you
dangled me over a vat of boiling oil. But I have written a number of reviews
and essays as sidelines.
Kennedy:
When did you first realize you
wanted to write fiction?
Cummins:
When I was six or seven, I drew
comic books, very badly, then in high school just wrote for the school paper.
When I got to college, I wrote humor and held back on fiction, thinking, who do
you think you are? But when I signed up for the creative writing course as a
junior I gave in to my inclination.
Kennedy:
You say that you started out as a
novelist, published two novels, then decided to focus on short stories and, as
I understand it, have stayed with short stories ever since. What is it about
the novel that made you turn from it? And about the short story that made you
turn toward it?
Cummins:
I wrote novels because everybody
else was, seeing them as the way to establish a career. Of course, that's still
true. But I discovered I'm not a long distance runner in writing. My instinct
is much more to explore a limited situation rather than an extended narrative
with complex development of character. Impatience may be a related reason.
During my peak periods of story writing I had so many ideas I wanted to try
them all. In the time it would take to write a probably inadequate novel, I
would have drafts of twenty stories.
Kennedy:
Of the hundred plus stories you've
published, you have collected enough to fill three volumes. That must leave
more than sixty stories that are uncollected. Will future collections contain
some of them or do you intend to collect only newer work?
Cummins:
My recent collection, Local
Music, gathers stories that are domestic in several senses of that word—people in their habitats or constrained surroundings in the United States. I have another group of stories about people abroad in European cities and
country sides that I would like to bring together.
Kennedy:
Do you feel a difference in
quality between earlier work and that you produce now? I myself sometimes fear
that what I have gained in technical proficiency, I may have lost somewhat in
spontaneity—do you ever feel that way? Maybe another way of asking this
question is, Do you write differently now than you did when you were younger?
Cummins:
I suppose I'm more assured, which
may be hubris. Even though I have a number of stories on my hard disk that
need much work, I've turned out enough that editors have liked to believe I can
do it again the next time I begin one. Yet each new story idea is as much of a
challenge as it has ever been.
About my earlier work,
I think I could make it better now. But every time I read something I wrote, long
ago or recent, I think, did I do that? Where did it come from?
Kennedy:
How do you write? Directly on
computer? Do you plan stories or write more or less spontaneously from a flash
of inspiration? And how long does it usually take you from inspiration to
completion of a story?
Cummins:
Year ago, when my spinal disks were
in better shape, I wrote by hand in tiny block letters, mainly because I'm such
a bad typist that trying to create on a manual typewriter distracted me with
errors. That printing deteriorated with my disks. When I got my first computer
in 1982, a Kaypro II, the ease of correction released me.
For me story ideas
always start with an interaction or a scene in my head, and I'm curious to see
what I can make of them, how they will turn out. Then I make a few notes about
what might happen next, just sentence fragments that often don't materialize.
I just write and see what comes next, sentence by sentence. A draft goes
quickly, two or three sittings for a story. But completion is another matter.
I'll read the draft again and again, making small changes each time. Still,
time at the keyboard is minimal. It's the pondering, trying to conceive of a
good reorganization or resolution, that can go on for several years in spurts
of thinking. Once I have that, the actual rewriting goes quickly.
Kennedy:
Perhaps an unfair question: How
imagined are your stories? Do you use scraps of your own life and the lives of
people you know or know of in your stories?
Cummins:
That same question occurred to me.
So I looked over the 17 stories in Local Music and found that only four
were directly autobiographical in origin. Many of the others were about people
or incidents I knew, a few totally fabricated. The European stories tend to be
very literal about places I've been and things I've actually done. But the
people in those places doing those things are made up, often based on someone
I've seen on a train ride or momentarily on a street or in a restaurant. Of
course, I fabricate many new events. Overall, I take experiences that were
very happy for me and make them miserable for the made-up characters.
Kennedy:
Why do you suppose that is? I find
myself doing that at times, too. Sometimes I even write stories that I think
are hilarious only to have someone say, "Oh, that's so sad!" Do we
distrust happiness? Fear it will seem fake to readers? Are we conditioned by
bad Hollywood stuff to mistrust happy endings?
Cummins:
We all know what Tolstoy said about
happy families, and I agree that it's a challenge to pull off an upbeat ending
in a short story that sets up a compelling dilemma for characters. Novels have
the pages to develop a positive resolution by presenting a process of
development. In a story it most often feels like an imposed trick. But like
you, I find that some readers miss what I think is funny and brand me as a
glum, downbeat writer. Rather than Tolstoy, my premise comes from a statement
by another Russian master, Chekhov, one Gorky reported he said to a crowd of hapless
people: "You live badly, my friends. It is shameful to live like that." A few
defenders argue that I have compassion for my sad characters, and I suppose I
do feel sorry for them without excusing them or providing any hints of uplift.
Kennedy:
Have there been different phases in
your style of writing? Have you gone from periods of realism to periods of
surrealism or post-modernism and back again or on to other styles? Or have you
stuck pretty much with realism throughout?
Cummins:
Early on, before Iowa, I tried a
kind of fantasy that Verlin Cassill thought was in the manner of E.M.
Forster's. That soon ended. I've published a few experimental stories, but
largely it's been third-person realism.
Kennedy:
I'd like to ask some questions
about your experiences as an editor. You've been Editor-in-Chief and Editor
Emeritus of The Literary Review for something like 25 or 30 years.
Which means that you have edited the equivalent of some 100 to 120 books in
that capacity. Has it been difficult to balance your wish to write against
your responsibility for the journal? And do you feel an equivalent
satisfaction producing an issue of TLR as publishing a book that you yourself
have written?
Cummins:
Before I began editing, I had read
much and felt relatively up-to-date with important new work. Editing and
reading submissions stopped that, and it also cut into my writing time. The
journal had deadlines and must-do activities. No one was asking me to write,
and so the imperatives of editing came first. Seeing an issue come out is
satisfying but not as much a personal accomplishment as writing. Yet, it's
been worth it.
Kennedy:
Have you been involved with editing
other periodicals? I know that you are involved in Tiferet: A Journal of
Spiritual Writing and in FDU's new on-line journal, Exploring Globalization
as well as the new on-line journal Sphere aimed at collecting
international student writing of excellence—which will maybe take the place
of a paperback book that used to exist entitled Intro, published I think
by the AWP back when.
Could you tell a little about these
journals and any others you may have been involved in?
Cummins:
I've also been involved with Web
Del Sol, not with a journal there, but making selections of fiction, poetry,
and nonfiction for eSCENE every couple of months. The other journals have been
more like busman's holidays, diverting because I don't have the ultimate
responsibility and can just make suggestions.
Kennedy:
How did you learn to be an Editor—by which I mean, how did you master all the variety of skills involved in editing
a journal—from the ability to select and solicit excellent work, to composing
an issue, sizing the publication, budgeting, and all the technical aspects of
publication involved, especially now in the age of desk-top publishing (or are
we now post-desk-top?)
Cummins:
My early technical editing
experience, though very different, was useful in giving me a sense of producing
a work on paper. But I still had much to learn, especially as the technology
changed. First, we literally cut and pasted from long galleys to do layout.
Then I learned PageMaker. Fortunately, when we switched to Quark Express
others were doing that work.
Most of my editing time
has been devoted to working with writers and guest editors, proofreading,
arranging for cover art, and generally keeping up with the business of putting
out a quarterly. Reading submissions usually got sidetracked as much as I
resolved to keep up by reading just a few every day. That rarely happened, and
I'd find myself spending most summers catching up. One of the reasons we've
gone to online submissions is to get more people involved in the screening
process.
Kennedy:
What makes a good Editor?
Cummins:
First, the ability to select good
writing. And there's also the ability to attract good writers to submit.
Conceiving of the issue as a whole has importance. On a process level,
it's holding everything together, keeping track of multiple tasks, and meeting
deadlines. Perhaps, most of all, it's an eye for sensing what needs to be done
to help a work realize itself. Although the busyness of reading
submissions and producing an issue hasn't allowed me all the time I wish I had
for that, my greatest satisfaction as an editor has come from working with
authors through the revision process.
Kennedy:
Travel, it seems, is an important
part of your life. You travel frequently and have done so, as far as I know,
since way back when. You lived in England for a while, in Spain, perhaps elsewhere, and you have traveled many many places—as evident in the 30 or
more essays you have published in The Literary Explorer series. What does
travel do for you personally, in what way does it appeal to you, and how is it
related to your literary aspirations?
Cummins:
I mentioned earlier that I've
written many stories that were inspired by travel, perhaps because I see the
phenomenon of coping with a new place as an existential experience, a person
unmoored and coping with the unfamiliar. Personally, travel is also an
encounter with other cultures, history, beauty, the sense of the world's
possibilities. First, I concentrated on England because my graduate literary
education was in English lit. I wanted to see the places the writers lived in and
wrote about. I also liked the sense of the life in the villages, the energy of
London. Then my wife said I was in a rut, so we went other places and liked
them equally. But I chose locations with art, natural beauty, and history so
close to one another—like Switzerland, where in an hour or so you can move
from a wonderful city like Bern to the midst of the Alps. Places are like
books. So much to see, so little time.
Kennedy:
And hand-in-hand with this, it
seems to me, is the fact that The Literary Review is very much an
international journal, doing many special issues from other countries as well
including individual contributions in translation. Over the years, editing so
many international issues, must have given you a pretty good overview of world
literature. Would you say something about that?
Cummins:
Yes, I've been fortunate to have
been exposed to such a range of excellent writing and important writers. TLR
has been unique among American quarterlies in bringing so much of the world's writing
to readers of English. I regret the limited audience for translations in this
country, perhaps because American writers turn out so much that's worth
reading. Still, we miss a great deal of other realities, other techniques, and
other imaginations. Working with guest editors who are specialists in the
literature of a specific country or region or language has been a personal
treat.
Kennedy:
Back to your own writing: You are
a member of a writers group that meets regularly to discuss the
works-in-progress of the members. Could you tell something about that? Does
meeting in person have an advantage over just getting feedback by email? Has
being in the writers group been of great value to you, or is it more or equally
social satisfaction that it gives?
Cummins:
The socialization is a plus, but
professionally I think we all need the help of others. Everyone in my group
now is well published, some having won various prizes. But it's rare that the
early drafts we show each other don't need significant revision. For me, the
advice of the others has helped me salvage story after story. I'm struck by
how often we thank the group in our book dedications.
Email exchanges can be
valuable, for one thing because you can save a record of what was said. But I
believe the real-time exchange of an in-person discussion has a number of
advantages. Almost always, a comment by another person leads me to expand or
reconsider what I've thought and to come up with new insights and suggestions.
Kennedy:
You are now, in principle,
semi-retired, but as far as I can see you have not slowed down. On the
contrary, it seems you have filled what would have been your free time as a
teacher with other literary activities. You are once again Editor-in-Chief of The
Literary Review as well as the other journals you are involved with, you
are teaching in the MFA low residency program at FDU, publishing a book or more
a year for the past few years, traveling a good deal, and no doubt many other
things. I am certain that much of this must give great satisfaction, but I
wonder if any of it ever becomes drudgery? Do you ever want to jettison any of
these activities or do they each fulfill something in your life?
Cummins:
Yes and no. Drudgery isn't the
right word. Overwhelming. Time confusing. Frustrating. Still, there's a
satisfaction in getting it done and holding the printed issue. But I'm also
looking forward to my replacement at TLR and retreating to an advisory
involvement. There are so many stories I haven't written or revised, so many
books I haven't read.
Kennedy:
Have you planned specific literary
projects for the future? Do you have specific plans for books that you want to
write or publish, that are in progress? Novels? Story or essay collections? Selected
Cummins? Collected Cummins? Literary ambitions which you have
always wanted to find time for and now perhaps have the possibility of doing?
Cummins:
Recently, I've been writing
creative nonfiction—memoirs, personal essays. Not a novel. But who can tell
what will happen in my dotage. As I mentioned, I'd like to collect my stories
set in Europe. One advantage of being at this stage of life is that there are
no imperatives, nothing left to prove beyond getting the next piece of writing
right. And I'm open to being surprised by a project I can't even conceive of
now.
Kennedy:
Anything that I have not asked that
you were itching to respond to?
Cummins:
The answer has been implicit in
everything I've said so far. Writing is a great way to spend a life. I
suppose painting and playing or composing music would be too. Those talents are
far beyond me. As a writer, I'm content with my little bit of success. It's
enough. At times, it's hard to believe I've published as much as I have, after
the slings and arrows of my mocked Santa and Philip Roth's Oh no! Too much!
and Really! I've enjoyed the benefits of the pleasure of creating when I'm by
myself and associating with some of the planet's most interesting people who
populate the world of writers.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:
Walter Cummins has published more than one hundred
stories, three story collections, two novels and numerous essays. He is
editor-in-chief of The Literary Review. His latest story collection is Local
Music (Egress Books, 2007). Cummins is a core faculty member of the
Fairleigh Dickinson University MFA program.
 Thomas E. Kennedy is the author of The Copenhagen Quartet, which consists of four novels about the loves and seasons of the Danish capital, where Kennedy has lived for over 30 years. He has written 20 books. Kennedy's stories have been published in more than 100 literary venues. He has won the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart, Gulf Coast, and European prizes, the Charles Angoff Award, the Frank Expatriate Writers Award, and The Eric Hoffer Award for Best Novel 2007. His 11th novel, A Passion in the Desert and his 3rd story collection, Cast Upon the Day were published in 2007.
Photo Credit: Alice Maud Guldbrandsen
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