WATER MUSIC’ GAINS HIGH CRITICAL PRAISE
Award-winning author analyzes his career
By Randolph Heard
The woods. Dark and deep. Two figures squat over an anemic flame, roasting meat. Lions roar, and lightning plays over the horizon like the flicker of ideas.
“So tell me. Mr. Park, if I ain’t gettin' too personal, just what it is you see in this explorin’ business anyhow? I mean you been starved and abused, sick with the ague and the fever, your clothes is in rags, half your goods is gone and your horse is layin' over there in the bushes like it ain’t never goin' to get up again. ”
“I’m glad you asked me that, Johnson. You see — my lord that smells good. What did you say that was?"
“Paw pads of the jackal. Only thing the vultures won’t touch. "
“Hmp. Leam something new every, day. . . Anyway, I’m the eighth of thirteen. Know what that means?’’
Johnson looks up from the skewered bits of meat. “You're consumed with an almost demonic obsession to prove yourself?"
“Exactly. ”
”And all the regular avenues is closed — you bein’ a Scotsman and your father only a crofter. So you can’t enter politics or take a commission in the army or hobnob with the elite in their drawin' rooms and clubs—”
“Uh-huh. ”
“So what else is there? You rely on your courage and your stamina and you
T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE
the release of his first novel, IVater Music.
T.C. Boyle, an assistant professor of English, is what the publishing industry calls a “coming young author.” His first book, a collection of irreverant short stories entitled The Descent of Man. garnered critical praise, the St. Lawrence Award for short fiction and is currently used in many college writing classes. Wafer Music has gained even higher praise and has caused a great deal of excitement about this lanky, ’60s bred, bearded young writer who plays the saxophone to relax.
The excitement is over the fact that many critics see Boyle as someone who can use the merits of high literature and still attract a mass audience. This is because he writes rip-roaring yams with plenty of chortles and adventure to satisfy just about anyone, but keeps a basic commitment to the story itself and to all its possibilities. Water Music displays a high imagination that seems to play with every sentence seeking a new and striking way to say things.
Not Twist, not Copperfield. not Fagin himself had a childhood to compare with Ned Rise's. He was unwashed, untutored, unloved, battered, abused, harassed. deprived, starved, mutilated and orphaned, a victim of poverty, ignorance, ill-luck, class prejudice, lack of opportunity, malicious fate and gin. His was a childhood so depraved even a (Continued on page 9)
Volume XCI Number 58
trojan
University of Southern California
Wednesday April 14, 1982
Freshman writing: poor attitudes breed upon image
More interest shown in grades than learning
By Eric Vincent
Staff Writer
A recent study of the university’s Freshman Writing Program reveals that the general dislike many students hold for the classes in the program is due to the students’ attitudes toward writing, not due to the failings of the department’s structure.
The Freshman Writing Program requires most students to take two semesters of composition w'riting. But prior to entering the program, students have the option of taking a waiver examination. Those students w’ho earn an A grade on this examination are exempt from taking Freshman Writing.
Students taking 101a. the first course of the program, are not given a final grade. The theory is that the first semester is spent on perfecting the waiting ability of the student without the pressure of a grade for the course.
But because of this, many students tend to be lax about their work for the class, since their performance in the first semester theoretically has no effect upon the grade they receive at the end of the second semester.
Since last semester, a professor has had the option of failing a student, should he feel the quality of the student's work does not justify placing him into 101b.
Upon completing 101a, students take a final examination. If the student earns an A on the test, he is exempted from taking 101b. All other students.
however, must enroll in a second semester of freshman writing.
Unlike in 101a. the student’s performance in 101b counts as two-thirds of the final grade, with the written assignments accounting for the additional third. The grade a student receives for 101b is worth eight units, because it encompasses the grade for two semesters of course work.
Program called effective
James Williams, a part-time professor in the Freshman Writing Program who also works in the English Department at UCLA, appears to be in a position to look at this university’s freshman program from an objective point of view.
“By and large. 1 would say it is very effective at what it is trying to do," Williams said of the Freshman Writing Program, but he added that “it suffers from some of the problems that all writing programs do.”
One of these problems involves the differences in approaches that instructors use to teach their courses. However, a much larger problem arises in dealing with the hostility expressed by students toward freshman composition.
“Most incoming freshmen come from the better high schools, and it makes them feel that this is some sort of burden being placed upon them,” Williams said.
The hostility is expressed in several ways, he said, including high absenteeism, little ef-
fort put forth to get work turned in and a low turnout rate for instructor/student meetings. More directly, Williams sees this hostility in the classroom from students complaining about assignments or the course.
Williams is in the process of preparing the results of a study, conducted at this university during the fall semester of 1980. aimed at learning the
motivations of students enrolled in the composition program. The survey, which was funded by a grant from the Freshman Writing Program, was based on data obtained from questionnaires distributed to approximately 300 students enrolled in the program.
Extrinsic vs. intrinsic students
The results of the study showed that two types of stu-
dents are enrolled in the Freshman Writing Program: those who are clearly interested in the subject and in writing, and those who are not. Students who demonstrated a genuine interest in writing were placed into the “intrinsically motivated” category. Conversely, those students' who demonstrated a general disinterest in writing were placed into the (Continued on page 3)
CONCERNS VOICED OVER BOARD’S POWER
Who oversees USC trustees?
This is the first in a series of articles about the Board of Trustees, its members, its structure and its relations with the university community.
By David Wharton Assistant City Editor
Montgomery Ross Fisher realizes there is a problem, but he can't think of a solution.
Fisher is a member of the University of Southern California Board of Trustees, a group which elects its own members, w'rites its own bylaws and dictates university activities and policies. In recent months, students and faculty have voiced concern about this power, saying they want to have more influence on the board’s decisions.
“The whole world would be a better place if everyone had a voice in everything,” Fisher says, responding to requests for change. “But how? When? Where? When I ask myself if I could think of a better system, I can’t. I honestly think this system is the best way.”
The criticism directed at the Board of Trustees suggests there is opposition to the administrative system. The gap between the trustees and the university community raises some questions about this system and its ability to
recognize student and faculty needs.
The 35 men and three women who compose the Board of Trustees serv e without pay. Ten life trustees, two trustees emeriti and 14 associate trustees also sit on the board, but only the 38 full members vote on university business.
Student and faculty concerns about the trustees are not unfounded — the board wields seemingly autonomous power. But George Abdo, executive assistant to President James H. Zumberge. says that a California state corporate law regulates the trustees’ control over the unversity.
The law was enacted in 1978 as Assembly Bill 2180, Chapter 567 of the 1978 Statutes. It prohibits more than 49 percent of the board (including their relatives and in-laws) from receiving money from the university at any one time. In other words, the law tries to ensure that trustees keep the university’s interests at heart and not those of their companies.
Such a check on the trustees’ power is ab-(Continued on page 6)
go off to fathom the unknown and then come back a hero. Right?"
“Yes— but there’s more to it than that. I want to know the unknowable, see the unseen, scale mountains and look behind the stars. I want to fill in the maps, lecture the geographers, hold up a torch for the academicians. The Niger. . . think of it, Johnson. No white man has ever laid eyes upon it. I’ll have seen what none of them have — no the Laird of Dumfries, nor Charles Fox, nor the King himself. ”
Water Music, by T. Coraghessan
Boyle
A girl from T. Coraghessan Boyle's fiction writing class leaned against the wall outside his office wraiting for the young, prematurely grey-haired author to finish with his current conferee. “I need help,” she confided. “I was supposed to turn something in a month ago, but I can't think of anything to write.”
What did she think of Boyle? “He looks sort of weird. . . Well, I mean he’s very funny — he's a great teacher. . . He’s really thin.”
Recently, others have been comparing the 33-year-old writer to the likes of James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon since