Description
Book SynopsisBy turns reflective, entertaining and moving, this book reveals how some of the most influential and best loved writers of our time were shaped by their inspirational teachers. Nobel laureate J. M. Coetzee, Margaret Drabble, Stephen Greenblatt, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Andrew Motion, Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina and Paul Theroux are among the twenty contributors of original essays to this landmark volume celebrating masters of the teaching profession.What makes a good teacher? What lights the writer's creative fire? How can the teacher shape the writer? This book answers these questions and more, describing the powerful influence of mentors at an impressionable time of life, portraying the heart-warming transition from pupil to friend, and exploring the lasting impact that truly great teachers can have on their students.To have teachers who care, and to have such notable writers capture their spirit, is ample reason to read Dale Salwak''s elegant celebration of the noble profession' and
Trade ReviewAll the essays deserve high praise. Seldom does one encounter such a wealth of good prose within the covers of a single volume. The book is itself
inspirational, teaching much about writing and teaching, thinking and living. -- Éilís Ní Dhuibhne * The Irish Times *
The best are excellent, memorializing through striking detail teachers – some exceptionally charismatic – who understood their pupils as well as they did the importance of all they were passing on to them. -- Catharine Morris * Times Literary Supplement *
I found myself pleasurably immersed in the recollections of a network of individuals for whom writing became not only the centre of their universe but a necessary condition for living. ... [A] delightfully entertaining collection. * Bennett Arnold Society Newsletter *
Celebrates how some of the leading writers of our time have been shaped by inspirational teachers. * Choice *
Dale Salwak has created a collection that should be required reading for all prospective teachers. Elegant praise for their teachers comes from Jay Parini, Margaret Drabble, Dana Gioia, and many others. -- Linda Wagner-Martin, Hanes Professor, University of North Carolina, USA
There is no model, no formula. Chance encounters, dusty school teachers, maverick professors, illiterate grandfathers. Twenty authors ruminate on the relationships that lit the first steps of their careers. Nothing could be more fascinating. -- Tim Parks, author of 'Where I'm Reading From, the Changing World of Books'
Writers and their Teachers offers a thought-provoking read to anyone interested in understanding the myriad ways a young writer's wish to write can be massaged from dormancy, their capacities strengthened, by encountering the "right" teacher in their youth. The best among the 20 essays describe the enhanced mastery of writing made possible when two people pay careful attention to each other. -- Janna Malamud Smith, author of 'An Absorbing Errand: How Artists and Craftsmen Make Their Way to Mastery'
The gifts are different — legitimacy, confidence, the value of hard work, skepticism, provocation — but the gratitude is the same. A collection of moving tributes to the often mysterious figures who have, firmly, gently, and at times unconsciously made literature seem possible. -- Stacy Schiff, author of 'The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams'
Table of ContentsPreface Notes on Contributors Part I School 1 Teachers We Remember: Gerrit Gouws
J. M. Coetzee 2 Mabel Morrill
Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina 3 Learning Curve
Catherine Aird 4 A Way with Words
Michael Scammell 5 Peter Way
Andrew Motion 6 My Grandfather and My Other Teachers
Ngugi wa Thiong’o 7 Il Miglior Fabbro
George Howe Colt Part II College 8 The Perilous Balance of Marvin Eisenberg
Jeffrey Meyers 9 W. Edward Brown: Many Years of Mentoring
Jay Parini 10 David Milch and the Strategies of Indirection in Fiction
William Logan Part III Graduate School and After 11 My Doktorvater
Stephen Greenblatt 12 A Far Cry from Oxbridge
Margaret Drabble 13 The Right Words
Carl Rollyson 14 Remembering Allen Mandelbaum
Paul Mariani 15 Sketch of a Professor: Roger Gilliatt
Michael J. Aminoff 16 How Lucky I Was . . .
Ann Thwaite 17 J. P. Stern: The Professor from Prague
Daniel Johnson 18 George Steiner: Enchantment and Dissent
Robert Boyers 19 Class Struggle: Donald Davie at Stanford
Dana Gioia 20 V. S. Naipaul, the Drill Sergeant
Paul Theroux
