All Writing is Autobiography

Big Picture:

The article bio describes Murray as: "professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire." So, by this point, he had retired. It's worth trying to find out when he retired.

It's interesting to note that this article was published in the "Staffroom Interchange" section of CCC. According to the article,

Two kinds of articles make up "Staffroom Interchange": compact descriptions of specific instructional or administrative practices and fuller essays of application, speculation, and introspection. "Staffroom Interchange" essays (normally under 3,500 words) should be written in a direct, personal style and may use either in-text documentation or a compact works-cited list. Since submissions are sent to Consulting Readers for review, authors should follow the guidelines for anonymous submission outlined on the back of the title page. (66)

I would also point out that this issue of CCC was a themed issue. The theme: "Teaching and Theory in College Composition." It's hard not to conclude that what Murray is talking about in his article does not constitute their sense of "teaching and theory" in college composition.

Other questions: Was this Murray's last publication in a mainstream journal? In the first paragraph, he writes, "As I look back, I suspect that no matter how I tuned the lyre, I played the same tune" (66). If so, how do we trace the trajectory from his first to this one?

And now, onto the article itself...

I'm struck by Murray's attention to genre, the way he likes to catalogue the genres he writes. The article leads with this line: "I publish in many forms-poetry, fiction, academic article, essay, newspaper column, newsletter, textbook, juvenile nonfiction and I have even been a ghost writer for corporate and government leaders-yet when I am at my writing desk I am the same person" (66).

CLAIM: All my writing-and yours-is autobiographical. (66)

The distinction between academic and writer: In going over this draft my spellcheck hiccupped at "squenched"and "companioned." As an academic I gulped; as a writer I said, "Well they are now." (67)

The way that Murray weaves his own process, himself-in-process into the text he is writing is captured in this sentence: "In writing this paper I have begun to understand, better than I ever have before" (67). It's the "I have begun to understand..." and the "better than I ever have before" that get at it...that illustrate that he is in process, figuring it out as he goes.

I assume that many people in this audience are aware of my obsession with writing and my concern with teaching that began with my early discomfort in school that led to my dropping out and flunking out. My academic writing is clearly autobiographical. (68)

An interesting and powerful confession: "Yes, I confess it, I wrote, and write, for therapy. Writing autobiography is my way of making meaning of the life I have led and am leading and may lead" (70). I somehow love that he says this.

The Murray self-deprecating humor: "Let's look at another autobiographical poem, one of my favorites, which, I suppose, means that it was one I especially needed to write for no autobiographical reason I can identify. It has not yet been published, although a great many of the best poetry editors in the country have failed in their obligation to Western culture by rejecting it" (70).

I love this line: "We become what we write. That is one of the great magics of writing" (71).

We see Murray drawing on his favorite sources in this piece, published and famous writers. I'm struck by the way he uses Melville in the following passage, so casually--as someone he might consult when he faces a difficult question. This is interesting: "Is the setting real? Let Herman Melville answer, 'It is not down on any map: true places never are'" (72). Other sources include Robert Frost, Ledo Ivo, Don Delillo, Graham Greene, Willa Cather.

I find the following passage incredibly useful. How do writers work? What do they do? What are their techniques? Murray gives us this and if I'm asking the question what is he good for or how is he useful, this is one thing he's useful for: helping clarify process or expand what is possible. It is useful to listen to the writer describe his craft, what he goes through, the nuts and bolts and nitty gritty of it. This passage captures it brilliantly:

One technique, I've been using, especially in writing the novel, is to layer my writing. Once I did quite a bit of oil painting and my pictures were built up, layer after layer of paint until the scene was revealed to me and a viewer. I've been writing each chapter of the novel the same way, starting each day at the beginning of the chapter, reading and writing until the timer bings and my daily stint is finished. Each day I lay down a new layer of text and when I read it the next day, the new layer reveals more possibility.

There is no one way the chapters develop. Each makes its own demands, struggles towards birth in its own way. Sometimes it starts with a sketch, other times the first writing feels complete [next day's reading usually shows it is not]; sometimes I race ahead through the chapter, other times each paragraph is honed before I go on to the next one. I try to allow the text to tell me what it needs.

I start reading and when I see--or, more likely, hear--something that needs doing, I do it. One day I'll read through all the written text and move it forward from the last day's writing; another time I'll find myself working on dialogue; the next day I may begin to construct a new scene [the basic element of fiction); one time I'll stumble into a new discovery, later have to set it up or weave references to it through the text; I may build up background description, develop the conflict, make the reader see a character more clearly; I may present more documentation, evidence, or exposition, or hide it in a character's dialogue or action. (72-73)

Boy, if this is not Murray at his best, in his instructive/manifesto mode, I don't know what is:

I do not think we should move away from personal or reflective narrative in composition courses, but closer to it; I do not think we should limit reflective narrative to a single genre; I do not think we should make sure our students write on many different subjects, but that they write and rewrite in pursuit of those few subjects which obsess them. (73)

This ties in nicely with the idea of Murray and student-centered pedagogy, and perhaps the student-centered movement is something I need to look into at some point, to try to place Don within that movement. I don't even know who coined the term or when. But here is Don nailing down his basic idea, tying it into a source (academic writing) and reiterating what he has said for so long: we start with the student and his/her obsessions. Learning begins with the students and not the subjects.

In Notebooks of the Mind (U of New Mexico P, 1985), a seminal book for our discipline, Vera John-Steiner documents the importance of obsession. "Creativity requires a continuity of concern, an intense awareness of one's active inner life combined with sensitivity to the external world." Again and again she documents the importance of allowing and even cultivating the obsessive interest of a student in a limited area of study. I read that as the importance of encouraging and supporting the exploration of the autobiographical themes of individual students-and the importance of allowing ourselves to explore the questions that itch our lives. (73)

This is not the kind of source that Don usually draws on in his work. Also, I note the phrase "our discipline"--his thinking that he is still a member of the discipline, whether or not the discipline still counts him as the kind of member he wants to be?

Final note: Murray shares his own writing here: poetry, fiction, newspaper column, textbook, academic article itself.