TITLE: Hemingway on Teachers, While Teaching
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: August 14, 2016 10:55 AM
DESC:
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BODY:
Early in Arnold Samuelson's
With Hemingway: A Year in Key West and Cuba,
Papa is giving an impromptu lecture about writing to two aspiring
young writers. (He does that a lot in the book, whenever the men
are out sailing and fishing.) This particular lecture was prompted
by what he thought was bad advice in a book by a successful pulp
fiction author on how to get started as a writer. An earlier
session had focused on the shortcomings of going to college to
learn how to become a writer.
Toward the end of his discourse, Hemingway tells the young writers
to do daily writing exercise and generously offers to read read
their work, giving feedback on how to get better. This offer
elicits a few more remarks about the idea of college writing
professors:
"They ought to have me teach some of those college classes.
I could teach them something. Most professors of English
composition can tell the students what's wrong with their
pieces but they don't know how to make them good, because,
if they knew that, they'd be writers themselves and they
wouldn't have to teach."
"What do you think of the life of a professor?"
"All right for a person who is vain and likes to have the
adulation of his students. Well, now, do you fellows think
you can remember everything Professor Hemingway has told
you? Are you prepared for a written examination on the
lecture?"
Teaching computer science must be different from teaching fiction
writing. I have been teaching for quite a few years now and have
never received any adulation. Then again, though, I've never
experienced much derision either. My students seems to develop
a narrower set of emotions. Some seem to like me quite a bit and
look for chances to take another course with me. Other students
are... indifferent. To them, I'm just the guy standing in the
way of them getting to somewhere else they want to be.
Hemingway's "have to teach" dig is cliché. Perhaps the
Ernest Hemingways and Scott Fitzgeralds of the world should be
devoting all of their time to writing, but there have a been any
number of excellent authors who have supplemented their incomes
and filled the down time between creative bursts by helping other
writers find a path for themselves. Samuelson's book itself is a
testament to how much Papa loved to share his wisdom and to help
newcomers find their footing in a tough business. During all
those hours at sea, Hemingway was teaching.
Still, I understand what Hemingway means when he speaks of the
difference between knowing that something is bad and knowing how
to make something good. One of the biggest challenges I faced in
my early years as a professor was figuring out how to go beyond
pointing out errors and weaknesses in my students' code to giving
them concrete advice on how two design and write good programs.
I'm still learning how to do that.
I'm lucky that I like to write programs myself. Writing code and
learning new styles and languages is the only way to stay sharp.
Perhaps if I were really good, I'd leave academia and build
systems for Google or some hot start-up, as Hemingway would have
it. I'm certainly under no illusion that I can simulate that
kind of experience working at a university. But I do think a
person can both do and teach, and that the best teachers are ones
who take both seriously. In computer science, it is a constant
challenge to keep up with students who are pushing ahead into a
world that keeps changing.
~~~~
The photo above comes from
the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
It shows Hemingway sitting on a dock next to his boat, Pilar,
sometime in the 1930s. The conversation quoted above took place
on the Pilar in 1934.
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