Friday essay: writer, disciplinarian, illiterate grandfather - reflection of writers on teachers and their influence on personality formation formation

What is the education of a writer like? Is it access to books, regular writing, difficulties in childhood (war, illness, a harsh boarding school)? What talent or inclination prepares a young writer for learning? In the struggle between nature and nurture, a key element is the right teacher at the right time: one who encourages, inspires, or resists pressure, pushing a curious mind. The essays in the new book edited by Dale Salwak, "Writers and Their Teachers," prompt reflection on one's own teachers, but one of the themes is that a writing instructor, looking back, takes many forms.

I remember Mrs. Wagstaff, the lunch lady at my English primary school with her dyed red curls and long nails, who sometimes read us stories during rainy lunch breaks. "Imagine this in your mind," she would say to us as we sat on the carpet, 40 years ago. I really did see it in my imagination, and I still see it today.

We all analyze stories of personal transformation in adult life, where scenes and dramatic characters remain alive for many years. Who made a difference and how? "Writers and Their Teachers" reads like a collective bildungsroman, in which we understand the forces that shaped the adult writer. In this genre, the teacher or mentor occupies a central role, guiding the student towards mastery.

Such transformations require faith from the teacher and a spark of interest from the student. Salvak quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson in his introduction: "The whole power of the teacher lies in the conviction that people can change, and they can."

Here we witness 20 such transformations, from a young man with a desire, or perhaps just his flickering, to a life ablaze with language, ideas, images, and history.

The Kenyan literary genius Ngugi wa Thiong'o calls his illiterate maternal grandfather his first teacher of writing.

Ngugi became his childhood scribe, reading his letters aloud until they reflected what he wanted to say. This process not only taught him "the value of the written word and the necessity of editing it for smooth reading," but also, most importantly, "the beauty of written Gikuyu," his native language.

Ngugi thrived in school, speaking, reading, and writing in his native language, but in 1952, the colonial government banned African schools, and the use of local languages became dangerous.

Ngugi's early books, including his classic about the Mau Mau uprising "A Grain of Wheat," were written in English, the language of the colonizer. In 1977, Ngugi helped write and stage a politically explicit play in Gikuyu.

Imprisoned for over a year as a result of this, and surrounded by "teachers" in the form of his guards, he wrote his first novel "Devil on the Cross" (on toilet paper) in his native language. Ngugi writes: "Thus, it was a Kenyan maximum-security prison that made me return to my roots, under the literary guidance of my grandfather, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, to whom I am eternally grateful. He was my first literary teacher."

Few lessons in these essays are learned with such personal risks, but many of the writers also confess to having unusual teachers.

British crime novelist Catherine Aird moved to a village where she knew no one and became a victim of a common life event for writers - a long illness in childhood. She went through the contents of the village library, immersing herself in the golden age of detective literature.

“I lived in a family that solved crosswords every day, where my mother had a clever (and cunning) bridge partner, and my father, a doctor, compared diagnoses to simple investigations.”

Eird creates a cozy yet gloomy picture of breakfast at the table, where her father, a doctor, shares his enthusiasm for forensic examination, recounting a terrible local murder-suicide in which he advised the medical examiner. She even assisted him in his detective work, once sending her upstairs in the house where the man was found unconscious at the foot of the stairs to check if the bed was warm, thus helping to determine when he fell.

Sometimes a young writer needs to learn how to navigate the vast world that is revealed through reading and writing. Michael Scammell, the biographer of Solzhenitsyn and Koestler, worked for two years at the Southern Daily Echo newspaper in Southampton, being the first in his family to receive an education until the age of 16.

A student of a grammar school in the English selection system, he left his own world without a guide for the journey. The older journalist Anthony Brody, a "giant of the editorial staff," a French-speaking bohemian, relaxed, educated, a product of privileged education, "taught me to write - and to live - in an unfamiliar environment."

A book about education (especially when the writer is British) also serves as a depiction of class and navigation through its boundaries. Tony's home was a revelation: "Unlike our family's small living room, where the four of us sat by the coal fire on winter nights with a loud radio that made reading difficult, Tony and Sylvia's living room was spacious and warm, and I could freely use their bookshelves (of course, without a television)."

In these books, Scammell discovered the works of Orwell, Wodehouse, Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. Books, of course, are our teachers. Later, Tony facilitated the connection through his publisher for the publication of translations, and he was on his way to success.

Friendships that arise from such unequal beginnings are often long-lasting and characterized by the generosity of a mentor. A tender admiration runs through several essays, highlighting how much one can give without expecting anything in return. As poet-critic William Logan writes about his unusual professor David Milch (creator of "NYPD Blue" and "Deadwood"):

“There are debts that cannot be repaid because you do not have the currency in which they were offered.”

The gift presented to V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel Prize laureate, by the young writer Paul Theroux was grand but ambiguous. Theroux writes: "For more than fifty years, I have written about Naipaul and reflected on his influence! However, only in the last few years, when the dust has settled, have I reconsidered our relationship and seen how complex it was, how significant it was - how crucial it was for my development as a writer."

This is the last essay in the collection. As it moves through "School," "College," and "Graduate School and Beyond," there is a growing sense as the writers recall themselves as adult students rather than children, and their teachers as insufficient people. Perhaps it's hard to avoid in the case of Naipaul, but for Theroux, Naipaul's snobbery and authoritarianism—and the 15-year break in their friendship—do nothing to undermine his significance.

When Tero met Naipaul in Kampala in 1966, he didn't know a single writer and was seeking guidance. As a driver, companion, and translator for Naipaul, he was able to observe up close his complete seriousness towards writing and to learn from him in an atmosphere of intense concentration fueled by fear.

I had a vivid sense of vigilance: no creature is in a more tense state than an animal in an unfamiliar environment - every sense is sharply alert, every synapse is engaged. I was completely awake in its presence and was afraid of doing anything foolish.

When this 30-year internship ended with a rejection caused by one of Vidi's "bad moods," Teru saw it as a liberation: "a promotion to a higher rank." Now he was free to write his controversial memoir about their friendship, "The Shadow of Sir Vidia." In the end, Teru has no regrets. What "every aspiring person" needs, he tells us, is support and faith.

“Nailpol did this for me: he was the only one who told me what I was capable of.” The form that the mentor most often takes on these pages is that of a school or university teacher, and often in the blink of an eye, they transform into something more than just a teacher.