The Grade

When I was a junior at the University of Illinois, I took a course in short story writing. The professor was one Dr. Quinn, a polished, urbane, thin man of utmost reverence for the work of Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and other greats of the genre. I imagined him to be one himself, from his manner.

For several classes he simply read to us, pointing out the strengths, occasionally noting weaknesses, of excerpts from those writers as we listened and learned--some of us. Always the brownies, we, like all students in small classes those days, fairly nodded ourselves into neck spasms and tried to be little quinns ourselves in receiving such elegant gifts.

But there was another interchange going on as well as the class communicated our responses with glances to each other, not always respectful, and whispered snide remarks about Quinn's pomposity and effete demeanor, and sometimes snickered under our breaths.

One young, chubby fellow wannabe who looked about as literary as a Roman wrestler was particularly ineffective at covering up his disdain for the proceedings. Before class he told me had written already, and published. In fact, he said, he created a popular comic strip hero of the day whose identity I can't recall, "Dragon Man" or something, but which I had heard of at the time and was duly impressed by.

I thought that this budding professional, this holy man (all who published were holy, to me, a poor unpublished mere mortal) was sure to get an "A" on every thing he submitted, ipso facto. But in fact, he got straight "D's" and "F's." I gleaned that his snideness and disrespect was noted by Quinn and influenced the grade accordingly, until I heard him read some of his work. It was really not of the type to be appreciated by anyone with a vocabulary above the second grade.

In time we all read our own stories, of course, before the class. I was thrilled to be the first called to do so, on the first submission, by the mighty Quinn. It was a validation when I saw, as he handed me my first effort, graded, a big read "A" across the top. I read it aloud with pride, a little personal piece about going exploring under my hometown's Jefferson Street bridge across the Little Wabash River in Huntington, Indiana as a child. I had "fictionalized" it, cloaked it in indecipherable anonymity, I thought, by calling it "Silver Bridge," and in its pages I described my first encounter with crayfish ("crawdads" we called them), slipping on the slippery floodbanks of mud which formed under the cement arches and falling into the muddy water reaching for flotsam and jetsam with branches, throwing skipping stones and so on--the predictable images and anecdotes of every boy's Huck Finn period in countless hometowns across the land. It must have reminded Quinn of his own childhood. I was thrilled he'd liked it.

From that moment forth my writer's confidence only grew. Each work I submitted earned an "A." Each round of reading found me trotted to the lectern, and I began to feel I could do no wrong; my highest mark was assured, and I was the class golden boy, the next to join, in time, should I deign to do so, the Whartons and Hemingways, Faulkners and Cathers of the literary pantheon. Someday my stories would be read by other novitiates and wannabes in future writing courses everywhere, and pointed to as models by other Quinns with the same reverence. And the beauty of it was, I didn't even half try. The writings came easily to me, and I seldom revised them before submission. I had always done well in writing courses from my freshman year on, always gotten "A's" on my compositions, always just whipped them off a few hours before submission and been cited and fawned over publicly by my professors for the exemplary efforts.

By the time I wrote my final short work for the course I had become an arrogant snob. I don't even remember what I wrote, only that I dashed it off with even greater recklessness than the others, supremely confident that whatever I condescended to remark would continue to astound and impress. The language, the diction, as I recall, had become stilted and polysyllabic. I sensed I had mastered the music of the Masters themselves and heard in my mind's scenario Quinn's then-familiar voice invite me once more to the triumphant read at the lectern.

Then came the day of the last class. But instead of the expected collegial glance from my professor as the class began and he started returning the papers, I received my final submission in my seat, handed to me with the briefest glance of Quinn's sympathetic eyes, and I knew something was terribly wrong even before I lowered my gaze to the small, embarrassed "C+" floating above a sea of negative redinked comments and slash marks, the result of thoroughly frustrated editing and justified total repudiation by an offended reader.

I was crushed. I don't even remember what I wrote, to deserve such wrath. Needless to say, I was not invited to read it to the class. Quinn was too civilized to be vindictive, too tactful to humiliate me publicly. He did, however, ask our class "Dragon Man" originator to read his latest narrative, which I don't remember but for which he had received his highest grade of the semester, a "B-", as I recall.

So the nettle in the toe of our mentor got his big moment. As I slouched low in abject despair, he read his story with the same crudeness and insensitivity he had demonstrated all semester, and it was indeed as unpolished and sophomoric as the rest of that luminary's oeuvre. Quinn was totally unimpressed with Dragon Man. But it did demonstrate Quinn's evenhandedness and generosity to the class, as I'm sure the professor intended. Quinn was too civilized and above it all to let himself be thought of as petty, either by others or by himself.

Others read as well, that last class, but I didn't hear them. I was devastated. After a few concluding niceties and wellwishes, the course was over, and I was the first to exit, race to my room, and chew on my sorrow.

At length the notes Quinn had entered became intelligible to me:

"This is a great disappointment. You have written much better work all semester. You are certainly capable of much more detail and sophistication than demonstrated here," etc., each upbraiding criticism knifing through my pride like a dagger plunged again and again, annihilating my writer's ego, knocking me off my accustomed, privileged position at the lectern forever.

I couldn't stand it. I made an appointment, tried to maintain my author's dignity as I entered his office, and handed Quinn my ink-bloodied manuscript for whatever explanation of the grade he could offer. Always gentlemanly whether in class or office, my ego-smasher considerately reread my work and his comments, then turned to me.

"Well, Mr. Kauffman, I hope I'm not being too harsh, but this is clearly not up to your early quality. Frankly, it reads as if the narrator is an overstuffed, snobbish bore. In contrast, your earlier submissions were fresh and direct, in your own words. I was disappointed, as I'm sure you are, but these things happen from time to time. You might have been rushed. I sincerely hope you will return to your usual fine quality in future work because I know you are certainly capable of it." He handed it back to me with genuine smile, with no hint of malice, and wished me well.

There was nothing for it; all hope was gone. The grade would stand, and I would receive an "A-" for the course in my mailbox a few weeks later. The minus would stick out of my heart like a spiritual lance for years, reminding me of my less-than-golden status among the short fiction writers of the world, and when the names of Wharton, Cather, Hemingway and Faulkner were sounded in the halls of academe, the name of Kauffman would remain unheard.

In the fullness of years I have come to change my perspective on that chastening event. I have become in turn a published writer, an English teacher, and a professor of literature myself. And I have grudgingly come to accept, gratefully, Quinn's integrity and honesty and admit that he was right. My final writing for his short story writing course was not my best work. In fact, I suspect that the grade was, if anything, a gift. No, it was more than a gift; it was a concession to me, a tribute to a talent he saw in my earlier submissions and did not wish to crush brutally and send me into silence.

I think Quinn's humanity got the better of him, cracked through his exquisitely-refined sense of quality for one brief moment, and allowed him to say that a "D" was a "C."

A writing teacher has no other way to communicate the totality of his feeling for a pupil than through his grade and comments, no other way to encourage or discourage, than the grade, as I have found out through personal experience, and no other way to say, "I care about you. I care about your life and your hopes and dreams and the development of your potential as a writer and as a human being."