It was a pleasure to start another four week course with Robert Gish at UNM Continuing Ed tonight.

I wrote a little about Robert before when I took this class with him a first time. The class is on short story writing- some theory and some practicum. Robert is a Ph.D., but above that, he is a guy who has written and taught about writing for a long time, and he knows pretty well what he’s talking about.

It’s a four week class, so you have to dive in quickly, and with Gish, you also have to pay attention. He is a flowing river of ideas and memories, of quotes and of quips, an you have to paddle to keep up with him.

This time around, I thought I wouldn’t write down every meaty relevant thing he’d say during class about writing. That’s a tough task. I decided to just note books he talks about, and authors he cites and quotes.

After theory talk, the second half of the class was spent in an abbreviated skim and then discussion session on clearly one of his favorite stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor. The story is a masterwork on playing with theme, irony, and tension. From the story’s start you get an ominous sense of where it’s going to go- but you follow it there anyways.

Good writing requires careful architecture. You are creating a space. You are shaping a structure with an array of appendages that must house characterizations. Locations. Plot points. Crisis. Recovery. A full palette of a journey. And the elements must be hobbled together with some panache, some artistry, to make te thing not only hold together, but also hold together with style and flair.

Beautifully.

We talked about O’Connor’s story for a bit. I read as much as I could as the discussion went on to taste its action for myself.

Wow.

O’Connor wrote a lot of amazing stuff in her relatively short life. She died at age 39.

As for the story of hers we read and talked about in class tonight, Gish said, “If anyone tells you this isn’t a great short story, they are wrong.”

And in my mind, I realize she wrote this dandy when she was 28.