Since the day I started writing I was a failure. I just never knew it. Teachers gave me good grades, people gave me favorable comments, and the few places I submitted or contributed my stuff to published it. I was a big fish in a small pond if only by default, but I had no reason to ever doubt my ability. Nobody else did. As the years passed by, and I started focusing more on writing, the pretentiousness level amongst my peers increased exponentially, but the quality of their writing more or less stayed the same: It sucked.
The first semester of my Senior Year in college I enrolled in a Fiction Workshop class. It was a Monday night class at a satellite campus fifteen minutes away. The distance seemed to keep away the window shoppers who might have otherwise thought the class an easy grade. There were thirteen or so students, none of whom—including me—really looked like writers. Our professor, however, looked exactly the part: Birkenstock sandals with Argyle socks, sweater vests and khaki pants, a gold pocket watch that he set on the desk in front of him before every class, he was every bit the stereotype; the underappreciated poet who was just teaching until his brilliant prose was discovered by the masses. The class sat in a circle, and every week three or four of us would have our previous week’s assignment read aloud by someone who didn’t write it. After each reading was finished, the rest of the class would comment or ask questions about what was read. Our professor made it a point in our first meeting that he was in no way an expert on fiction; his cup of tea was, of course, poetry. But he stressed that good writing defied format; “You’ll be able to hear it,” he’d say. After the first few weeks I wasn’t so sure; It seemed as if it was going to be like every other writing class I’d taken: one giant circle jerk. The writers weren’t looking for validation of their prose as much as they were a pat on the back for their troubles. Brutally honest didn’t mean, “The description of your mother when she was crying could use some fleshing out,” it was more, “That sucks what happened to your mother.” It was discouraging; I took the class with the intention to grow as a writer, to get beyond just writing poetry, just writing simple exposition. Early on it looked like the only thing that would grow was my already extensive vocabulary when it came to sugar-coating things. Before the third class I told myself if it didn’t get any better that night, I was going to quit it and find something else. And then someone read the first line of the story from the guy with the clover on his hat:
“In sixth grade, I paid Kristine Barber ten dollars to touch her boob in the cafeteria. It was taco and guacamole day, just around Christmas, it was snowing out, and lunch was nearly over.”
I felt my stomach drop. This wasn’t just good, it was great. (Two years later, while riding down an elevator after a two-day workshop, best-selling author Chuck Palahniuk said the same thing to me about that line.) I felt myself slide down in my chair. Collectively, over all of the years that I’d been writing, everything, every word that left my pen wasn’t in the same league as those two sentences. I went from feeling like a former semi-pro baseball player playing in a recreation softball league, to a former semi-pro baseball player trying to tell war stories to Derek Jeter. Part of me wanted to quit; I thought it would be far more graceful, or at the very least less embarrassing to quietly bow out the back door than to have my words be read after his and be exposed for what they were: CRAP. As the person read on in the story I listened, and like everyone else, I laughed. Everyone knew this guy was good, but he just sat there, looking disinterested, rather unassuming as he slouched in his chair until everyone was finished with their comments.
Around the same time as the Fiction Workshop class, in the rap world the heavyweight battle to end all battles was in full-effect. Jay-Z, on his album Blueprint, had just landed a devastating uppercut to Nas with his song, “Takeover.” In it, amongst the below-the-belt “You know who did you know what with you know who” blast and other dizzying disses, Jay-Z said:
“Went from Nasty Nas to Esco’s trash
Had a spark when you started, but now you’re just garbage
Fell from top ten to not mentioned at all
To your bodyguard’s “Oochie Wally” verse better than yours.”
I’d been listening to Nas for years, since his debut album Illmatic came out when I was in high school. Early on, Nas was the writer’s rapper; critics called him the best lyricist in rap, and that distinction seemed due. Along with thanking the likes of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. in his liner notes, Nas was just as likely to thank Billy Joel and Bob Dylan. He had his pulse on more than just the streets from which he was raised, he was educated in history, and he told compelling stories. When I was in high school, I really started listening to rap because I couldn’t find any truth or personal identity in most grunge music. Not that I could relate directly to what it was like to gang bang or sell crack, but there was a struggle in the Biggies, 2Pacs, and Wu-Tangs of the world, and the way they were conveying their message, in dizzying rhymes over catchy beats, it was exciting, fun even because you could listen in a communal setting and everyone might catch something different. But as the years passed by, Biggie and 2Pac were murdered, Ol’ Dirty Bastard went loco, and on more than one album after It Was Written, the quality and focus of Nas’ work seemed to slip. Along came a hungry Jay-Z; already respected for his flow, and a crossover success to boot he still needed his Michael Corleone popping Virgil Sollozzo moment and he took his best shot.
After “Takeover” came out, a short time later Nas responded on his album Stillmatic with the all-time counter punch in “Ether.” In four-and-a-half minutes Nas annihilates everything from Jay-Z’s motivations:
“Y’all niggas deal with emotions like bitches
What’s sad is I love you ’cause you’re my brother
You traded your soul for riches”
to his manhood:
“You a fan, a phony, a fake, a pu$$y, a Stan
I still whip your ass, you thirty-six in a karate class?
You Tae-bo hoe, tryin’ work it out, you tryin to get brolic?
Ask me if I’m tryin’ to kick knowledge
Nah, I’m tryin’ to kick the shit you need to learn though
That ether, that shit that make your soul burn slow”
By the end of the barrage he tells Jay-Z he should apologize and it almost feels just; he should.
The fact of the matter is that both Jay-Z and Nas came out winners in their battle. Jay-Z went after a made-man, a legend, and he slapped him upside his head pretty good. Nas responded with his best album in years, and whether or not he regained his proverbial throne, he re-gained the respect of those who started to doubt him. One of them lost the battle, but both of them won the war. The only way to get better at anything is competition. If you ever want to advance your skill, your trade, your art, you have to put yourself in a position where you’re surrounded, or at least aware of your talented peers. Bob Dylan had The Beatles, Joe DiMaggio had Ted Williams, Ernest Hemingway had his “Lost Generation” cohorts. Competition doesn’t always have to be as cut throat as it was between Jay-Z and Nas. In Fiction Workshop, I wasn’t looking for a prose throw-down. After I got beyond my initial insecurities I was excited by the possibility of being in the same class as someone so talented. If I wanted to get the sort of reaction out of people that he got with his boob-touching beginning, I had to step my game up. If I didn’t know how to do that, I had to learn. I couldn’t just rest on my supposed—and as I could now see, completely exaggerated—laurels anymore. If I ever wanted to be considered a good writer I had to learn how to write.
The prospect was a daunting task. Some assignments I had better luck on than others. When I’d get blocked I’d listen to Stillmatic the same way I used to listen to Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan when I started writing. “Got UR Self A Gun” was a favorite listen; with its Sopranos theme sample, it’s both catchy and confident; the sign of a man who is through taking sh!t:
“To take it back to Africa, I did it with Biggie
Me and Tupac were soldiers of the same struggle
You lames should huddle, your team’s shook
Y’all feel the wrath of a killer, ’cause this is my football field
Throwin’ passes from a barrel, shoulder pads apparel
But the Q.B. don’t stand for no quarterback
Every word is like a sawed-off blast, ’cause y’all all soft
And I’m the black hearse that came to haul y’all ass in
It’s for the hood by the corner store
Many try, many die, come at Nas if you want a war, get it bloody, uh”
One of the redeeming qualities of Nas’ music is his vulnerability. He wears his emotions on his designer sleeves better than anyone else in rap. “One Mic” is a lyrical Memento; built off a Phil Collins “In The Air Tonight” sample, the song slowly gains momentum that amplifies his rage and outright dystopian outlook on the state of things before it quells to an almost hypnotic, hopeful whisper:
“This is crazy, I’m on the right track I’m finally found
You need some soul searchin, the time is now”
For the second of two short stories I had to write for Fiction Workshop I chose to write about Woodstock ’99. Though rooted in some truth—some things I saw when I was there, a little bit on the sequence of events to actually get some of my friends there, a band or two that I saw perform—the heart of the story was more or less made up. But writing the story allowed me to think deeper about some things I couldn’t quite get my head wrapped around at the time: the randomness of the people who ended up there, the complete disregard by so many for even the slightest bit of decency towards so few, the fact that the whole event felt secondary to the actual experience of that many people in one place at the same time. Writing that story felt like my first attempt at a short story all over again. It was exciting, scary, and disjointed; far from polished, but because of how hard I was pushing myself, the story was far from horrible either. It had its redeeming moments, and moments were something to build off of.
As for the other guy in the class, well, he’s still the best writer I’ve ever read. I’d even take being Bushwick Bill to his Jay-Z.
