Category: Professor Hudnall

Private Benchly

Forgive me for this.

Although the Benchly’sWord Vault to the left will tell you otherwise, my most devoted readers (read: reader) will confirm that these are the opening words to my fourteenth blog entry of 2009. My last entry, a brief photo-essay documenting a recent trip to a local farm to pick strawberries was removed in an effort to preserve the anonymity of my girlfriend. I removed this entry after receiving a hostile comment posted by an anonymous poster (it’s funny how all hostile comments are anonymous) in which my girlfriend’s full name was used. The anonymous poster wondered if someone should warn my girlfriend of my past, which was ironic because my girlfriend is someone I can open up to about my past and also because some days it feels as though she and I are the only ones capable of living in the present. As a result, I’m forced to screen all comments and, though it makes my First-Amendment-bones quiver as if George W. Bush was in the room, all comments containing personal attacks, personal information, and/or foul language are now deleted. Who knew it would come to this?

One question I’m repeatedly asked is, “what’s up with your nickname?” (or some variation). In response, like a ballplayer reciting the daily, monotonous postgame “there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’” sound bite, I explain the origins of the nickname, delving into as much detail as my mood and schedule will allow. Despite my predilection for long-windedness, though, one detail that is often lost in my explanation is the reasoning behind my use of the nickname as a pseudonym on the Internet. I don’t bother elucidating because I consider the explanation to be implied. The short answer is that I prefer anonymity; of course, when have you ever known me to be short?

When I started this blog, the second entry I published was a rant about a man whom I dubbed The Prick. I kept my real name and his out of the blog for the same reason: in case he ever read it. Even then, I recognized that anonymity was my only chance to feel free to express my uncensored thoughts, which was my only chance at producing anything worth reading. (Whether or not my writing is actually worth reading is a discussion for another day.) I wanted to be uncensored without risk of hurt feelings. What an unrealistic contradiction, right? I guess that’s the fate of a writer. From the very start when Professor Hudnall and others were teaching us the art of storytelling, we were told to write what we know. And then we graduated and entered a world where successful writers based some or most of their stories on their personal experiences, all the while pretending that any similarities between real life and the fiction presented in their work was a coincidence. The writer for the motion picture (500) Days of Summer even makes light of this when he prefaces his film with the disclaimer, “The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Especially you, Jenny Beckman.”

Regardless of how hopeless my goal of anonymity seemed to be, I had to try. I wanted my writing to speak for itself, not the facts and feelings behind the words. (And incidentally, to anyone who complains that I’m only telling one side of my life’s story, I say of course I am, and if you have a problem with that, get your own damn blog.) My writing is important to me and as such, this blog is doubly important. The birth of this blog came at a time when, as a writer, I worried that my creativity had died like a fly ball at the warning track on a windy day at Candlestick Park, and now, five years later, Candlestick Park has been torn down and replaced by a new literation-friendly ballpark. I built it and my blog counter tells me that people have come, so I must be doing something right. There’s just one tiny problem …

As the Peer Pressure links to the left will tell you, like 200 million people around the world, I have a Facebook page. I created a page for the same reason some people buy an Oprah book; or like a certain band; or wear a certain style; or say a certain catchphrase: I followed the masses. And though I’m sure that once the American sheep herd starts to venture to a different networking hill, “Facebook” will be said with the same nostalgic-yet-disapproving tone as has been reserved for “Hootie and the Blowfish” and “skidz” (among other unpopular fads formerly known as popular), I will acknowledge that it has worked wonders in reconnecting me with lost friends, cultivating current friendships, and establishing new ones. Unfortunately, it has also introduced a new level of anonymity-related problems.

When I signed up for Facebook, I used my pseudonym. I did this because I knew my blog would be linked to my Facebook page and vice versa, and in order to preserve my anonymity and subsequently maintain a freedom to write in my blog, I needed to keep my name private on Facebook. I also set my Facebook profile settings as private as one can get without being unwelcoming to friends both old and new: stated simply, for a person to see anything other than my pseudonym and profile picture, he/she would have to be my Facebook friend. I’ve even gone so far as to use the pseudonyms for my nieces in the pictures of them that I’ve posted on Facebook. Sure, that’s a picture of me with Niece #3, but unless you know her, you don’t know her name or where she lives. I’ve done my best to create an online identity as close to the real one as is possible when using millions of ones and zeros. This has included dropping Facebook “friends” with whom I no longer maintain contact (including exes, former coworkers, etc.). And as a result, for the last Facebook year, my sense of privacy has begotten a sense of creative freedom. And yet.

A month ago, the anonymous poster left the aforementioned comment that included my girlfriend’s full name, a piece of information to which, in my perfect world, only my Facebook “friends” would have had access. I admit that there are loopholes through which an obsessive person could travel to ultimately find her way to private information reserved for my Facebook friends. It would be grossly naïve to think otherwise. And I admit that even though I’ve since taken additional steps to ensure my online privacy, there is probably a backdoor I’m missing through which someone may someday enter. This is the world we live in.

And I won’t forgive you for that.

Torn and Restored

“Would you like paper or plastic?” “Would you like fries with that?” “Who can spot the dangling modifier?” English majors are familiar with these questions because, in their loved one’s collective opinion, these questions accurately reflect the only possible postgraduate avenues down which someone with an English degree can travel. After the laughter from these career punch lines has died down, what everyone fails to explain to the English major is that variations of these jokes exist for other fields of study (philosophy, history, art, music, etc) and that hundreds of thousands of students around the world have been victims of these living-room/kitchen table verbal firing squads. In essence, as we venture off to the world of academia, our first lesson is that we are about to waste the next four years of our lives; that unless we choose science, or medicine, or technology, or education, we are wasting ours and our parents’ money.

As I sit back and watch Freckles’ brother (a recent college grad with a history degree) attempt to shield himself from the barrage of “do you want to teach history?” questions, I find myself yet again struggling with my own English-degree identity in this English-degree-fearing world. Yes, I’m an editor, but the qualifications for my job have slowly but surely begun to mirror those of a McDonald’s manager and, though a respectable job, that’s not the career path I envisioned the day I declared my major. The path I convinced myself I was choosing was that of a storyteller.

Although I’ve never felt emotionally or intellectually qualified to teach English, I can say without a doubt that I chose this path for myself because of the influence of two English teachers: my 7th grade English teacher, Mr. Gagnon; and Professor Hudnall in college. In his class, Mr. Gagnon once told a story from his childhood and after building up the suspense for 10 minutes, every eye was focused on him as he delivered the climactic ending that left every student in the room as full as a compulsive eater on Thanksgiving. If Ms. Parker’s memory is as capable as I think it is, she’ll swear that I’m confusing Mr. Gagnon with Professor Hudnall. I’m not, but to her credit, I easily could have interchanged the names because Professor Hudnall accomplished the same feat 9 years later. Though unique in every possible way, in my mind, Mr. Gagnon and Professor Hudnall will forever be linked by their ability to bring their students to the edge of their seats. They were teachers, of course, but like every English major before and after them, they were storytellers first and foremost.

After graduating college and entering the classroom-less real world, and while fine-tuning my own craft, I found myself starved for the good story that had been lacking for the first time since I was old enough to know a good story from a bad one. Consequently, I ate up all of the books a postgrad guy is supposed to (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; Catch-22; On the Road; etc) and with my book clubs, that trend hasn’t really stopped. I also watched as many movies as possible. Unfortunately, it seemed like I graduated college around the same time the majority of stories told in movies were dumbed down to reach a broader audience. But then, something wonderful happened. Either the film industry experienced an explosion of creative talent or I got better at finding the good stories. And so it was in 2001 that I found myself on the edge of my theatre seat on three consecutive occasions: Memento, Moulin Rouge, and Amelie. All three movies captured my imagination but as the first of the three released that year, Memento was the film that made me believe in storytelling again. (If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.)

Like a born-again Christian desperate to share his faith with anyone who will listen, I made all of my loved ones watch Memento; and like that very same born-again desperate to consume anything that tastes like the crack that is his newfound love of Christ, I have since made a point of watching all of the films by Memento’s director, Christopher Nolan (Following, Insomnia, and most recently, The Prestige). Because Freckles was desperate to consume the crack that is her love of Christian Bale, she accompanied me to see The Prestige this past weekend. Like Memento, The Prestige had a symphonic feel to it; each scene was arranged and interwoven in a seemingly random way with a hint of purpose. The scenes began to harmonize near the end as a twisting crescendo built to a climax comparable to The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” or the movie Requiem for a Dream. And yet again, I left the theatre satisfied with and inspired by Nolan’s work, as well as invigorated by a renewed faith in storytelling.

And so it was with great pride that I recently discovered that Christopher Nolan was once a student of English in London who had most likely shielded himself from the same barrage of “do you want to teach English?” questions that were fired in my direction 7 years ago. Now I don’t pretend to believe that this common denominator means that I’ll ever be as successful as Nolan has been, but I’ve also never been naive enough to think the size or reaction of an audience is proof of a good story. All that matters to me is that Nolan’s success brings with it further recognition that there is a place in this world for storytellers and that we should stand as proudly as doctors and teachers. My only hope is that when my time has come to pass, and I’m asked what I’ve done with my English degree, I can say with confidence that I wove a few good stories.

"Read books, fall in love, dream a lot." – Clayton E. Hudnall

In the second semester of my sophomore year at the University Whose Name Shall Never Be Said, I was lost. I had yet to declare a major, I had yet to take a college class I truly enjoyed, and I had yet to take the entire college process seriously. Then, on a whim partially influenced by Ms. Parker, I signed up for Gay and Lesbian Literature taught by Professor Clayton E. Hudnall. And instantly, I hated it.

By this point, I had taken 15 college classes and while passing them all, it’s safe to say I barely did any work. I coasted through my classes like a high school senior preparing for the beach. What I hated about Professor Hudnall’s class was that he didn’t accept my coasting. He graded my work for what it was: delicately teetering between average and below average. I resented that. He’d often say, “This is college, folks. You’re paying to be here. Act like it.” or something similar. And I tried like hell to ignore him. For awhile, I succeeded.

Then, over time, my stubbornness wore off and I opened myself up to the wonders of learning. You can chalk this up to a number of reasons: the incredibly eccentric and animated classmates with whom I shared the class (Sciaretta, Briggs, Theatre, Excessive Hand Motions Girl, Mr. Billings, Ms. Parker, Arizona Boy, the Uncle Lover, etc); Professor Hudnall’s passionate and lively debates/lectures that forced a student to contribute; and hell, I’ll admit it, the lesbian fiction. For the first time in college, I anxiously awaited each new class (except on those days when I had neglected to read the assignment and feared the Wrath of Hudnall). And with my new dedication to work and learning, a funny thing happened: my grades got better. Of course, because I slacked off for so long in the beginning, I couldn’t achieve the highest marks for the semester, but I did break par and it was the first grade in college I truly deserved.

When my sophomore year ended, I declared my English major and I immediately signed up for a fall semester class taught by Professor Hudnall (American Poetry). When my junior year arrived, I poured my heart into his class each and every week (well, maybe not the Walt Whitman week) and I was rewarded with yet another inspirational performance by Professor Hudnall. His passion for poetry was infectious. And while I’m the first to admit these poems could have stood on their own without our professor there to support them, I’ll never underestimate the importance of his guidance and lessons.

Professor Hudnall’s classrooms were his stage and with the spotlight glued to his every move, his classroom audience was always on the edge of its collective seat. We listened. And though he would have cringed to hear me say so, in some ways, his words were more important to us than the words of those he quoted. Through his actions, and through his stories, and through his enthusiasm, you knew his words were words worth remembering. He had lived a life worth noting and each glimpse into his world and his life and his thoughts gave you that much more of a chance to be a better person.

I am who I am today because of the paths I have crossed and one of those paths was Professor Hudnall’s. He taught me how to be a college student; to take responsibility for myself and my actions. He showed me the power of the written and spoken word. And he gave me a newfound appreciation for life and all of its beauty. His final lesson to my class was: “Read books, fall in love, dream a lot.” These are words to live by and by them he lived.

Professor Clayton E. Hudnall of East Windsor, Connecticut, passed away on August 25, 2004. He was an Associate Professor of English from 1970 to 2000. And for his priceless contribution to my life, I am forever grateful.