PF Kluge, professor

These are three things I love. But I wouldn’t want to do any of them all the time. The trick is to get the mix down. I’ve been a professor at Kenyon College since 1987; the last few years, they’ve called me Writer in Residence. I teach only the first semester, two writing courses and, in alternate years, a third course which is in literature, e.g. The American Novel Since 1950, The American Experience in Vietnam and, soon, a seminar on the work of Graham Greene. College teaching invigorates and connects and sometimes exasperates. Writing is solitary, professing is public and social and political. My writing courses involve basic lessons and necessary hits; I walk a fine line between encouraging talent while conveying a realistic sense of what a long-odds game writing is. I emphasize that writing is for an audience of strangers and that, when you address strangers, it’s important to perpetrate a story. I tell my students that delaying writing until you feel inspired is foolishness. And that—especially when you’re starting out—the reading you do is as important as the writing. And I tell them that, after all reservations, footnotes and asterisks are entered, a writer is a good thing to be. Teaching at Kenyon brings students into my life and some of them stay in touch. They make life interesting and keep me young.