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Video Closed Captions

[music]

Jeffrey Eugenides:
Writing should make you love life more.

Jeffrey Eugenides:
I decided to be a writer when
I was quite young, about 15,

16 years old in high school.

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It happened because I read
"Portrait of the Artist as a

Jeffrey Eugenides:
Young Man" by James Joyce, and
idolized Stephen Dedalus.

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I started writing short stories
and submitting them to the

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school literary contest. I then
thought about my college

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in terms of what writer I
wanted to study with.

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John Hawkes was always a
little bit leery of my

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admiration for him, I have to say.

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I was once sitting in a class
next to him, and I turned over

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and I looked at his shoes.

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I bent over and looked at his shoes.

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And he looked at me and said,
"You even want to know what

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shoes I wear?"

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I wanted to know everything
about the guy.

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There's a way of being in the
world that a lot of my writing

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teachers had, a kind of state
of being very awake and

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attentive to the visual world
and the social world.

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I was always excited by the idea
that becoming a writer

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would make me a little more clear-headed,

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a little more alert.

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One of the reasons I like
teaching at Princeton is that

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I'm dealing with undergraduates, many of whom

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are interested in writing but
don't want to become writers.

Jeffrey Eugenides:
It's not a professional class.

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A lot of my students are obviously

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not going to be writers.

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They might be going into
business or science, some of

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them want to be diplomats.

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But I think what we do in the
creative writing class, in

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paying attention to language,
will actually be useful.

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For writers in general, it's
important to have an interest

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or mastery of other fields.

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Saul Bellow, for instance,
studied anthropology, and you

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can see how that plays
out in his novels.

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I can see that with my own
students at Princeton.

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It's one of the great
pleasures for me, is to read

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and to learn about other
fields through what the

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students write about.

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I have one assignment I give
every year, which is to write

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a story from the point
of view of an animal.

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I had one student who knew
a lot about insects.

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He chose a swarm of insects,
because the swarm basically

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operates like one organism.

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What he knew about insects,
he was able to use

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in the short story.

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When I read their work, I
usually can find writers whom

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they should read.

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And at Princeton, they go off
and they actually read it,

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it's not like I just tell them
and that's the end of it.

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So the whole semester can be
spent with what we're doing in

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the workshop, but also what he
or she is doing privately,

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reading on his or her own.

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I've heard from students, they're
very happy to have a

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place like the Lewis Center on campus.

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It is their refuge.

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It's getting bigger, it's getting built.

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Soon it's going to have its own
complex of buildings, and

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they need this place.

Jeffrey Eugenides:
It actually soothes a lot of
students on this campus.

[music]

Jeffrey Eugenides:
I was helped in my early years
by my writing teachers

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profoundly, and there is a sense that I have of

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passing that on.

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My wife says that I always come
back from teaching my

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workshop with a spring in my step.

Jeffrey Eugenides:
I think studying creative
writing will make you a better

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student of literature, and
I do think being a better

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student of literature
makes you a better

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student of human nature.

Jeffrey Eugenides:
And that certainly is going to
carry on whatever they do in

Jeffrey Eugenides:
their lives.

[music]