Feature: MSU's Gang of Four Showcased on Campus

MSU'S GANG OF FOUR SHOWCASED ON CAMPUS By Barry Gross

Four celebrated Michigan writers returned to their alma mater last fall to help launch a new annual symposium. Friday, November 9, 1992, was an exciting and historic day when the MSU Libraries launched the first annual Michigan Writers' Symposium. The purpose of the Symposium is to celebrate the accomplishments of Michigan writers and bring them to the attention of the MSU and mid-Michigan community. The four writers invited to the first Symposium--Richard Ford, Dan Gerber, Jim Harrison, and Ted Weesner--all graduated from MSU in the 1960s.

In the afternoon the four writers read from their works. Ford and Weesner read long sections from novels in progress, Gerber and Harrison their poems responsively -- that is, Gerber read a poem of his, then Harrison read one of his poems that Gerber's called to mind, and so on. In the evening, the four writers had a free-wheeling and wide-ranging two-hour discussion about writing, MSU, politics, and whatever else came to mind. The discussion was ably moderated by William Barillas, a doctoral candidate in American Studies at MSU. Both events were held in Fairchild Theatre and about two hundred and fifty people attended each event.

All four writers are extremely well published. Ford authored four novels-- A Piece of My Hear, The Ultimate Good Life, The Sportswriter, and Wildlife--and a collection of stories, Rock Spring. Gerber is the author of three novels--American Atlas, Out of Control, and A Voice from the River; a collection of stories, Grass Fires; and five volumes of poetry--The Revenant, Departure, The Chinese Poems, Snow on the Backs of Animals, and A Last Bridge Home. Harrison is the author of eight collections of poems--Plain Song, Locations, Walking, Outlyer and Ghazals, Letters to Yesenin, Returning to Earth, Selected and New Poems, and The Theory and Practice of Rivers--and eight novels--Wolf, A Good Day to Die, Farmer, Warlock, Sundog, Dalva, Legends of the Fall, and The Woman Lit by Fireflies. Weesner is the author of four novels--The Car Thief, A German Affair, The True Detective, and Winning the City--and a collection of stories--Children's Hearts.

The four writers are very different from one another and they do very different kinds of things, so it would be a mistake to pigeonhole them by locating them in a particular time--the Sixties--and place--MSU, the state of Michigan--or to force on them a group or generational identity. Yet the two formats--paired readings and discussion--allowed interesting and revealing similarities to emerge.

Michigan State can't take credit for Ford and Gerber, Harrison and Weesner, but they were here during important and formative times in their lives and while they were here they learned things which turned out to be important to them, to the men and writers they've become. Richard Ford, the only one of the four from out of state, came to MSU from Jackson, Mississippi, to 'learn to be a hotel manager.' Until he entered Michigan State, he recalls, his 'reading had been the casual drugstore and cereal box type -- whatever came easy. I was remarkably ignorant for a boy of eighteen, as unlettered as a porch monkey and without much more sense than that idle creature of what literature was good for or to what uses it might be put in my life. I was not at all a writer, not one bit the seasoned, reasonable, apprentice bookman customary to someone who before long would want to be a novelist.'

He remembers the first story he had to read in the first literature class he took at MSU his freshman year -- it was Scott Fitzgerald's 'Absolution' -- because, he says, he didn't understand anything that happened in it. In that first year he also read Faulkner and Hemingway and didn't understand them either, but just knowing about Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway made him feel 'comfortably and creditably set apart' from his fraternity brothers 'who were sunk into packaging, retailing theory, and hotel management -- all those necessary arts and sciences for which Michigan State had become justly famous.'

After freshman year he abandoned Hotel Administration and decided to major in English. He recalls his English professors putting him through 'dry formalistic paces' -- point of view, dramatic structure, image, theme -- but by the time he graduated from Michigan State in 1966 he did know some important things about fiction and felt ready to learn to read carefully.

Dan Gerber, born in Grand Rapids, came to Michigan State with the 'unimaginative' notion of being a prelaw student. But being in college, he found, 'was like putting on a pair of glasses, it was like getting a catalog for my education. I don't know if I got my education in college, but it opened my eyes to the possibilities.'

By the time he graduated from MSU in 1962 he had 'taken his vows' -- that is, he had started to write poems because he felt he had to, because it seemed to him to be the only thing that made sense for him to be doing at that particular point in his life.

Jim Harrison was born in Grayling and grew up in Haslett. He didn't much care for the English department at MSU -- 'I was a nasty item and they denied me Honors and flunked me out of graduate school' -- but he loved the library where he was steadily employed -- 'it became my refuge' -- and he did care for an english professor. Sooner or later, Harrison says, 'you end up yourself but we all use gurus to get there. First it's our father. Next it's artificial fathers you find in books: one day you're Rimbaud, the next you're Dostoevski, the next you're Steven Dedalus. Herbert Weisinger was the main one for me.'

Not only did Professor Weisinger 'run interference' for Harrison and arrange for him to return to MSU and get his master's degree but he was 'the first truly great man I ever met. He could topologically see the whole history of the world and its literature and from all different angles: mythographically, historically, economically, scientifically. That was of perceiving things has become my own.'

Ted Weesner, born in Flint, came to Michigan State to study landscape architecture and diligently and dutifully did. But he was also in the Honors College -- the first year there was an Honors College at Michigan State -- and that gave him the freedom to take lots of English courses. Those courses, he says, quickly became his 'mistress,' his 'secret love.' In his senior year the secret was out: he gave up the pretense, came north of the Red Cedar for good, and graduated an English major.

Without telling Harrison, the sponsors invited Harrison's mentor Herbert Weisinger, now in his eighties and living in retirement in Florida, to attend. Not only did Professor Weisinger's presence make the return of this MSU Gang of Four an even more sentimental journey than it otherwise might have been but it also firmly underlined the MSU connection that bonded these four writers together in the first place and, as became clear during their formal presentations and in many touching casual and spontaneous moments during the weekend, continues to do so in surprising and unexpected ways.

It was a rich and rewarding weekend for all lovers of literature but something even more--and totally unforeseen--emerged from the symposium. Watching, listening to, and getting to know Richard Ford, Dan Gerber, Jim Harrison, and Ted Weesner one began to detect the makings of what might be called an MSU style (and it is characteristic of that style, isn't it, to hedge, and even apologize, in order to avoid the possible appearance of self-importance or self-congratulation). How does this style manifest itself and what does it consist of? They really seemed to like one another, to respect one another, to enjoy one another.