Trimble’s creative writing class

Six years after graduating from the University of Texas, I re-enrolled. This time, however, I did not seek a degree—although getting a master’s would undoubtedly have helped me later on. I merely wanted to take a series of courses with the idea of learning how to write. If that enabled me to pull out of the rut of blue-collar jobs to which I had become accustomed, so much the better. I took three journalism courses with Warren Burkett, an editing course with a kindly and knowledgeable gentleman whose name I have forgotten, an expository writing class with the erudite and Falstaffian Dr. Kurth Sprague and another with a guy from Wisconsin (name also forgotten). In the spring of 1983, I signed up for a creative writing class taught by Dr. John Trimble. My focus here is the latter.

He was a native of Buffalo and had earned a bachelor’s degree at Princeton, followed quickly by a master’s and a doctorate at the University of California. In 1975, Trimble authored Writing with Style, a little gem which has now gone into more than 30 printings and has probably earned him considerable royalties over the years. It often struck me as inappropriate when teachers made their own books required reading, but not in this case. If Trimble was somewhat smug and a know-it-all, maybe he had earned the right. Teaching writing, at any level, is a labor-intensive endeavor. I have edited and graded enough papers to be able to appreciate the difficulty of that task. What Trimble did for his students was worthy of sincere respect, and he won numerous honors along the way.

What were the most important things I learned during those few months with Trimble? Whether I learned them from him or he simply reinforced them, the list would include: constantly working to expand my vocabulary; brightening dull phrases; using active rather than passive verbs; varying sentence structure; always keeping the reader in mind; avoiding redundancies; revising my work again and again; and making it "flow." No. 1, however, was being able to trust my own voice. Trimble urged us to write about things that mattered to us. During one class, he declared himself “a sucker for authenticity.” (All of this has been of tremendous value, but it would be untrue to say everything I learned about writing came from Trimble’s class. I can think of at least two other mentors in the editorial field, also named John: Taliaferro and Bellquist. Furthermore, I have picked up quite a few things on my own.)

There were about a dozen people in English 379C. I recall Kathy Gregor, Flavia Ferrin, Letty Perez who was inordinately fond of the Carpenters' music, a girl named Janna who was engaged to a sportswriter in Fort Worth and a guy named Jay who was a fanatic about bicycle racing. Jack Crager was my favorite, however. A runner like me, he hailed from Canyon, Texas and seemed to have been born with a smile on his face; he now works as a freelancer in New York City.

We were supposed to meet twice a week in Parlin Hall, one of the classic old buildings on UT’s quad leading down toward 21st Street. But Trimble had a better idea—meeting off campus, at his home or those of the students who lived nearby. I remember one at my apartment in the shadow of the Law School. We were always seated, Trimble among us, as we went over papers we had written the week before. Sometimes we did so with a fine-tooth comb. Such a cliché would have been shot down quickly in Trimble’s class and for good reason.

He had a system whereby we edited each other’s writing. This inevitably led to bruised feelings. In one case, a male student insisted on handing in papers in which he scrawled his ideas with a ballpoint pen. This seemed foolish if only because it virtually screamed the fact that his first version was also his last. When I so informed him, he got mad. None of us in the class had a personal computer and a printer, as far as I recall. We basically used typewriters. Typewriters, for goodness sake! This really was a long time ago. I dare say that the class, if it were to take place in 2011, would benefit from major technological advances.

We knew Trimble’s class was special, but we got tangible proof when Greg Curtis, editor of Texas Monthly magazine, came and spoke. The next meeting consisted of a tour of the TM offices in downtown Austin. All of us were then supposed to do an assessment of that award-winning publication. What we wanted was to dazzle Curtis and be offered a job or at least an internship there. It so happened that Texas Monthly was just turning 10 years old. The magazine had been born in 1973, and an entire issue was devoted to the various changes the Lone Star State had seen in that decade.

Doubting that I was about to be hired at TM and keeping in mind what Trimble had said about authenticity, I decided to tell it like it was—or at least like I saw it. I wrote that the magazine abounded with glossy, high-dollar ads and that the stories about the state’s changes over the previous ten years were merely an exercise in self-celebration for Texas Monthly. Curtis was offended.

I must add one more thing about Trimble, who retired from UT a few years ago and moved to Colorado with his wife. He was a cad, a man with a reputation for hustling female students. One of the girls in our class described him this way: “He has the morals of an alley cat.” Another one confirmed it. I am no prude, and I am aware that there is in academe a long history of teachers pressing their masculine charms on young women. Nevertheless, I was disappointed to learn of Trimble’s lecherous ways.

I encountered him a couple of other times after the conclusion of that course, and my view of him as somewhat boorish grew. Finally, one morning in the mid-1990s I was having breakfast at Hot Jumbo Bagel on West Fifth Street in Austin. He came up and gave me a big grin and a hello. Wordlessly, I indicated that he should just keep on moving.