A Delicate Aggression: Savagery and Survival in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop

Journalism professor Dowling (Surviving the Afterlife) charts the 83-year life of one of the nation’s leading writing programs, zooming in on specific writers with a granularity that hampers his ambitiously scaled narrative. Starting with the program’s 1940s rise to prominence, Dowling moves chronologically, focusing on the tricky balancing act of turning out writers equipped for both commercial and literary success. However, Dowling too often detours into anecdotes unrelated to this central theme. For instance, he recounts a bar fight between then-workshop student John Irving and another student who had called Irving’s favorite professor, Kurt Vonnegut, a “science fiction hack.” More pertinently, Dowling discusses how Marilynne Robinson’s rise to fame outside the workshop “has relied on the power of commercial media—despite her principled renunciation of it.” He observes that Robinson strongly opposes the current University of Iowa president for being a corporate veteran with no academic experience, an apt illustration of the conflict between academe and commerce at the book’s heart. Dowling is at his best when showing how this quandary relates to the outside world, demonstrating why the story of the workshop matters to more than just those who’ve passed through its hallowed classrooms. (Mar.)