Nearly a third of the sophomore class—about twenty students—had signed up, making it the most popular elective. Eddie was under no illusion about this popularity. The creative impulse was meant to be encouraged and critical judgment understood as finally subjective, so any student who showed up in Eddie’s classes and gave some sign of having done the work could expect an A- or, at worst, a B+. The same was true of some of the other electives—fiction writing and art studio—but there were additional advantages to “DramAct,” as the boys called it. Eddie was a lousy disciplinarian, and he was easily led into digressions that took up much of the fifty-minute period. At some point word had spread that you could get away with attending his classes while stoned. He didn’t believe in his own authority, which made it impossible to project it to the boys. At heart, he didn’t care whether they learned anything. His first goal was keeping himself out of trouble by avoiding any student complaints.
What do You think about Arts & Entertainments: A Novel?
