The Imaginary Girlfriend by John Irving Page A

footnote: the fellowship I received from the National Endowment for the Arts, to complete my third novel, was not enough money for a family of four, which I was supporting, to live on for a single summer; I spent the “fellowship” to rebuild the only bathroom in the Putney house—and I took a summer job. I’m not complaining about having to get a job,
or
about the NEA—the NEA was only giving me what the NEA could afford.
    I’ve heard many of my fellow writers say that a writer must make it on his own and not lean on the university for assistance; they say that a writer who teaches for his daily bread—so that he’s not putting financial burdens on his writing—is not a real writer . . . only hedging his bets. But in my own experience I
wanted
my writing to be free from the pressure to publish it too soon—free from the need to make a living from it. Friends who were constantly interrupting their novels-in-progress to write for magazines, or who published novels badly in need of rewriting because they needed the advances, have suffered the constraints of time and money as, truly, I never did.
    Nowadays, nothing angers me as much (from my fellow writers) as to see those fortunate souls who are self-supporting in the writing business make their insensitive pronouncements at various Creative Writing programs across the United States. In the presence of good writers who teach for a living, these best-selling authors are fond of denouncing the university as too-safe a haven; they frequently urge student writers to make it on their own—even, hypocritically, to starve a little. This is
idle
hypocrisy, of course; it is doubly hard to tolerate when the proselytizing author is expensively well-tailored and riding a multibook contract in 25 languages.
    Creative Writing courses are an economic necessity for writers in this country; for the writers who teach them, they are essential to their lives
as writers.
And for those few students who truly benefit from them, they are a gift of encouragement and time; writers—young writers, particularly—need more of both.
    There is a quandary here, however: not every writer can or should teach Creative Writing. Many of my writer friends are simply too standoffish for the requisite social contact of the job; some are preternaturally uncomfortable in the presence of “young people”—many more are too thin-skinned to endure the nastiness of English Department politics.
    I once was a member of an English Department (at Windham) wherein a senior full professor proposed that any department member without a Ph.D. should not be permitted to vote on matters concerning the curriculum. I was the
only
member of that English Department without a Ph.D., and so I sought to defend myself by saying that I agreed; I even flattered my colleagues by telling them that the writing of a Ph.D. thesis was a “massive” accomplishment. I thought it fair to warn them, however, that I was soon going to publish my first novel, which they would surely accept as an undertaking equal to their theses; I would wait to have a vote in the department until my novel was published.
    I felt it also fair to warn them that I intended to write a second novel, and a third—and, if I were able, many more after those—and that with the publication of each novel I expected to be granted an additional vote. To my surprise, my argument was not met with the good humor with which I had delivered my defense, but the proposition—that only Ph.D.s be permitted to vote on matters pertaining to the curriculum—was narrowly defeated.
    Many writers I know would rather write nonstop for magazines or newspapers than subject themselves to the pompous lunacy of academics. But, in my case, I got up early to write—having children in the house helps. I met with my students in an organized fashion, I daydreamed through English Department meetings, and then I went to the