Success Story

The course was paying off. To Pupils Penick and Goss came payments for short stories from Collier's and the Atlantic Monthly; to Pupils Morgan and Flynn came advances from Publishers Farrar & Rinehart. These were new testimonials to Teacher Hudson Strode of the University of Alabama and his course in creative writing, English 117-118-119.

Last week, having just finished revising his own eight-year-old South By, Thunderbird,* a journal of a South American plane trip, 51-year-old Professor Strode could take time out to puff away at his pipe and look at the record. Although he says of his course, "We do not write to sell, and I think a lot of the best stuff has not sold at all," the record has an exceedingly successful ring to it: P: Pupil John Mayo Goss's check from the Atlantic was for a short story, Bird Song; the 50-year-old ex-adman's story was the 25th to be sold by a Strode student.

P: Pupil Roy Flynn's check from Farrar & Rinehart was for The Changeling, the young (26) man's first novel and winner of the $1,000 Stephen Vincent Benet Scholarship; it was scheduled for publication next spring, and was the 14th novel accepted from a Strode student.

Clinics & Visits. When would-be novelist Harriet Hassell came to him for help in 1937, brisk Professor Strode, no novelist himself, remarked skeptically: "I don't believe a person can be taught to write a novel"--then added: "but we'll see what happens.'" The result, Rachel's Children, went into four printings. Since then Hudson Strode, a full professor at Alabama since 1924 (specialty: Shakespeare) has been busy teaching students to write about what they know.

Professor Strode does not believe that everybody can be taught how to write. He restricts his four-session-a-week "clinic" to those who he thinks have genuine latent talent; twelve to 14 is the usual number. They read no textbooks, hear no lectures, spend their entire time writing, revising, polishing, criticizing each other's products, absorbing pungent Strode comments.

On occasion, students visit Strode's country retreat for discussion, with hunting & fishing trips on the side. They also go to his home, just outside Tuscaloosa, for conferences with him and his wife, who assists him in appraising manuscripts.

Passion & Variety. Alabaman Strode has an almost fanatical faith in the cultural present and future of the South. He takes great pride in the fact that all but four of his 14 students who have sold novels come from within 100 miles of Tuscaloosa.

With the war's end (seven of his students are in the Navy), and the South's gradual economic liberation from the North, Hudson Strode predicts a great regional renascence. For, he declares, "there is more passion, more sentiment, more grace, and more variety in the South than in any other section of the nation."

*Other Strode books: Timeless Mexico, The Story of Bermuda, Finland Forever.

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